Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

Timing of announcement prompts claims No 10 is using royal wedding to gloss over it

The prime minister has nominated nine new Conservative peers on the eve of the royal wedding, including the former cabinet ministers Sir Eric Pickles and Sir Peter Lilley, and handed one to Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party, as she tried to bolster her party’s fragile position in the upper house.

Four other former Tory MPs are to be elevated to a chamber that has defied Theresa May’s government on 15 occasions over Brexit, in a Friday afternoon announcement that has prompted accusations that No 10 was trying to use the proximity of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding to gloss over the news.

Northern Ireland would vote overwhelmingly in favour of remaining in the EU if a second referendum was held, a survey has found.

The survey comes as the Brexit secretary, David Davis, made a second flying visit to Northern Ireland on Sunday, meeting businesses as part of his cabinet research into the “maximum facilitation” option for a post-Brexit customs system.

In 2016, the region voted 56% to remain and 44% to leave, but support for leaving the bloc has fallen 13 points to 31%, undermining the Democratic Unionist party’s continued staunch backing for Brexit.

New research shows teachers reporting that the vote to leave the EU has hardened monolingual attitudes
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Speaking at the Hay literary festival on Friday, a panel including Cardiff University professor Claire Gorrara and linguist Teresa Tinsley, said that Britons had too long relied on a false belief that English was the world’s lingua franca. Only 6% of the global population are native English speakers, with 75% of the world unable to speak English at all. But three-quarters of UK residents can only speak English.

“That English is somehow the norm is a complete misapprehension of the facts, but this notion that everyone is speaking English is persistent and believed by many in the UK,” said Gorrara, warning that economic opportunities and bridge-building with the rest of the world was at risk after Brexit if Britons did not become less “linguaphobic” and learn more languages.

Deficient language skills in the UK cost 3.5% of GDP, according to 2014 research by Cardiff Business School for UK Trade and Investment. A 2017 British Council report recommended that the top five languages needed by the UK “for prosperity and influence” post-Brexit are Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, French, Arabic and German.

The same report also found that there was a “growing language deficit” in the UK, which is expected only to grow post-Brexit because the UK’s £1bn “language industry” – including services such as translation and interpreting – already heavily relies on EU citizens, whose expertise may become harder to access.

Speaking at Hay, Tinsley said that in forthcoming research commissioned by the British Council, due to be published next month, a survey of around 700 modern-language teachers in England found that a third felt Brexit had resulted in a negative attitude towards learning foreign languages in their school, among both parents and pupils.
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With 94% of language students in Europe learning English and 51% studying two or more foreign languages, the UK has long lagged behind the European Union linguistically. After 2004, when languages became optional for UK students once they turned 14, GCSE take-up halved, going from nearly 80% to around half that in 2017. Applications to study modern foreign languages at university have also dropped 57% in the last decade.

The internal contradictions in EU rule regarding immigration and economic policies are already are showing strains across the EU, from the UK to Hungary .

... the perceived chains of the Eurozone common currency ...

Are you worried about Etias?

I’m not particularly familiar with it but as I live in France I’m not concerned. There may be a few bureaucratic hoops to be gone through which are tiresome but I don’t think it’s a serious problem. I know Americans who live for varying lengths of time in France and they find things perfectly tolerable.

‘Global Britain’ and ‘America first’ always sat uneasily together. Now the UK must work with the EU to avert a trade war
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Yet the tariffs announced by the Trump administration are also a timely reminder that national self-interest lies at the heart of every trade negotiation. The US president has made no secret of his desire to put “America first”, nor his willingness to take populist decisions that have negative impacts on business interests in his own country and across the world. His latest move once again shows that the US plays tough in trade negotiations – and plays to win.

Trump’s protectionist turn must serve as a wake-up call to those in Westminster keen on a swift free trade agreement with the US once the UK leaves the European Union. The “global Britain” the government seeks to create and the “America first” approach are the unlikeliest of bedfellows. Despite the special relationship between the UK and the US and the deep business and political ties between our two countries, it is unfathomable that the Washington would compromise in negotiations with Westminster if that brought competition that threatened US jobs or investment.
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British ministers must join forces with their colleagues in the EU – while the UK still remains a member – both to de-escalate trade tensions with the US, and to ensure that those firms hurt by its new tariffs are not further undercut as competitors shift away from American markets. The UK has long been a bridge between America and the continent, and must try to use that position to good effect over the coming weeks to avert a trade war that would hit business confidence and investment both here at home and around the world. ... ... ...

Personally, I thing that Britain can rely on the US, but not on the president they've got now.

Voters are turning against Brexit as they lose faith in Theresa May’s handling of the negotiations, a new poll shows.

The proportion of people who disagree with leaving the EU has reached a high of 47 per cent – a record 7 points ahead of the 40 per cent who still back the decision.

The figure has leapt three percentage points in just one week, as the cabinet fails to agree on an exit strategy – and amid stark warnings about the chaos from leaving with no deal.

The 40 per cent who told YouGov that the Brexit vote was the right one was also down three points and is now at the lowest level recorded.

Significantly, no fewer than 62 per cent of voters said the government was handling Brexit negotiations badly, with just 23 per cent backing ministers.

Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, said Labour would not be ordering its MPs to vote for the UK to stay in the EEA (European Economic Area) because the party was split on this issue. This was one of the 15 amendments added to the EU withdrawal bill in the House of Lords as a result of government defeats. The government will seek to take out this amendment, and some or all of the other 15, when MPs debate the bill on Tuesday next week. Some Labour MPs want the party to vote for staying in the EEA, and believe that if Labour imposed a whip and if enough Tories rebelled, the government could lose. But Starmer said the parliamentary Labour party as a whole would not support the EEA amendment.