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Looking Beyond The Obamacare Debate To Improve Health Care: Sundayreview
Looking Beyond The Obamacare Debate To Improve Health Care: Sundayreview
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/26/opinion/sunday/obamacare-universal-health-
coverage.html?ref=opinion
Opinion Editorial
grows
First posted: Friday, August 25, 2017 05:19 PM
EDT | Updated: Friday, August 25, 2017 07:47 PM
EDT
EDITORIAL
Canadians’ frustration
with border fiasco
http://www.torontosun.com/2017/08/25/canadians-frustration-with-border-fiasco-grows
The Observer view on
Labour’s new Brexit
policy
Labour’s newfound pragmatism over the EU,
revealed by Keir Starmer in the Observer today,
is a game-changer. Now the real argument over
Brexit can begin
Observer editorial
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Now Labour has at last made a choice and
deserves credit for adopting the only short-term
position that makes sense. Negotiating a
transitional deal is all but impossible to achieve
within 18 months, given that talks on the deal
cannot even start until the UK and EU have
reached agreement on three complex and
contentious issues: the financial bill Britain will
owe the EU on exit; the rights of EU citizens
living in Britain and British citizens living in the
EU, and who will oversee them; and
arrangements for the Irish border. Any deal will
also require unanimous support from every
other EU nation, and ratification by both the
European parliament and European council.
British negotiators should be focusing on the
immediate and critical substantive issues, such
as the Irish border, then turning their minds to
the long-term settlement; not wasting time and
energy on the impossible task of negotiating a
transitional deal. This means, as Labour
suggests, we must seek to keep all our economic
arrangements and relationships with the EU
intact for a period after we give up membership
of the EU’s political club. This is necessary to
allow the time and space to negotiate a final
deal. Yes, keeping the economic status quo,
while giving up our power to shape the rules
that govern it, is very much a second best to full
membership of the EU. But there is no way
round that.
A transition period, by definition, comes to an
end. What comes next? Here, Labour has also
markedly shifted its tone. Starmer explicitly
leaves open the door to remaining in the single
market and a form of customs union, so long as
a final deal includes arrangements for managing
migration more effectively. This is, for now, a
sensible position: Britain may well have more
luck negotiating some more significant brakes
on freedom of movement now than David
Cameron did prior to the referendum. The EU
today is more self-confident and less blighted by
existential fears than the EU of two years ago,
thanks to an economic upturn and the failure of
far-right nationalists such as Marine Le Pen in
France and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to
gain power.
Labour has clarified its stance and opted for a
Brexit approach that is practical. Compare and
contrast with the Conservatives’ chaotic journey
without maps. In recent days, ministers have
published several position documents intended
to clarify Britain’s negotiating strategy for a
transitional deal. Together they give the
impression of a government that continues to
cling to the fantasy that Britain can, in the now
notorious words of Boris Johnson “have its cake
and eat it”. Philip Hammond and Liam Fox
jointly wrote two weeks ago that Britain will
leave both the single market and the customs
union at the end of the Article 50 process. But
there is no realistic acknowledgement in these
papers of the gigantic difficulties that this would
create. On issues from the Irish border to
customs arrangements, the government has
simply stated what it wants, no matter how
unfeasible its demands. There was, at least, a
significant concession on the European court of
justice: the government seems to have conceded
that the UK will continue to be affected by EU
law.
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The government’s approach so far to the historic
question of Brexit borders on the irresponsible.
Yet, still, ministers continue the deceitful
charade, while every day the uncertainty
deepens for businesses making investment
decisions and EU citizens living in this country.
Last week the government celebrated a report
indicating falling immigration figures. But those
statistics are in fact a sign of a spluttering
economy in which industries such as food
production are suffering from a lack of workers
and the NHS is unable to recruit enough doctors
and nurses. New research from KPMG suggests
that this is the shape of things to come, with
significant numbers of younger, better-educated
and better-paid EU nationals considering
leaving the UK.
That Labour has finally screwed its courage to
the sticking place on Brexit could be a game-
changing moment. Next month the EU
withdrawal bill returns to parliament for its
second reading. The bill’s provisions on the
European court of justice would effectively
make Labour’s transitional proposal to stay in
the single market all but impossible. So, not
before time, battle must and will be joined in the
House of Commons. It’s now down to
moderate, pragmatic Conservative MPs to break
ranks and rally behind Labour to bring some
sanity and realism to the Brexit process. If this
parliament votes to sacrifice Britain’s economic
interests on the altar of Conservative party
unity, history will not remember it fondly.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/201
7/aug/26/the-observer-view-on-labours-new-
brexit-policy