This an example of how the current government’s choice of Brexit - and its insistence on treating mobility with all our close neighbours (apart from Ireland) in the same way as mobility with Mongolia - are economically and politically unsustainable.
The damage to the UK’s services industries, the reduction in the opportunities available to our citizens (young and old), the problems caused to business - all are consequences of the current government’s choices: other choices could have been made.
The opportunity for opponents of the current government is that even many arch-Brexiteers oppose those choices. And many more are likely to do so once the COVID crisis has passed and the extent of damage becomes clearer.
Nor is there much evidence of huge public opposition to much better mobility arrangements with the EU: the current government is fighting the last war on this.
The lesson of pieces like this is that there is a large political space open for parties proposing much greater mobility with the EU: short of FOM, but allowing much greater freedom to move around, work for short periods, live and study.
It is on issues like this that opposition parties can start prising apart the pro-Brexit coalition on which the current government majority is based.
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NB2: the process for selection of CofE (Arch)bishops is set out here. churchofengland.org/sites/default/…. One name (or one name and a “reserve for the contingency that it becomes impossible to appoint” the first candidate) goes to the PM.
So the PM’s role is now fairly nominal (though his appointments secretary serves as a non-voting member of the appointments committee, and his appointee chairs the selection committee for Archbishops).
I’m in the “one the one hand, but on the other” camp on this (whether @CMAgovUK should be the new U.K. subsidy control authority). @AlexanderPHRose and @jamesrwebber have a good point but...
1 The CMA has an established reputation and credit with the EU and other trading partners. 2 It has a role under the U.K. Internal Market Act that means dealing with the devolved governments - and that complements a subsidy control role that will also deeply concern those govts.
3 No one really knows what resources this role will need: if it’s the CMA, it can move people in and out depending on work load.