UK damages the life chances of young Scots with youth visa block

Keir Starmer claims he wants to ‘reset the relationship’ with Europe but yesterday’s trip to Brussels turned out to be just another disappointing “mood music” meeting. The slogan ‘make Brexit work’ is meaningless because of the UK’s red lines.

For example, a scheme for visas for young people to work in the EU has been knocked back by Labour for fear of the response of the right-wing press and Reform. No material progress appears to have been made either on that or Erasmus, the student exchange programme. 

The Financial Times warned this week that EU leaders are already sick of Labour’s timid time-wasting. The paper quoted an EU insider as saying: “The UK wants to stay outside the single market and the customs union. The ball is in the UK’s court. What do they really want?”

The UK is damaging the life chances of young Scots

The refusal of a youth visa offered by the EU will further reduce the opportunities and life chances of young Scots. During their summer holidays, you can meet students from Ireland working in every European capital and resort. But Scots don’t have the same freedoms, even though every area of Scotland voted to Remain. 

It is difficult and expensive for Scots to study in Europe now and it is even harder to get a work visa. The same is true for Europeans who used to be keen to study in Scotland and work here in the holidays and often after graduation. With Brexit, the UK left the Erasmus student exchange programme, through which about 15,000 British students a year studied in an EU university before Brexit, and about 20,000 came to the UK.

Hotels and restaurants across the Highlands, as well as food and farming businesses used to benefit from access to a pool of seasonal workers, often young people from Europe. No longer. Bringing in year-round migrants to fill these jobs is much more difficult given the housing and work constraints of rural areas. 

Labour Party too timid to take the argument to Reform

Even though the vast majority of MPs in Westminster were elected on pro-EU anti-Brexit tickets, the Labour Party is too timid to explain that Brexit is a disaster which is holding back the UK’s economic growth.

The incoming Labour government has essentially adopted the same policy as the outgoing UK government. It is trying to court Reform voters in English constituencies. That means it cannot really make progress in cutting the increased red tape and blockages that are affecting the UK economy. 

In a podcast this week, Chair of think tank The Federal Trust John Stevens castigated Starmer and his cabinet for kow-towing to the right wing press and to Nigel Farage. Stevens said that Starmer’s declaration that he didn’t think the UK would rejoin the EU “in his lifetime” was borne out of pre-election panic.

Stevens said Starmer believes the Faragists “have to be appeased - but this is a fundamental error. You can’t appease such a position, you have to take it head on and explain that it is based on a misunderstanding of the national interest.” 

Brexit damage getting worse

Over time, the Brexit damage deepens. Students and scientists don’t meet each other; bands don’t play European festivals; new businesses can’t export to Europe; international businesses are not attracted to the post-Brexit UK. All this is lost future potential - and the lost tax receipts that go along with it damage public services and create a vicious cycle. 

Last week, new research confirmed that Brexit is having a “profound and ongoing” impact on Britain’s trade with the EU, with goods exports and imports still being hit by the bureaucratic barriers erected by leaving the single market, research has shown. Modeling by economists at Aston University has estimated that annual exports to the EU are 17 per cent lower and imports 23 per cent behind where they would have been if Brexit had not occurred, with negative impacts increasing during 2023.

Flagship post Brexit freeports are a flop - and more arguments loom over fishing etc

Just six businesses are using customs sites at “freeports” across the UK, more than three years after the tax-free import scheme was announced as a way to bolster Britain’s economy after leaving the EU. The introduction of freeports was a flagship post-Brexit policy by the Conservative government that Boris Johnson promised would “boost” the country’s economy. But the Office for Budget Responsibility, the independent fiscal watchdog, expects the impact of freeports on UK GDP to be so small it would be “difficult to discern even in retrospect”.

More arguments loom over energy trading and fishing rights because of a “tripwire” clause in the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which explicitly links the two issues. Under the TCA the transitional arrangements for electricity trading with the EU - which benefit the UK - expire in June 2026 at the same time as a transitional deal on fishing rights, which are politically sensitive for coastal EU member states. 

Conclusion 

The Labour government is too timid to take on the pro Brexit lobby despite growing evidence that the policy is causing increasing damage. How can they be serious about growing the economy if they can’t make meaningful change to the Brexit red tape strangling Scottish businesses?

While the UK government courts right wing newspapers and the money men who backed Brexit, the life chances of young Scots are being damaged. While young people from Ireland can spend their summers working in the EU, some of their Scots counterparts have to sit at home. This is not fair. Scotland didn’t vote for Brexit.

The Scottish Parliament was not allowed a say then - and it is not being offered a say now, despite the fact that the choices being made by the UK government impact every Scot. Only as an independent country can Scotland have a meaningful say over its relationship with the EU.

22,000 others have already pledged their support, because only a non-party-political independence campaign can move independence support to the levels we need to win our independence. We Believe in Scotland – Join us!