Posted on 06/14/2016 8:48:51 AM PDT by dennisw
Bureaucrats have their own way of thinking. Whenever there is talk about cutting back or lowing authority, their first inclination is to “cut the meat and protect the fat”.
Say you have a dozen programs, only one of which is popular and efficient, whereas the other 11 are wasteful and bloated. So you offer to cut the popular one. This puts pressure on those who want to cut.
In this case, there are likely at least *some* EU programs that work well and are liked by the British. So they will offer to end these immediately, while insisting that the unpopular and stupid programs can either not be eliminated or can only be eliminated at great cost and time to Britain.
And, it will get worse. Popular goods flowing back and forth will be curtailed, while unpopular things, like immigrants, won’t be. They will even make things like TSA lines for people who want to cross the border in either direction. It is, and will be, pure harassment.
Couldn’t work like that. EU programmes aren’t enforced in Britain by EU bureaucrats (they haven’t the power), they’re enforced by British civil servants in British government departments. The moment a British government tells those civil servants to stop enforcing them, they’ll stop.
Yes and no. That is, while the EU bureaucrats didn’t enforce, the Brits created enabling acts to carry out the EU directives. So much of their law has been modified, and their bureaucrats will still enforce these things until they are repealed. Decades of them.
In any event, it is going to be very interesting to watch.
Yes and no again. You’re right in that EU directives which are incorporated directly into primary legislation will take a lot of parliamentary time to unscramble. Most, however, especially the trivial ones which tend to cause the most public irritation, are in the form of Statutory Instruments. These are applied by government ministers under powers delegated to them by primary legislation, and are thus much easier and quicker both to introduce and to remove.
Many of these government ministers are pro-EU, so I would look forward to all variety of procrastination. There doesn’t seem to be any way to make them change. Except perhaps when you finally get a strong, anti-EU PM.
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