Yanis Varoufakis
The main argument against my Norway Plus proposal is that such an agreement would jeopardise the capacity of the UK government to strike out into the world to bring home a variety of tailor-made trade deals with the US, China etc. At the same time, hard Brexiteers continue with their disingenuous promises of daily millions that will flow to the NHS, money saved from the UK’s contribution to the EU budget. Now, here are two excellent reasons to back Norway Plus! Let’s look at them briefly:
Any trade deal with the United States with include stringent clauses which force the UK government to ‘open up’ the NHS to the predatory behaviour of Big Pharma and give them the right to sue the London government in tribunals controlled by private law firms in the employ of Big Pharma. This is no criticism of the Trump administration per se. Looking at the manner in which the Obama administration negotiated both TTP and TTIP, it is obvious that any UK-US trade deal will be detrimental to the NHS’s autonomy from the predatory medical-industrial complex.
As for the Brexit dividend for the NHS, it is a figment of Boris Johnson’s imagination: Setting aside the tax decline due to slower growth in the long term (following any Brexit that take Britain out of the single market), the sheer administrative post-Brexit costs will overwhelm any net gains from not contributing to the EU budget.
In short, Norway Plus offers the NHS a shield from the lurking predatory medical-industrial complex and minimises the pressures for further cuts on the NHS due to Britain’s stressed fiscal position.
This is one of four short articles extracted from the debate that followed this meeting at the House of Commons, in which I presented the left-wing case for a Norway Plus Brexit agreement. To read/listen to that presentation, click here.
The argument again 'Norway plus', is that the UK wishes to regain its constitutional system where no parliament can bind a successor, not continue with the 'Corporations uber alles' approach Yanis has sold the soul of the Greeks to.
ReplyDeleteHe knows full well we can afford whatever NHS we have the people to staff, and he also knows that taking trained medical staff from other countries is little more than colonial appropriation.
I'm amazed he's gone full Project Fear. Either he doesn't understand what parliamentary sovereignty is about, or he's just being another disingenuous globalist.
I'm disappointed in Yanis Varoufakis, he could have saved Greece by accepting Putin's offer of becoming a member of BRICS and taking Greece out of the EU.
DeleteOkay, that would have been a big decision to make and the Greek ruling elite or the CIA may have shot him, but in many interviews I've seen of Varoufakis he describes Putin as a gangster. But aren't the Clintons professional criminals, aren't the Neocons who run the Whitehouse psychopaths, aren't the US ruling elite gangsters? Did Russia or China blanket bomb whole continents back to the stone age with napalm. Who's caused illegal wars all over the ME? Who dropped two nuclear bombs? But Yanis Varoufakis still sees the US as the bastion of free speech, democracy, liberal values (but what good are they if we are imperialists who keep starting wars), and fairness. Most of this is just propaganda but Yanis Varoufakis never criticises it.
I've looked all over for Yanis Varoufakis email address but I can't find it. I do like him and think he's a decent guy. I would send him Andre Vlchek's article Called, South East Asia Never Forgets, which I have put out here. I would also tell him about MNE's.