Politico: Dutch courts to stop extraditing Polish suspects

 The Netherlands will stop extraditing suspects or convicts to Poland over concerns that the country's courts are no longer independent, an Amsterdam court said on Thursday.

The same court had already asked the Court of Justice of the EU in a similar case in July whether the extradition of Polish suspects must be halted considering that "the independence of Polish courts and thus the right to a fair trial have come under increasing pressure." [...]

Similar doubts about the independence of Polish courts from political interference have been expressed by courts in Germany, Ireland and Spain. [...]

The EU's top court ordered the suspension of a new judicial body created by the Polish government after the Commission expressed concern about its independence.

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Social Europe: German court decision ends treaty pretences

In one relatively brief decision, the court struck a double blow. It asserted the power of itself, a national institution, to overrule the European Court of Justice on an EU-level issue, and it denied the political independence of the European Central Bank. [...]

The first was the conviction that there existed a coalition with the centre-right European Peoples’ Party for greater EU integration within a progressive framework. That conviction was closely related to a second—that concessions by the centre-left on fiscal rules would gain proportionate concessions from the centre-right on social protection. [....]

While the German constitutional court operates independently of the federal government, the recent decision by the former sets limits to the decisions the latter can make. These bind all the more because the decision affirms the longstanding opposition of the Bundesbank to ECB monetary-expansion programmes—the appropriateness of which the ruling explicitly mandates the Bundesbank to assess. [...]

Methods to confront this dilemma fall into three categories, increasingly radical in nature: 1) devise schemes to bypass treaty rules, 2) take measures which openly challenge the treaties or 3) break with the EU. I exclude the last, since it would create for any such government unmanageable short-term problems exactly when a solution is needed.

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The Guardian: How Airbnb took over the world

Eleven years on, Airbnb’s site lists more than six million rooms, flats and houses in more than 81,000 cities across the globe. On average, two million people rest their heads in an Airbnb property each night – half a billion since 2008. [...]

In London – where more than 77,000 homes are listed on Airbnb, a fourfold increase since 2015 – mayor Sadiq Khan last month called for a registration scheme for people renting properties on a short-term basis. Since 2015, a legal cap of 90 nights a year for short-term rentals in London has been in place, but it has proved almost impossible to enforce. [...]

Last week an adviser to the European Court of Justice said the company – which is registered in Ireland – should be regarded as a digital service provider rather than a real estate business. This could exempt it from onerous regulation. Airbnb has spawned competitors though none has matched its scale. Marriott International recently said it would become the first global hotel chain to launch a home-rental business. Hilton and Hyatt are considering similar moves. [...]

Fears of using Airbnb for lucrative real estate schemes are not misguided. The city filed a $21m lawsuit against a group of real estate brokers who are accused of using Airbnb to rent out 130 apartments in the city. The restrictions have been supported by housing campaigners, who see the company as a factor in rising rents and gentrification.

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TLDR News: Have May's Red Lines Made Getting a Deal Impossible? - Brexit Explained

May has been talking about red lines for months, her hard limits when it comes to Brexit negotiations. However, there's a case to be made that these red lines are exactly what's sabotaged the Brexit process. We discuss why the red lines have limited the chances of getting a deal and how the EU sees the process.

Political Critique: Democratizing Europe’s Economy

Italy’s right-wing government has earned popular support for deliberately questioning the European Commission’s budget guidelines in the name of addressing poverty. This shows how skeptical many Europeans are about the EU’s commitment to social welfare and democracy, and it is precisely this skepticism the Italian right-wing is using to provoke a conflict and further undermine the commission’s popular legitimacy. Such an approach has support beyond Southern Europe, and if the commission does not reconsider, it will find itself increasingly vulnerable to popular backlash.[...]

This renewed emphasis on the social dimension is supposed to be connected to the European Semester, which is the commission’s attempt to bring order to European economic governance. Thus the commission ranks the member states according to unemployment rates (especially youth unemployment), reduction in poverty, lifelong learning, access to childcare, and other social indicators. Yet it does not measure the meaningfulness of work. It also fails to assess whether workers have a say over the nature of their work, their relationships at work, their work’s relationship to the greater economy, or their working conditions. In an age when more and more people classify their work as “bullshit jobs,” to use the provocative phrase from the anthropologist David Graeber, something important is being missed.1 [...]

