Brexit, the four directions: nadir

EU Referendum Results Map

Last week, I wrote and posted a series about the four possible directions the UK can go from where we are.

• First, hard Brexit, which is catastrophic;
• second, soft Brexit, which is several different flavours of disaster;
• third, re-running the EU referendum, which would be expensive, time-consuming, and wouldn’t necessarily stop Brexit;
• fourth, Parliament voting to revoke the invocation of Article 50, which means an unprecedented rebellion of MPs in both Opposition and Government with unpredictable consequences.

From a worm’s-eye perspective, the fourth option is least-worst: but the people most likely to face negative consequences for carrying it out and saving the UK from catastrophe or disaster, are the same MPs who would have to vote for it.

And regardless of how bad it is for us in the lower income bands, MPs are all in the top ten percent by income just from their salary: they have a generous expenses system, heavily subsidised food and drink at work, complete job security until the next general election, and a nice golden parachute even if they lose their seats then: they will not directly suffer from the economic disaster of soft Brexit, and though the catastrophe of hard Brexit might hit them, they’re better insulated against it than most.

Workfare and the Big Society

Nick Clegg in April:

“From today, if you are 18-24 and out of work, you can get down to a Job Centre like this because they will be able to offer you the opportunities to either earn or learn, to either take up work, which we will part subsidise, or the expanded apprentice prospects or the increasing number of work experience placements.”

Over a hundred people spent the night of Saturday 3rd June under London Bridge. Some of them were being paid “apprenticeship wages” of £2.80 an hour, learning valuable rough sleeping skills. Many were working for free, though they’d expected to be paid. Kerry McCarthy, MP for Bristol East, says that £1.5 million was allocated for security at the Jubilee, and wants to know, among other good questions:

When Close Protection UK were awarded the stewarding contract, was this on the basis that they’d use unpaid labour (and if so, were the organisers happy with this?) Or were the organisers led to believe that the stewards would be paid, and the contract price fixed accordingly?

American blogger Atrios says (via):

Aside from the obvious “slave labor” element of this, using people like this for security by a private security is a complete scam. It’s just collecting a bunch of money from the government to pretend to provide security. Security people need to be trained, have authority, and actually give a shit to serve any legitimate purpose. The only purpose here is “take tax dollars [sic] and run.”

Possibly we have a different standard of large crowds in Britain than in America, but I have been a volunteer steward, and I’ve been at events with volunteer stewards. I didn’t watch the river pageant: it was a lovely sunny afternoon and, while I’m no monarchist, I don’t get a kick out of watching an elderly lady get rained on.* But it appears the main problem at the event was hypothermia, not security trouble.

You can see how it could have worked if the plan had been from the start to use volunteer stewards for the pageant crowds, with a one and a half million budget.