Is this the dawn? Have we reached the glimmer of a new beginning? Rishi Sunak’s about-turn on joining the European Union’s Horizon programme is a first note of sanity in the two and a half tortured years since Britain formally left the EU. Let it not be the last.
As Sir Simon doesn’t grasp.
The aim of Brexit was not to then ignore the 450 million J Foreigners on our doorstep. It’s to be able to decide when we’d like to cooperate with them, when we’d not. To be able to pick and choose rather than be part of the whole shebang. Let’s do that joining and cooperation on the things that benefit us. And not on those that don’t….
A quick scan of this: https://sciencebusiness.net/news/horizon-europe/why-eu-uk-horizon-europe-negotiations-have-taken-so-long, showed this:
one of the issues – “if, over the course of two consecutive years, the UK gets more than 8% out of Horizon Europe than it puts in. In other words, if the UK does particularly well out of association, it has to pay up to compensate the Commission.
But there’s no equivalent protection for the UK if it does badly. Instead – as outlined on page 397 – if the UK gets 12% less out than it puts in, it can ask a joint EU-UK committee that oversees UK participation in EU programmes to work up a report “proposing appropriate measures to address performance related issues.”
“Other associated countries – Israel for example – have an automatic correction mechanism that works both ways, not just in the EU’s favour“.
The EU are cunts. Period.
I have no doubt Fishy wants to take us back in. He might leave it to Sir Kneel, who knows? But I guess he’s got his eye on emulating some of his old mates and the EUMafia appointing him PM at some future date…
If I was Simon Jenkins (80), I’d worry less about my favourite homosexual political project which I won’t live to see us rejoin, and more about surviving the winter.
The UK hasn’t even properly begun to disengage from the tangled web of the EU but is falling over itself to make concessions and renew membership of the dodo-club.
This is exactly what I voted for.
Leyens!
I was rather upset to see that Jenkins’ exwife died recently.
The EU are cunts. Period.
This seems a narrow view since dotgovdotuk are clearly also cunts.
Dumb cunts, it seems, led by the son-in-law of Bharat.
Hold on, if you are expected that you only get out what you put in, then what’s the point with the money resting in their account?
To be fair, the British government is a lot like a sun-ripened corpse floating lazily down the river Ganges. You can practically smell the Bharat.
PJF, agreed, but at least our cunts have an element of fairness about them.
Right. This is the UK joining the EU programme as a third country . Alongside Israel and apartheid state New Zealand. That’s a first. It’s equivalent of the ex husband being invited to his former father in law’s funeral. Not a first step toward remarrying. Remoaners and brexiteers alike please calm down
I see no point negotiating anything with the EU until Macron is an former president, he’s made it quite clear he thinks we should be punished for Brexit.
That said, the value in this association should be measured in more than just £s. It’s about science knowledge and do we gain more by pooling investments than going on our own? If it is the next question is whether or not it’s worth more than this asymmetric agreement.
BinD, just on R4’s ‘Farming Toady’, some professor happy we can rejoin the programme. ‘Great news’ she said, ‘we can now access their world class research facilities’ or something.
Yeah, the research facilities we fucking contributed to when we were in the racket…….
I have been reading Simon Jenkins, or at least aware of his columns, for forty-something years now, and he really does hold the journalism award for being consistently and reliably wrong on everything. He’s not extreme, he’s not stupid and he’s not ignorant, but he is spectacularly lacking in empathy. Meaning he is a smug Guardianista metropolitan twat and cannot imagine what the overwhelming majority of people who are not smug Guardianista metropolitan twats might think and how they might behave.
AFAICT the deal is the UK contributes £10 billion pa to Horizon and gets £7 billion back. Now, maybe the monkeys in Brussels are 50% better than the monkeys in Whitehall at guessing which R&D projects to back, but I see little evidence for this assertion.