Veteran Downing Street photographer Steve Back has done it again – he’s snapped these notes being carried out of a meeting with Mark Field in Downing Street this afternoon. Someone at the meeting appears to have said we are “loathe” to do a transitional deal, we are “unlikely” to stay in the single market and that our position is to “have cake and eat it“. Here is an attempted transcription:
Won’t provide more detail. We think… be offered single market. Our criteria are clear – more open the better.
Manufacturing relatively straightforward
Services harder – because French hoping for business.
biggest interest is internal marketECJ & control of borders won’t fit.
Transitional – loathe to do it. Whitehall will hold onto it. We need to bring an end to the negotiation.
Headlines won’t change from now until March though
Why no Norway – TWO elements – no ECJ intervention… beyond our trade with Europe. Unlikely to do internal market
Trade with EU through DexU not DIT.
What is the model? Have cake & eat it.
Very French negotiating team.
Need fair process guaranteed…
Canada Plus – more on services
Europe gets a good deal
BEA model not good
So has someone in Downing Street at last revealed the government’s Brexit plan?
Transcription via Chris Jones
In her conference speech Theresa May vowed that Brexit would mean “our laws will be made not in Brussels but in Westminster. The judges interpreting those laws will sit not in Luxembourg but in courts in this country. The authority of EU law in Britain will end”. Well, not quite…
The government has today decided to ratify the Unified Patent Court Agreement, which accepts both the primacy of EU law and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice over patents in Britain. Article 20 of the agreement says “the Court shall apply Union law in its entirety and shall respect its primacy”. Article 21 says “Decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union shall be binding on the Court”. This is just one aspect of EU law, but it means May is not keeping her conference promise – on patents the EU will still have primacy…
Shortly after Theresa May became Prime Minister, her team stressed to the overwhelmingly Remain-supporting civil service that Brexit must be at the centre of all decision-making, that there must be no equivocation: we are leaving the EU. Panjandrums were told they must include a commitment to Brexit in all of their “write rounds”, the regular Whitehall memos circulated to ministers, sub-committees, the PM and the Cabinet Secretary. Alas, Europhile mandarins have defied this order, repeatedly omitting the Brexit commitment. Forgetfulness or a vain act of dissent? Downing Street are taking no chances – whenever they receive one of these incomplete write rounds from civil service Remainers they add the words “We are leaving the European Union” and send it back, reminding the sore loser responsible of their duties. “You will remember next time, won’t you Humphrey?” “Yes, Prime Minister…”
Thirteen leading Leave campaigners including Michael Gove and Gisela Stuart have urged the government to keep Vote Leave’s referendum pledge and spend the Brexit ‘dividend’ on the NHS. Buried in Wednesday’s OBR report was the revelation that Britain will get back an extra £32 billion when we leave the EU, approximately the £250 million per week figure which Vote Leave said was the net amount currently being paid to Brussels. During the referendum Vote Leave famously suggested that money could be spent on the NHS. Today Gove, Gisela, Steve Baker and others say:
“When we leave the EU we will be able to take back control of the billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money we send to Brussels each year. We will be able to decide how we spend that money rather than EU bureaucrats. The OBR has revealed that the British people will get back over £10 billion net a year once we leave the EU. We believe that this Brexit dividend should be spent on our priorities – the most important of which is our NHS.”
According to Civitas research fellow Christian Stensrud, Deloitte, the firm responsible for last week’s famous ‘leaked’ memo, took at least €24 million from the EU in 2015. The US company was involved in €45 million worth of EU auditing and consultancy last year and Stensrud’s number-crunching reveals at least €24 million of this went straight to the firm. During the referendum campaign David Sproul, chief executive of Deloitte in the UK, warned of the “unsettling effect” that the vote was having on business and the firm claimed Whitehall needed to hire 30,000 extra civil servants to cope with Brexit. Shrinking EU means somebody needs a new revenue stream…
Should an MP vote against the will of the people? @OwenSmith_MP says when it comes to Brexit, the answer is ‘yes’ #TheAgenda pic.twitter.com/gQTfjv4zyk
— The Agenda (@agendaitv) November 21, 2016
Piers Morgan: “Are you prepared to stand there, as a democratically elected politician in this country, and vote against the democratic will of the people?”
Owen Smith: “Yes, in respect of this I absolutely am.”
No further questions.
