GRcade

Lagamorph wrote:The Lords have just voted in favour of keeping the entire UK in a customs union after Brexit.

348-225

twitter.com/BBCParliament/status/986670578160623616

satriales wrote:The bill wasn't about whether we stay in the customs union, but that the government has to explain what they have done to try and keep us in the customs union.
They can literally just say "we've done nothing" and that will satisfy this bill.

More likely they'll release a few sentences of waffle that sounds better than that, but they aren't actually going to change anything.

The Guardian wrote:Sunder Katwala, who runs the British Future thinktank, which focuses on migration and identity, says Michael Gove was right to say that British attitudes towards immigration have become more tolerant since the referendum.

On his Twitter feed Katwala flags up various bits of research that back up this view.

twitter.com/sundersays/status/986873285748166656

Rob Ford, an academic specialising in this topic, looks at the evidence in this Medium article. He cites various sets of data, but the key figures are probably the ones in this chart.



Ford explains:

Here’s the impacts data. This comes from the British Election Study panel fielded by YouGov on a regular basis to a very large representative sample of respondents. The panel regularly asks people whether they think immigration is good or bad for the economy, and whether they think it enriches or undermines cultural life.

There is a big, sustained jump in the share of positive responses on both of these measures after the Brexit vote (shown by the red dashed line). Immigration optimists now significantly outnumber pessimists on the economic measure, while on the cultural measure optimists and pessimists are now balanced. Before Brexit, pessimists were the larger group on both measures.

And he questions why this might be.

Why has this change happened? Immigration policy hasn’t changed, and while migration levels have dropped somewhat, they remain high by historical standards and a long way above the government’s “tens of thousands” net migration target. The vote to leave the EU didn’t change anything on its own. Yet voters across the political spectrum seem to have taken it as a cue to worry about immigration less, and appreciate it more. Why?

Michael Gove had an answer on Today - although, as I pointed out earlier, hate crime figures tell a different story.

Katwala also refers to this Ipsos MORI report from last year looking at attitudes to immigration. It includes this chart showing how attitudes have become more positive since the referendum.



When Gove said on Today that the UK was now the most immigration-friendly country in the EU, he seemed to be referring to this Eurobarometer study published recently. The full report (pdf) runs to 271 pages, and it is not entirely clear on what metric Gove thinks the UK comes out top (I’ve tried his office, but they have not got back to me), but the UK is third best out of the 28 EU countries on the measure of whether people are happy having an immigrant as a neighbour - which is close enough to justify Gove’s claim.

Here is the chart from page 41.



And this is what the report says about these findings.

Among those who feel totally comfortable [having an immigrant as a neighbour], the highest proportions are found in Sweden (82%) and the Netherlands (76%), followed by the United Kingdom (72%) and Ireland (70%). In 11 countries, less than three in ten (30%) give this answer, with the lowest proportion found in Hungary (9%), and less than a fifth giving this answer in Bulgaria (14%) and the Czech Republic (16%).

Moggy wrote:British attitudes might have softened.

The British government attitude obviously hasn't.

twitter.com/faisalislam/status/986941773791596545

twitter.com/geraldjmcgrath/status/986925628925587456

twitter.com/carrie_p_/status/986929681600524289

Exclusive: EU rejects Theresa May's Brexit Irish border solution as doubts grow over whether UK can leave customs union

The EU has comprehensively rejected British proposals for avoiding a hard border in Northern Ireland in a move which will cast serious doubt on the UK’s ability to leave the customs union, The Telegraph has learned.

Senior EU diplomatic sources said that Mrs May’s plan for avoiding a hard border in Northern Ireland was subjected to a “systematic and forensic annihilation” this week at a meeting between senior EU officials and Olly Robbins, the UK’s lead Brexit negotiator.

“It was a detailed and forensic rebuttal,” added the source who was directly briefed on the meeting in Brussels on Wednesday. “It was made clear that none of the UK’s customs options will work. None of them.”