The studies of Herbert Kitschelt and Philippe Rehm using the European Social Survey show that in post-industrial economies, people involved in administrative-organizational occupations tend to have more authoritarian views, independent of their income status (although those at the top may be less inclined toward redistribution, and those at the bottom more inclined). Those involved in more interpersonal occupations, which involve communication and agreement on norms and objectives, tend to have more liberal views independent of their income status. [...]

It is no surprise that the European Commission has not managed to fully connect economic, social, and democratic concerns. Doing so would require the commission to challenge the dogma that economic growth is the basic answer to all social problems, to face up to its own role in undermining social cohesion and democracy simultaneously in the many parts of Europe that have been exposed to austerity programs, and to acknowledge that a technocratic approach exacerbates anti-democratic tendencies and sentiments. With the upcoming European summit in May 2019, the European Parliament elections, and the new European Commission, the union needs a much deeper and more nuanced appreciation of the changing dynamics of the global economy and its implications for political preferences. In so doing, it should follow the lead set by some of its most politically active working citizens.

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openDemocracy: Why Brexit won’t work: the EU is about regulation not sovereignty

I stumbled across its significance of regulation and am only beginning to get a measure of it. Denunciation of the EU’s over-regulation was the starting point of the long campaign against British membership. Now, a revealing analysis in openDemocracy reports staggeringly high rates of popular support in the UK for European levels of regulation. They run at between 70-80% - incorporating large majorities of those who voted to Leave. While the big boys bang on about sovereignty, regular people, women somewhat more than men, prefer regulation. Brexit has a weird, old-fashioned veneer because it is so male-dominated and self-important, giving the issue its end of epoch feel. The campaign against it risks being drawn into similar routines and perhaps recognising the centrality of regulation can help prevent this. [...]

By regulation I don’t just mean high profile financial regulation. I mean its ongoing, background role in ensuring the quality of the air we breathe, the medicines we take, the food we consume and the safety of the flights we board. You could undertake the enormous costs of building custom checks for goods going between the UK from the EU. But what is the point, if you then have to recreate and duplicate inside the UK the entire apparatus of regulations, with their ongoing autonomy from parliamentary 'sovereignty'? The idea that once the UK left the EU Britain could ‘do away’ with regulation from Brussels, because it is mostly unnecessary, has proven to be an utter fantasy. Britain’s wannabe Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, told the BBC, “we will finish up perhaps in an even worse place than we are now because we won’t be free to de-regulate”. But no modern democracy would wish to deregulate. It is not the road to freedom. And as the UK government is learning, public opinion will not let it deregulate. This is a fundamental lesson of Brexit. [...]

If you embrace the Hobbesian, Westminster notion of the state, as Brexiteers do, then power is zero-sum. Either one has it or the other does. In contrast, the powers of regulation are an exercise in mutual collaboration with the aim of collective gain. The process is win-win not win-loose. For for the Anglo-British this cannot define the nature of power, for sovereignty cannot be shared it can only be singular. There are endless examples of this taken-for-granted assumption across the commentariat, both Remainers and Leavers. To take an example at random, Oliver Wiseman, the editor of CapX website, says he prefers "the return of powers from an undemocratic supranational organisation to a democratic national government”. The assumption: that power is something you have or do not have and can be returned. But in many fields there is no such possibility. The power of regulation resides in relationships that are negotiated. The process needs to be democratised but it can't be 'returned'. The underlying premise of Brexit is that sovereignty is simple. It is not. If it ever was, it isn't simple now. It is complex, multi-layered and in the age of corporations no longer something nation states can monopolise over their territory. Hence Brexit cannot be 'Brexit', as in Boris Johnson's call for a "full British Brexit". Sovereignty is no longer a meal we can eat alone. [...]

It seems that the EU has in this way developed over 11,000 regulations, set over 60,000 standards and its different agencies have taken over 18,000 decisions on interpreting regulations and laws. Forrester notes that it could take ten years to incorporate them into British law, if each is accorded scrutiny. This alone shows that a process has been taking place that is beyond the reach and capacity of traditional legislatures. The result was acknowledged by the prime minister in her Mansion House speech in March when she finally set out ambitions for Brexit, “the UK will need to make a strong commitment that its regulatory standards will remain as high as the EU’s”. [...]

