Brexit is dead. Long live the future
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Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
KEVIN MAGUIRE: 'Brexit was a giant con by plastic patriots – we need a plan to get back in EU'
The Mirror's Kevin Maguire argues the only way for Britain to return to its former prosperity is with a plan to return to the EU after Brexit proved to be a giant con that only leaves us poorer and weaker Brexit is a self-inflicted assault on the UK economy that will prove more than twice as expensive as abolishing slavery in the British Empire. Ending the shameful, terrible, cruel bondage of Africa's kidnapped men, women and children branded and clapped in irons to sweat on plantations in the West Indies and Americas was undoubtedly a noble cause. Disastrously wrenching our country out of the European Union was a cranky obsession of relatively few plastic patriots who hoodwinked a minor majority subsequently regretting the giant con. I'd also wager a disturbing number of Brextremist agitators, had they been shouting their mouths off at the end of the 18th and start of the 19th centuries, would've argued we couldn't afford to free slaves earning a fortune for their owners. READ MORE: Brexit is a 'complete disaster' and referendum 'should have been repeated' Mercifully the moral Britons won back then and on holiday in Spain I read in Adam Hochchild's ultimately inspiring Bury The Chains, the history of Britain's struggle to axe slavery, that scholars estimate stopping the trade then ceasing slavery itself cost the nation 1.8% of national income over more than half a century. The bill for Brexit will be 4% in less than half that time, calculates the Office for Budget Responsibility, and the extremists who masterminded the 2016 referendum heist are unable to claim any superiority. Highlighting any Brexit benefits is nigh on impossible, which is why the likes of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Kemi Badenoch like to talk about almost anything else and shouldn't be trusted on issues such as migration. How many refugees, asylum seekers and migrants crossed the Channel in small boats before that referendum, a period when the UK could trigger the EU Dublin convention return arrangement? Zilch or virtually none. The 40,000 or so annually arriving in small boats is, in one of those startling coincidences, around the number of seized slaves yearly transported in British ships to their dreadful fate across the Atlantic. Before anybody, including Keir Starmer, shouts about trade deals, those between Labour and the EU, India and US are mere pennies for lost pound - as were Tory agreements with Australia and New Zealand. Even the 10% Trump tax on exports to the US isn't worth much more than his 15% tariff slapped on the EU when we trade twice as much with Europe as we do Donaldland. Regular exchange rate fluctuations can wipe it out easily. Deceiving Brexitremists pretended turning our backs on our EU neighbours was freedom. The freedom to be poorer and weaker? No thanks. Brexit remains the elephant in the room, deliberately ignored by the Prime Minister and others. If we want Britain to be more prosperous and stronger on the global stage then we need a plan to be back in the EU. At the moment, they're not even making the argument. More than one way to skin a Fat Cat Rachel Reeves is justified in stressing hers was a dreadful economic inheritance when more than three-quarters, £111billion - which is 77% - of this financial year's projected £143bn UK government borrowing covers interest on past debts - much of them Tory. Labour's Methodists want higher taxes on bookies and Marxists on banks (son of the manse and fairness champion Gordon Brown advocates both) to fund key public services and avoid breaking election promises to most workers and families. The Chancellor of the Exchequer could do much worse than dust off advice from the likes of out-of-the-box thinkers like Tax Justice UK and Patriotic Millionaires, including 10 reforms to raise £60billion by, among other changes, limiting pension tax relief handouts for higher earners to those of average earners and stop the South's richest paying less council tax than typical Northerners. Just because Reeves is against a wealth tax on the few with more than £10million doesn't mean she can't help ordinary folk. There's more than one way to skin a Fat Cat. Let's hear 'up the workers!' in classrooms The massacre of seven people during a seafarers' strike 200 years ago in Sunderland was unknown to me, and I'm from South Shields up the road. Bicentennial commemoration lead organiser David Scott was right: we should never let these events be 'lost from the history books' because we stand on the shoulders of giants - everyday men and women who challenged grave injustices. The seven murdered by soldiers on North Sands, now Sunderland Uni's St Peter's campus, were resisting pay cuts (Hello P&O Ferries in Dover) and the slain included Mary Wilson, 76, in a crowd of more than 100, including women and kids, on the beach. People's history, our history, is what establishment lackeys fear most in prioritising the teaching in schools of the supposed greatness of oppressive warlord kings and queens... Let's hear more 'up the workers!' in classrooms. Labour voters entitled to feel cheated Labour Deputy PM Angela Rayner's landmark Renters' Rights Bill coming into force next year bans, among other scams, landlords ending tenancies to sell properties then relisting them charging more, so now very ex-Housing Minister Rushamara Ali should've been sacked instead of allowed to resign. Because the greedy extra £700 a month grab by the rentier class shamed MP for Bethnal Green and Stepney once again overshadows the great things a UK Labour government is doing and Rayner, as well as Starmer, down to every Labour member and voter, is entitled to feel cheated. She wasn't a distraction, as the self-serving MP claims. I'm afraid she was guilty as charged of grotesque hypocrisy. Going up Deporting most convicted foreign criminals immediately and barring re-entry into the UK is penny-wise Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood acting tough when it costs an average £54,000 a year to lock 'em up with 12% of inmates in stuffed jails from abroad. Going down STUPID, nasty and inflammatory MP Rupert Lowe mistaking a charity rowing crew for migrants in a boat off the ex-Reformer's Great Yarmouth constituency in Norfolk confirmed these dangerous Hard Right reactionaries speak first, think later when spreading their poison. Speaker's Corner 'I have to say that I really have become a good friend, and David has become a good friend of mine.' Ugh! Pass the sick bag when fishy JD Vance slavering over David Lammy, and the UK Foreign Secretary drooling over the US Vice President, turns the stomach. Vance is as vile as Trump with added menace and brains. I hope Lammy's anti-tetanus jab is up to date.
