News
Rejoin EU Party Leader Resigns
The leader of the Rejoin EU Party, Richard Hewison, has resigned his position as leader following the outcome of the by-election in the Clacton constituency last week. The Rejoin EU Party came third in what was seen to be a two-horse race, despite 34 candidate being in the running on paper. The Rejoin EU candidate, former MEP John Stevens, secured 1.4% of the votes and so fell below the threshold for retaining the deposit required to be a by-election candidate.
Mr Hewison gave his reasons for his resignation in a letter published on the X/Twitter social media platform, which we have linked to below.
Britain Unbound continues to believe that the British people do not wish to be part of the European Union, and the by-election result in Clacton reinforces that view.
Reform UK Announce Welfare Changes for Foreign Nationals
Reform UK have announced a welfare plan which includes making "British citizenship a condition for accessing almost every form of benefit". This would therefore exclude foreign nationals - including EU citizens - even if they have lived, worked and paid taxes in the UK for many years.
Whatever you may think of this proposal, it highlights the generosity of the UK's European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS), which has still been accepting applications six years after Brexit. As a result, EU citizens generally retain more automatic rights in the UK than UK citizens now have in the EU.
Access to benefits is a special case. Under the terms of the Brexit deal, many EU nationals have full access to UK benefits. But this at least is reciprocal: UK citizens living in the EU generally have full access to benefits in their host countries. Nonetheless, this arrangement helps many more EU citizens than Brits.
Overall, only about 1.3 million UK citizens live in the EU (excluding Ireland). In contrast, over 7 million EU citizens have applied to the EUSS, and around 4.5 million have already been granted settled status (with most of the remainder having "pre-settled" status, which amounts to much the same thing).
This is the sort of asymmetry which should be recognised as part of a fair and balanced UK-EU reset. At the very least, this imbalance might be seen as a bargaining chip which strengthens the UK's hand in the negotiations.
However, all the evidence so far suggests that the EU is more likely to be the party that continues to play hardball. If a Reform-led UK government, or any other, attempted to scale back the access of EU citizens to UK benefits, the EU would surely retaliate.
This could simply mean removing the reciprocal rights of UK citizens to benefits in EU countries. The disparity in numbers would mean that the UK government could compensate some or all of them and still make a net saving on the welfare bill. (The Reform plan includes a small contingency for additional benefits paid to UK citizens who return home.) But additional trade sanctions and other retaliatory measures would be a possibility too.
In summary, Britain Unbound has no official view on the merits of the Reform plan. But it is important to acknowledge the potential conflicts with post-Brexit agreements, and how this illustrates the fact that reciprocity can still favour one party over the other.
You can read Reform's proposals here.
The latest EUSS data are here.