The defining ideologist of Brexit is the Daily Mail. It describes the main motive for leaving the EU as, “a deep-seated human yearning to recover our national identity and independence”. Must it be the case, then, that those of us who voted Remain are indifferent to, or have no yearning for, national identity and independence? I think not. I claim that we are more free in a fundamental way as persons - as English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish and British persons - inside the EU. Our liberty is enhanced within it, for all the dangers. You could answer that it is a false binary: that we can enjoy both patriotism and partnership, national identity and international regulation. Indeed, but such an answer takes a side. The spirit of Brexit insists on a single priority. For the Daily Mail our national identity and independence are being lost and must be “recovered”. It sees mass migration and the European Court of Justice and as invaders that have penetrated our national space. It demands they be repelled to save our country and its great institutions. If judges show themselves to be “enemies of the people” and peers of the realm have become “traitors in ermine” they merely confirm how far subversion has reached.

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Politico: EU faces Poland test

Forget worries about exacerbating an East-West rift or splitting the bloc just when it needs unity to deal with Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Theresa May. If Polish strongman Jarosław Kaczyński is allowed to get away with replacing an independent judiciary with judges hand-picked for political loyalty, the EU’s claims to be a democratic watchdog and not just a glorified free-trade area will look hollow. [...]

“The Polish case is a test whether it is possible to create a Soviet-style justice system, where the control of courts, prosecutors and judges lies with the executive and a single party, in an EU member state,” Piotr Buras of the Stefan Batory Foundation, a Polish civil society organization, and Gerald Knaus of the European Stability Initiative think tank wrIte in a joint paper. “It remains to be seen whether this can be corrected before it fatally undermines the idea of the EU as a community based on law and common values,” they add. [...]

Barring a last-minute intervention by EU ministers or the European Court of Justice, the government will go ahead with the enforced early retirement of up to 40 percent of the Supreme Court on July 3 under a law that entered into force in April. Among those whose necks are on the block is Małgorzata Gersdorf, the first president of the Supreme Court, whose eviction in the middle of a six-year term would violate the Polish constitution. Some 70 out of 120 Supreme Court justices would then be new appointees.  [...]

Because of its own history, it’s hard for Germany to read the riot act to the Poles over the rule of law. It would gift Kaczyński a chance to turn a principled dispute over judicial independence into a political battle and accuse Berlin of “bullying.” Chancellor Angela Merkel has wisely let the Commission take the lead so far, lending discreet support to Vice President Frans Timmermans, the Dutch social democrat who holds the toxic Polish file in Brussels. He needs her public support now.

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VICE News: Michel Barnier Is Negotiating Brexit For The 500 Million EU Citizens That Remain (HBO)

The EU AND UK will soon launch the latest round of Brexit talks next week, and one man will be speaking for the 27 remaining countries: Michel Barnier.

The future rights of 500 million citizens and and the world’s most powerful trading bloc are riding on the deal his team brokers with the UK.

Barnier has a reputation as a hardliner, which stems primarily from the strong banking reforms he introduced as the EU internal market commission between 2010 and 2014. And his opponents have seized on that reputation to paint him as a villain in current Brexit talks.

With Brexit’s deadline looming, VICE News sat down with Barnier to discuss the the status of the world’s largest divorce proceedings.

“Right now, I have no certainty,” Barnier tells VICE News. "I can see the difficulty and the intensity of this debate. We’re waiting for the British to have a clear position and choices."

Independent: The EU is ready to reap the profits from our financial services and there's nothing we can do

Phillip Hammond reckons it is in everyone’s “mutual interests” to include financial services in the deal but it most certainly is not. Now the UK is leaving, the EU has no incentive to ensure London’s financial district continues to thrive, which is why Europe has repeatedly rejected any suggestions of London having access to the single market. [...]

The City of London is an integral part of the UK economy. More than one million people work in finance-related jobs and estimates put the sector’s contribution to the UK economy at £124.2bn in gross value. These jobs and this contribution are now in serious jeopardy and a number of major banks are quite openly making plans to move to the continent. JP Morgan has warned of 4,000 UK job cuts, Goldman Sachs has started to move people abroad, taking up space in Paris and Frankfurt, and Swiss investment bank UBS said the bank “will definitely” be moving people out of London. [...]

During the eurozone crisis, having euro clearing taking place in London proved to be a major difficulty for the ECB as it tried to mitigate and control the crisis. There will soon be nothing stopping Europe from enforcing a policy like this and it works massively in their interests to pursue it. Manfred Weber, the head of the European People’s Party, the largest group in the European Parliament and a political ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, has openly said that it was not conceivable that euro-denominated business could remain in London.