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
The government needs to face up to reality
Martin Kettle's analysis of the dysfunctionality of government is spot-on, but incomplete (The biggest problem for Starmer and co: the machinery of government is broken and they can't fix it, 7 August). The core problem is our unwillingness to face up to reality, whether it is on tax, the need to invest in reform, the impact of Brexit, the pros and cons of legal migration, the real steps necessary to stem illegal migration at source, the implications of the new cold war, or the new world order under Donald Trump. By biting our tongue and trying to fudge the hard choices, successive governments have both confused and misled. Now is the time to treat the public as adults and trust them to recognise the need to get real. We need to rebuild the country to make it relevant for both today and the future, and that means moving beyond the Widow Twankey politics of saying a lot but doing nothing. Now is the time for genuine leadership and a promise to lead, not follow, the KellyPrime minister's official spokesperson 2001-07 Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Glasgow Times
6 hours ago
- Glasgow Times
I do not think McGregor is fit to be president of Ireland, minister says
Transport Minister Darragh O'Brien compared MMA fighter McGregor, 37, to Ireland's outgoing president Michael D Higgins, who is a former arts minister and sociology lecturer. Mr O'Brien said McGregor was free to challenge the process to get on the presidential ballot paper but that the Irish constitution was 'clear'. He was responding to comments from McGregor to The Sunday Times where he said he is considering a legal challenge to the eligibility rules for the presidential elections. To become a candidate, a person must be nominated by either 20 members of the Irish parliament or four local authorities. They also must be an Irish citizen who is 35 or older. An election for the largely ceremonial role is expected towards the end of October, as it must take place in the 60 days before outgoing President Michael D Higgins' term ends on November 11. So far, two candidates have secured sufficient nominations to get on the ballot: former farming journalist and EU commissioner Mairead McGuinness, who is the Fine Gael nominee; and Catherine Connolly, a left-wing independent and former Galway mayor who has received the backing of opposition parties and independents. Several figures have said they intend to seek the nominations needed to get on the ballot, including Riverdance star Michael Flatley, millionaire entrepreneur Gareth Sheridan, and previous presidential candidate Peter Casey, as well as McGregor. President of Ireland Michael D Higgins and his wife Sabina outside Aras an Uachtarain, Dublin, the official residence of the President of Ireland (Gareth Chaney/PA) Asked about McGregor's intention to legally challenge process to be nominated as a presidential candidate, Mr O'Brien said he was within his right to take a case but did not believe he would be nominated. 'Like any citizen, he's entitled to take a case should he wish, but the constitution is clear on that, the nomination process is clear,' the Fianna Fail TD said. 'I don't envisage he'll be nominated to run for president. But look, I think it's open to any citizen to take a challenge, should they wish. 'The office of Uachtaran na hEireann is the highest office in the land. 'It's a critically important office. If you look at the work that Michael D Higgins has done over the last 14 years and representing our country abroad with such distinction, I would just ask people to draw the comparison to what our president has done, and what someone like Conor McGregor might do. 'So I don't think he would be fit to hold that office.' Last month, McGregor has lost his appeal against a civil jury's finding in favour of Dublin woman Nikita Hand, who accused him of rape. Ms Hand, 35, successfully sued McGregor in a civil court over an incident in which he was alleged to have 'brutally raped and battered' her in a penthouse at a south Dublin hotel in December 2018. Ms Hand was awarded almost 250,000 euro in damages and McGregor was also ordered to pay about 1.3 million euro in legal costs following the November trial.
