The UK has not yet achieved the ecstacy of Brexit (or will it be the agony), but there are already chewy bits showing up in their beer. Lawfare‘s Shannon Togawa Mercer analyzes:
Despite that, the tension surrounding foreign workers in the United Kingdom and their post-Brexit status has already begun to mount. After the September Tory conference to which I alluded above, Home Secretary Amber Rudd distributed a controversial briefing note suggesting that companies may have to aggregate and disclose to the government a list of the foreign workers in their employ. The note precipitated responses from more than 100 business leaders condemning the plan on the grounds that it would “hurt the economy, hurt workers’ rights and hurt Britain’s standing as a tolerant country.” The Government, in response, clarified its intention to “consult with businesses…on how [to] do more encourage [sic] companies – to incentivise them – to look first at the British labour market.” While no formal policy has changed, at least one other instance of ambiguous government policy has suggested a burgeoning panic regarding the government’s approach to foreign workers. On October 8, the Washington Post reported that professors at the London School of Economics (LSE) accused the British Foreign Office of making foreign academics ineligible to advise the government. The Foreign Office has denied any policy change post-Brexit, but reports coming from foreign professors at LSE have garnered a lot of press.
There’s been talk of a hard Brexit. Is that the only option?
While exiting from one of the four freedoms is a non-starter from an EU perspective, there may be a way to thread the needle in a softer Brexit. The Guardian reported in July that senior EU officials may consider allowing for an “em ergency brake” on the movement of people for a period of several years in order to avoid a shock to the EU economy and allow the U.K. to stay in the single market while assuaging the immigration concerns expressed in the process leading up the referendum. In exchange, the rights of EU citizens in the U.K would be protected for the term of the “emergency brake.” Further to the potential for a compromise, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond has recently broken with May’s stance on immigration, suggesting that foreign students should not be counted in net migration numbers. Even more recently, former Tory leader Michael Howard, an oft-described eurosceptic, has said that he “think[s] the Government should make it clear now that those EU citizens who are currently living in this country would be allowed to stay in this country, would be allowed to carry on working in this country, would be allowed to carry on studying. I don’t think we should wait for any question of reciprocity.” If there are fractured opinions in Whitehall, the red-line of immigration control may fade into a fuzzier gray.
Probably not good enough for Scotland. I’m still betting on a breakup of the UK, now that Scotland has less reason to stick around.