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Politico: Brexit: A managed surrender

In Phase 1, Britain accepted the European Commission’s method for calculating its financial liabilities to the EU but claimed to have beaten down the price. It accepted Brussels’ conditions on the future rights of European citizens living in Britain and of British nationals living on the Continent. [...]

In Phase 2, London agreed lock-stock-and-barrel to Brussels’ terms for a 21-month transition period — shorter than Britain had wanted — during which the U.K. will have to apply all EU laws without any say in the bloc’s decisions, in exchange for keeping its current market access. [...]

True, there will be a joint committee to try to fix any disputes that arise during the standstill period from March 29, 2019 to December 31, 2020. But if the two sides don’t agree, the European Court of Justice — the bogeyman of Brexiteers — will have the final say. [...]

That’s not good news for the Brexiteers. Joining the EU entails negotiations in name only. Candidate countries must adopt the entire body of EU law; any bargaining that takes place is basically over how fast to apply it and how soon the newcomer gets the full benefits of membership, including free movement for its workers. [...]

It turns out that leaving the bloc is a strikingly symmetrical process. “The equivalent of accepting [EU law] is accepting the Commission’s negotiating guidelines, which have been approved by all 27 EU partners and cannot be substantially changed,” Leigh said.

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The Atlantic: The Millions Left Marooned by Brexit

The referendum result set in motion a complex array of political machinations that can feel hopelessly abstract, but one very simple outcome is this: Nearly 5 million people living in democracies across Europe were suddenly unsure of their rights. Most of these are people from elsewhere in Europe, legally residing in the U.K. for now but unsure whether they’ll get to stay. The same is true of a smaller number of British citizens who have made their homes across the Channel. And while a draft withdrawal agreement presented by U.K. and EU negotiators on Monday set out to clarify what some of these rights would look like after the U.K. fully transitions out of the EU at the end of 2020, plenty of unknowns remain. The3million, an advocacy group for citizens’ rights, said in a leaked letter to European Council President Donald Tusk that the draft agreement “makes for a bleak, uncertain future.” [...]

This uncertainty set Remigi on a fact-finding mission, which culminated in the June 2017 publication of In Limbo, a collection of testimonies of more than 100 EU nationals living in the U.K. between March and April 2017. The book includes the story of a Danish citizen who was denied permanent residency after living in the U.K. for 18 years due to an insurance requirement that many were unaware existed; an Italian couple who, despite being permanent residents in Oxford, are considering leaving the country due to a spike in hate crimes in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum; and a British national who is using her status as the granddaughter of German Jewish Holocaust refugees to apply for German citizenship in case her French partner’s permanent residency application is rejected. “The book has been written to show the human side of the Brexit story—the human cost,” Remigi said. “When you read these stories you realize the pain, the suffering … that our rights should have been guaranteed from the start.” [...]

Apart from negotiators in London and Brussels, there is one other body that could have a say: the European Court of Justice. Last month, an Amsterdam district court asked the EU high court to consider a case brought by five British nationals living in the Netherlands seeking to retain their EU citizenship after Brexit. Michaela Benson, a researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London and the leader of BrExpats, a U.K. in a Changing Europe-funded research project focusing on the rights of British residents in EU, said that if the high court deems EU citizenship irremovable, it could have major implications for Britons everywhere. “If it’s successful, it won’t just be about U.K. nationals living in the EU,” she said. “It would be about all U.K. citizens who were, up until the point of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, considered EU nationals. … That could change the game.”

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Political Critique: How Białowieża Forest’s cards have been reshuffled

In 2017, almost 190 000 cubic meters of wood was logged, which is four times the average annual harvest. Additionally, this was the first time that heavy-duty machinery had been used in this forest, threatening the forest’s natural ground and the habitat of many smaller species. [...]

Both the increased logging and the use of heavy machinery was criticized by Greenpeace Poland and UNESCO, for example. Many demonstrations were held, in the forest as well as in major Polish cities. While the government did not change its opinion, and many of the protests were suppressed, both the protests and the logging were hotly debated in Poland and Europe. [...]

The case was brought to court and although the final judgement has not yet been delivered, the court has ordered Poland to stop the logging immediately as of November 2017, even announcing a penalty of €100,000 per in case of any infringement upon this order. There has not been any logging in the forest since. The final judgement is expected soon and there are many reasons to believe it will be in accordance with this order. On the 20th of February the court published an opinion which states that the logging was unlawful. Although this has no legal impact, the judgements are quite often consistent with the opinions published. The Polish Minister of Environment has changed since then and the new minister Henryk Kowalczyk is taking a different approach towards the forest. Although he wants the logging to go on, he has announced that Poland will follow the ECJ’s decision.

