P&O sackings and Brexit

It is important for us to call out lies and misperceptions whether they come out out of the mouths of Brexiteers or Remainers.

The truth is, in short, the 800 P&O workers were sacked because of UK employment laws.

French and Dutch workers kept their jobs, not because of EU laws, but because of domestic employment laws.

Last weekend, Dover MP, Natalie Elphick, met with the sacked workers and was shouted down. She did say she would fight for them and their jobs. On Monday, Labour reintroduced an early day motion which would have been the pathways to stop fire and hire. Elphick did not vote.

Yesterday, in a Common's committee, P&O admitted it broke union law by not consulting, but did it anyway. Nothing said about employment laws.

This is important, because leaving the EU was supposed to stop this kind of thing happening, even though it wasn't an EU law, but a domestic law issue. Always was and still is. EU Law and regulations are for minimums, it is up to each sovereign Member State to decide whether to increase those provisions.

For the UK membership of the EU was more about securing op-outs rather than op-ins, and when things went wrong, just blaming the EU for failure or gaps in domestic legslation. They're still doing it two years after we left.

The Government said the law is going to be changed, but that could have been done at any time. As well as on Monday, they talked the early days motion down in Novemeber, saying "it wasn't good for business".

So, failure in legislation, failure in Government and failure to tell the truth. Brexit in a nutshell.