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Yanis Varoufakis – To defend the NHS we need a Norway Plus Brexit deal for the UK

Summary:
These trade deals sound terrifying, especially for government run public services. The corporations are all over them seeing what they can pick off. How did it get so complicated, you would think a democratic country could just run its public services without threat from multinational corporations.  KVYanis VaroufakisThe 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

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These trade deals sound terrifying, especially for government run public services. The corporations are all over them seeing what they can pick off. How did it get so complicated, you would think a democratic country could just run its public services without threat from multinational corporations.  KV

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.
Mike Norman
Mike Norman is an economist and veteran trader whose career has spanned over 30 years on Wall Street. He is a former member and trader on the CME, NYMEX, COMEX and NYFE and he managed money for one of the largest hedge funds and ran a prop trading desk for Credit Suisse.

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