Vocal Voices

Tim "Thick as mince" Martin, boss of Wetherspoons and leading supporter of Brexit - sovereignty, no FOM, blue passports, no deal - you know the sorts of things, is now whingeing that he cannot get enough staff to serve the Gammons in his pubs. So what does he want? He wants the government to make it easier for migrants from the European Union, the EU no less not the RoW, to come and work here.

The UK has a low birth rate and is getting older so Tim the Dim wants to bring in loads of fit and healthy EU people on min wages and zero hours so that he can grow his profits.

What a hero! What a patriot!

He said: "The UK has a low birth rate. A reasonably liberal immigration system controlled by those we have elected, as distinct from the EU system, would be a plus for the economy and the country."

I believe our LeaveEU campaign was for an Australia style points system. It didn't say that we could set the points so that EU people could not come here and work. It just said that we should be the people to control whether they come in or not and also in control of when they must go.

There is absolutely no double standards or ambiguity in this. I would expect that some people will have switched jobs as the pubs remain closed and also that some people won't want to take the risk of serving in a bar whilst Covid is still an issue.

Creating a controlled immigration system which allows this kind of staff in for a fixed period of time is neither two faced, immoral, against the principles of what was said, nor the actual words.

Read again what he said and take the press hype out of it.

Martin said: "a more flexible visa system for EU workers could help ease the pressure on firms."

Given that he campaigned to stop FOM from the EU that is about as two-faced as one can get. He did not want FOM but now he has a staffing problem he wants EU FOM 'Lite" - sort of what we could have done under EU rules when we were a member!

He, of course, hid it in all that other stuff totally forgetting that the UK has always had it in its power to use any (legal) system to control immigration form the RoW - even when it was in the EU.

He said: "The UK has a low birth rate. A reasonably liberal immigration system controlled by those we have elected, as distinct from the EU system, would be a plus for the economy and the country."

That is what he campaigned for and that is what he is asking for.

Yes, of course he did. I distinctly remember him wanting "A reasonably liberal immigration system controlled by those we have elected..." for the 7,428,147,063 of those not in the EU. He was out on the streets every day with is megaphone - "What do we want? Justice for the seven and a half billion! When do we want it? When Brexit is done!"

But at the time he said no such things. When he was campaigning he wanted sovereignty back and control of our borders, and we all knew what those things meant.

Stop trying to re-write history.

Workingman wrote:Stop trying to re-write history.

I'm not. He campaigned to remove the rights of Brussels to determine who could come to the UK and put it back with the UK government.

Now you are saying he can't say "OK UK government, let's have a sensible policy on who can and can't come here"?

Now who is trying to re-write history?

He campaigned to remove the rights of Brussels to determine who could come to the UK and put it back with the UK government.

He campaigned for no such thing.... that only ever applied to EU citizens and we did not apply those rules effectively; as you well know.

Two of the core themes for Leave.EU and Vote Leave in the referendum were immigration and taking back control of our borders. They wanted to lower the overall number, not just EU, coming in (anyone and from anywhere) and also to choose their skill levels. They wanted total control - our way or the highway. That's what he campaigned for.

You cannot campaign for something that does not exist. Nothing was mentioned about a "reasonably liberal immigration system". It was not in any advert, press release or speech. Not on a bus. It did not exist - it was not thought of. Liberal immigration for all was the last thing they wanted - control was! Unless you have links saying otherwise.

However, now that some 1.4 million EU citizens have left Tim and his mates want to move the goalposts. Suddenly up springs this brand new and shiny 'reasonably liberal' (whatever that means) immigration system. It's not for everyone, mind. The world's people can queue because Timmy wants to prioritise those from the EU - he said so.

If it has been around since before the ref, as you claim, you will know it in great detail, won't you, and be able to explain it to the nth. Who these people are, Where they will come from, The skills they have that we lack and why we cannot fill them. How many we need. For how long. Or is it so 'liberal' that anyone and his dog can just turn up to fill any position no matter how unskilled, even pulling pints in 'Spoons?

Workingman wrote:

He campaigned to remove the rights of Brussels to determine who could come to the UK and put it back with the UK government.

He campaigned for no such thing.... that only ever applied to EU citizens and we did not apply those rules effectively; as you well know.

I apologise, I should have been far more precise.

He campaigned to remove the rights of Brussels to determine when and whether EU citizens could come to the UK and put it back with the UK government.

Workingman wrote:However, now that some 1.4 million EU citizens have left Tim and his mates want to move the goalposts.

At the time of the referendum, it was claimed that there were circa 1.4m British citizens in the EU and circa 4.2m EU citizens in the UK.

To date, there have been 5.2 million applications to the EU Settlement Scheme

So are you telling me that, in reality, there were 6.6 million EU citizens in the UK and 1.4m left?

I reiterate. He campaigned to remove the rights of the EU to set laws and regulations which the UK were obliged to accept, wherever we did not have a veto. The campaign was to bring full competence back to the UK on laws, border and trade.

I thought everyone understood that.

Once you have full competence it is not beyond the realm of credulity to then ask to set a relatively benign immigration regime for the near future to get over an impact to the country on a scale of a fairly major war. Especially as it will be up to Westminster to decide when, how and for how long that benign immigration regime lasts.

It is an important distinction and often played as something very different.