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Business Insider: Theresa May only has two Brexit options left: Capitulation to the EU or a second referendum

His position — that Britain will eventually win a soft Brexit package from the EU — is a common one among analysts and economists in The City's investment banks. They believe no government could survive the economic damage of a hard Brexit. [...]

"So how will the current deadlock be broken? The chances of the EU conceding ground remain ultra-slim. Its economy is motoring, while cutting the U.K. a good deal would risk fuelling separatist movements elsewhere. It can run down the clock, waiting for the U.K. to capitulate as the cliff-edge draws nearer." [...]

"The PM, meanwhile, will stick to her unworkable proposals for as long as she can. Later this year, however, Mrs. May must decide, and we expect her to opt to keep Britain tied to the EU with a customs union. This would solve the Irish question and minimise the administrative and economic disruption. It is also the only plan that can command a majority in parliament." [...]

It's an extraordinary scenario, and it is essentially speculation on Tombs' part. What makes it significant is that, outside parliament and the Westminster media echo chamber, this is how the smart money sees Brexit playing out.

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The Guardian: May’s Brexit pledges have turned to ashes. Was she deluded or dishonest?

Exactly one year ago, the prime minister stood in Lancaster House and gave a speech setting out her Brexit plan. Following an embarrassing series of flip-flops, it now reads like a long list of broken promises and empty threats. [...]

The prime minister said she wanted the greatest possible access to the single market without being a member of it, her version of Boris Johnson’s cake-and-eat-it approach. She also knew this was going to be tricky to get. That is why she threatened to turn the UK into a Singapore-style tax haven while hinting that we would abandon cooperation with the EU on fighting terrorism if she didn’t get her way. [...]

The same goes for her “no deal … is better than a bad deal” mantra, which was given prime billing in the Lancaster House speech, and her promise that “the days of Britain making vast contributions to the European Union every year will end”. As it is, May has ended up promising £39bn to the EU to settle our past bills, and abandoned her “no-deal” bravado. [...]

We are told that she is preparing another big speech next month setting our her vision for our future relationship with the EU. If Lancaster House is anything to go by, we should expect the same combination of delusion and dishonesty – when the least the public deserves is realism.

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Politico: Europe tries to clear the air

Bulgaria, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council for the first half of 2018, said it would make air quality “a focus” of its presidency. The country has experienced the problem first hand: It has the highest death rate related to air pollution in the bloc, with over 13,000 premature fatalities a year linked to fine particulate pollution — out of nearly 400,000 for the whole EU. [...]

Dirty air is a Continent-wide problem. Central and Eastern European countries struggle with dust and fine particulate pollution, where low-quality domestic heating units are often a major source of those pollutants. And Western European countries are recording high levels of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant closely linked to diesel vehicle exhaust, in their cities.

Five of them — France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K. — were given a final warning in early 2017 by the Commission, the last step before being taken to the European Court of Justice. [...]

In one of them, France’s highest court gave the government until March 31 to come up with tougher measures to tackle high levels of nitrogen dioxide. In the U.K., the leading NGO on this issue, ClientEarth, launched its third legal challenge against the government’s air-quality plans in November, with a decision expected in the coming months.

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Politico: ECJ advocate general: ‘Free movement’ rights extend to same-sex spouses

An EU member country cannot refuse residency rights to the same-sex spouse of an EU citizen on the grounds that it does not recognize gay marriage, a European Court of Justice advocate general said in an opinion published Thursday.

The opinion was issued in response to a 2012 case in which Romanian authorities refused to grant residency rights to a male U.S. national married to a Romanian man. [...]

The married partner — including partners in same-sex unions — “may also reside on a permanent basis in the territory” of an EU member country where “his or her spouse is established as an EU citizen after exercising his or her freedom of movement,” according to the opinion.

The Romanian Constitutional Court referred the gay marriage case to the European Court of Justice in November 2016. A final ruling on the case is still pending.

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CityLab: Europe Says Uber Is Officially a Taxi Service

Uber is a taxi company. That’s the ruling today from the European Court of Justice, the highest court in the European Union, which interprets the union’s laws and ensures their application across all member states.

