The other way round..

My understanding was that the EU has many universities.

Switzerland is also land locked by the EU. Surely Switzerland needs trucks with food, fuel, construction, raw materials and other essential imports, coming in on a regular basis more than the EU needs Switzerland's universities. You can't eat money or live in a house built from research papers to survive.

I'm not saying EU would ever do something that radical, but my point is, the EU has far more screws to turn on Switzerland in case of a diplomatic conflict, than vice versa.

Which is why Switzerland tightened their banking secrecy regulations at the insistence of the EU despite Switzerland not being beholden to EU laws.

> That’s so self-destructive - surely the EU needs Switzerland’s powerful universities more than Switzerland needs Horizon?

Switzerland in practical terms needs the EU more than the EU needs Switzerland. The current situation is suboptimal for both sides obviously, but from the EU side you can mostly ignore that discourse.

A Labour Party that in most respects doesn't sound any different to their opponents.

Tories did end up supporting May's compromise, even some members of the ERG.

It was blocked by Labour and other parties.

It would have been the most practical way forward at the time. It would have been softer and better planned and with a better working relationship with the EU.

It would also have meant that Labour would have been in partial control of parliament for another 3 years as May's majority relied on people who hated her and was never going to last for every vote. Then we would have had another election this year not in 2019.

I honestly don't know what people were thinking at the time. It was obvious that not compromising would end in chaos.

> Good luck to native workers in the UK competing with an Indian on a work visa that has no working time regulations, holiday allowance, etc.

There's an important point to highlight here: low paid workers from India working long hours with no holiday will not actually be able to compete with either highly skilled Indian workers who can already get visas, or highly skilled native workers or workers from other developed countries, even if they demand holiday, high pay, etc.

Indeed, this migration report [1] suggests that immigration decreases wages for low paid workers, but increases wages for medium and high paid workers.

Immigration doesn't just boost labour supply, it boosts demand too, but not always in the same jobs, so the effects on wages can be uneven.

If it were that simple to replace highly paid workers, we'd have all already been offshored, but that never seems to materialise.

1: https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/th...

no doubt that government leaks to test policy

but this one's such a huge vote loser even the opposition refuse to discuss it

it's some journo that's got wind of part of some second hand discussion and has turned it into a scoop