Pilot 20: The Home Office Is Undermining the Brexit Negotiations

First, Liam Fox accused the EU of blackmail over the ongoing Brexit negotiations. Then, The Guardian found that the Home Office was extracting huge profits from immigration applicants.

These two things are not unrelated.

We discussed last week the notably tense tone of the third round of Brexit negotiations. Chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier described the British position papers as being infused with “a sort of nostalgia”, a series of demands that take control back to Westminster whilst expecting all the major benefits of remaining an EU member state.

And we know where this nostalgia comes from, don’t we? Too many of the Brexit hardliners have never let go of the British Empire and all the power and negotiating leverage that that represents.

“Blackmail” is the perpetual cry of the smaller negotiator with the weaker hand. #getagrip — Nick Macpherson (@nickmacpherson2) September 1, 2017

Let’s be very clear: negotiating for your interests is not blackmail.

It is the EU defending its own interests, as well it should.

Somehow a number of Leavers are still under the false impression that the EU owes us something, or that ‘they need us more than we need them’. It’s a fantasy. We are one little island nation of 60+ million, which no longer manufactures much that isn’t foreign owned. The EU is 27 nations of 440 million people. So, who holds the negotiating power (hint: it’s not us).

There are two very important points to consider, points that David Davis seems hellbent on distracting the public from:

The EU can afford to take their time. The longer the negotiations goes on, the more pressure there is on the UK . A no deal is bad for both sides, but it is obviously much worse for the UK . It benefits the EU that the UK be in the weakest position before trade is discussed. This is how negotiations are conducted.

Go ahead and read the European Council guidelines for Brexit negotiations. It’s all there: “no cherry-picking”, “no separate negotiations”, and the primacy of the European Court of Justice. Plain and simple. When the history books come to be written, we will never be able to say we weren’t told.

But — you might ask — why would the EU negotiators be so cavalier about the millions of citizens affected by these negotiations? Why not work with the UK government to protect those people before getting down to the nitty gritty?

This is where that Guardian report comes in.

“The Home Office is making profits of up to 800% on immigration applications from families, many of whom are eligible to live in the UK but are turned down on technicalities and forced to reapply – and pay again.”

Read the full piece here.

Here is another reminder that if you’re a politically disadvantaged group, the government will do its best to ignore your rights, get as much cash out of you as it can, and generally not care about acting decently. The morality of the state is proportionate to the political influence of those affected.

Andrew Henderson and his wife, Hsin-Ni Chen, a Taiwanese national, have had to make two UK family visa applications costing about £1,464 each after their first application was refused on a technicality. The cost to the government to process this visa was £423.

The amount of money being extracted from people is cruel. The Home Office is currently charging £5.48 PER EMAIL. In researching this topic, Ceri spent some time looking at forums and message boards of those who have/want to/tried but failed to emigrate to the UK. A scary number had stories of having to spend up to $10,000 to get a visa due to being refused and having to resubmit. For further details and stories around this issue, check out this episode of the Brexit podcast Remainiacs.

(If any of our listeners are having problems, or know someone who is having problems, we suggest you start by going to r/ukvisa on Reddit, as they seem to be super helpful and knowledgeable.)

We’ve spoken about this before. The British Home Office is widely regarded as a cruel and unpleasant institution. It is an explicit policy to create a “hostile environment” for applicants for UK visas. And now they’re making money on top of it.

And that’s why the EU negotiators aren’t giving Britain an easy time, not even to come to terms on citizens’ rights more quickly — they have no faith that the British government will uphold their end of the bargain.

Theresa May has been a complete joke of a PM — her real legacy will be giving the Home Office this reputation for cruelty.

Quick hits

We aren’t exclusively a Brexit podcast. Here are the other topics we touched on.

De-Activate

After a glorious run of peerless meme-age, Activate have disbanded. Or have they? It seems they were infiltrated by a Momentum member, then they closed down and then they announced their return. They’ve even deleted all their top-quality memes. They’ve lost staff at an alarming rate: their media co-ordinator left after just a day, citing time concerns. Then their campaign director resigned.

We haven’t seen such a strong first 20 days since Trump moved into the White House.

#KenyaDecidesAgain

We spoke to Katie G Nelson back in episode 18 after the result had been announced on the 11th of August. That was a comfortable victory for the incumbent, Uhuru Kenyatta, that was repeatedly contested by the opposition on the grounds of serious irregularities in the voting process. The result was voided on the 28th of August because the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission ignored basic aspects of constitutional and electoral law. A full report on the ruling is still forthcoming, so details are light.

The Kenyan Supreme Court explicitly blamed the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. Uhuru Kenyatta was not blamed. Right now, this is an issue of governmental incompetence, not vote rigging. Kenyatta has threatened to “fix” the courts if re-elected in the next election (which must happen in the next 60 days).

Remember though, flaws in the vote are what sparked off the violence in 2007. So the next two months are a potentially very dangerous time, especially with the President making inflammatory remarks on television.

Follow Katie for more information and on-going reporting and check out her website here.

You know the drill:

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