Uber, of course, has long resisted that label. It presents itself as a digital platform for connecting people, rather than as a taxi service. But a Barcelona taxi association  challenged that claim in court in 2014, frustrated that Uber’s revenues had been partly and unfairly bolstered by worse pay and conditions for drivers. And Wednesday’s resounding judgement against Uber, who sought to appeal the Spanish ruling at the ECJ, is a bombshell. Not only does it mean the company faces far stricter regulation across the E.U., it also undercuts the very way Uber has tried to define itself globally. [...]

More broadly, there’s a degree of existential threat in the ECJ decision. Uber has largely attempted to sail above the notion that it is a regular company employing actual humans, enabling it to deny such basic employee necessities as sick and holiday pay. Wednesday’s ruling bursts that bubble. Uber’s app-based hailing system may have been the ground-breaking key to its success, but the suggestion that it is not a transportation company is increasingly hard to sustain.

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Politico: Brexiteers fear ‘Swiss Trap’ trade deal

For some in the British government, the Swiss model — and the high level of access to the European single market it offers — looks attractive, were it not for a catch which troubles even the mildest of Euroskeptics: If the Swiss break a single clause in any of the numerous bilateral agreements that make up their trade deal with Brussels, their whole economic relationship comes tumbling down.

This all-or-nothing “guillotine clause” forces the Swiss into accepting a large and evolving share of EU law, including free movement of people, with little practical power to break away without risking enormous economic damage. [...]

It is the closest model to the one laid out by U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May in her Florence speech last month, where she rejected Norwegian-style EEA membership as too restrictive, while also insisting a Canada-plus free-trade model did not offer enough access for Britain’s economy. [...]

These agreements are overseen by “more than 15 joint committees,” rather than the European Court of Justice — but if they break any deal, the whole arrangement collapses. The severity of this penalty — and its impact on the Swiss economy — means that in practice the country must go along with whatever is decided in Brussels, if it is related to any of the sectors of its economy where is has a deal with the EU.

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Politico: Germany and France push harder line on Brexit talks

Even as EU leaders plan to extend an olive branch to London by starting internal discussions about a future trade relationship, France and Germany have pushed to include a reference to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in draft conclusions prepared for next week’s European Council summit, according to three EU diplomats. [...]

The push by Germany and France, the EU’s biggest and most powerful members, to include such language in the first paragraph of the draft conclusions (before any other Brexit issues are mentioned) is a reminder to London that the first phase of Brexit negotiations is nowhere near completed and that the divorce terms are not settled. [...]

EU leaders seem prepared to authorize the start of internal discussions despite a lack of sufficient progress on the main divorce issues. The Council has said such progress is required before it will allow negotiators to move on to the second phase of talks. At the end of the fifth formal round of negotiations last week, the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said the two sides were in “deadlock” over the financial settlement.

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Politico: Support grows for second Brexit vote

Just over half of those surveyed said they back some form of a second referendum, with the most popular scenario being a vote to either accept the government’s Brexit deal, or to stay in the EU — an option backed by 34 percent. That is up from 28 percent in a similar survey in March, according to new findings from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (GQRR). In the earlier survey, 45 percent of people backed a second referendum — although these figures include public votes that would still mean the U.K. leaves the EU under either outcome.

The pro-EU Liberal Democrats are the only U.K. political party now backing a second referendum, but they hold just 12 seats in parliament. The opposition Labour Party, which meets for its annual conference in Brighton this week, has so far ruled out the idea — and decided Sunday not to have a debate or vote on the issue during the gathering. The Scottish National Party is not formally pushing for a vote, but leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon hinted it still might, telling the New Statesman last week that the case for a second vote “may become very hard to resist.” [...]

Among Labour voters who responded to the survey, support for some kind of second referendum is at 70 percent, with a referendum on accepting the Brexit deal or staying in the EU the most popular, backed by 51 percent. [...]

Overall, 39 percent of respondents reject the idea of a second referendum — and 7 percent want a “hard Brexiteer’s referendum” in which people would choose between the government’s deal and leaving the EU without a deal. Another 10 percent back a referendum that would give voters the chance to reject the government’s Brexit deal, but send it back to the negotiating table. [...]

While there is broad support for the fundamentals of the U.K. government’s negotiating position, it is the increasing interest in revisiting the entire question of Brexit that will be of most interest, particularly to the opposition Labour Party, which gained much of its support from voters drawn to its softer stance on Brexit. The Lib Dems will also take heart from the findings, after failing to cut through with voters at June’s general election with their second referendum message.

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