Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Bureaucratic Brexit

The underwhelming offer by Theresa May of residency rights to (some) EU citizens resident in the UK will require a vast bureaucracy to ensure it happens. Inspectors will need to be employed to sniff around people's private lives to show they have been resident for 5 years. Thousands of bureaucrats will be needed to sort out the vast number of applications to remain. All of this, of course, means a reduction in the rights of both EU and UK citizens.

The growing bureaucratic empire of civil servants won't end there. A new immigration system will need to be set up and operated so that fruit pickers can be brought into the country (assuming the fruit farms don't close down - no jam tomorrow with Brexit), nurses can be employed (applications are down 96% from the EU) and GP shortages can be filled.

Then there is the bureaucracy needed to run our own regulatory system which we will need to set up in the absence of the EU system. And don't forget the creation of government departments needed to negotiate separate trade agreements with other countries.

Brexit - looking more and more like an employment scheme for bureaucrats.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Jonathan, I generally agree with everything you say but I'm not so sympathetic on this point. The UK has operated without the EU not so long ago, so it won't be that difficult. True that more civil servants will be needed, but better that than fork out money to the EU. UK can have more control over who enters the country and the extra effort will be worth it. Theoretically, EU is wonderful but I don't think it will last.