Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

The campaign for a referendum on the final Brexit deal has been boosted by a record £1m donation, amid growing public concern that Britain will leave the EU without any agreement.

The multimillionaire Julian Dunkerton, who co-founded the Superdry fashion label, said he was making the donation to the People’s Vote campaign because he saw a “genuine chance to turn this around”. He claimed that, if Brexit had happened 20 years earlier, his brand would never have been a success.

The donation will fund a polling blitz that organisers hope will inject critical momentum into their campaign. Those backing a new public vote face a race against time before Britain ceases to be an EU member after March next year.

An Opinium poll for the Observer has found that 40% now believe it is most likely that the UK will leave in next March without a deal – up sharply from 31% last month. One in five (22%) think Britain will leave with a deal, while 16% think Britain will not leave the EU in March.
Campaigners for a public vote are now planning what is described as one of the “biggest polling operations ever undertaken in UK politics”, examining support for a referendum on the final Brexit deal in different parts of the country and among specific sections of the population.

The most recent polling suggests that 45% of voters want the electorate to have a say on the final Brexit deal, with 34% opposed.

However, serious issues remain over how a second vote could be achieved, whether there is enough time to hold it and what question voters should be asked. Both the Tory and Labour leaderships oppose the idea.

Some senior ministers fear that there is no Commons majority for Theresa May’s proposed Brexit deal, unveiled to her ministers at a meeting at her Chequers retreat earlier this summer and resulting in the resignations of the Brexit secretary David Davis and Boris Johnson. Many MPs and donors are expecting Johnson, the former foreign secretary, to make a pitch for the leadership, while hard Brexiters are drawing up their own preferred Brexit deal.

“We are on the road to misery,” said one senior minister. “[Hard Brexiters] will kill all but ‘no deal’. The Commons won’t vote for that – ministers won’t – so it will all collapse. It could be truly dreadful.”

Dunkerton, aged 53, left Superdry earlier this year after seeing it expand to more than 500 retail outlets. He told the Observer: “If Brexit had happened 20 years earlier, Superdry would never have become the global success that it did. We would have struggled to cope with negotiating customs and tariffs. Perhaps even more importantly, Europe was our staging post because inside the single market we had no fear of opening a store in France, Germany, Belgium or anywhere else.

“I’m putting some of my money behind the People’s Vote campaign because we have a genuine chance to turn this around. I’ve got a good instinct for when a mood is going to change and we’re in one of those moments now. It’s becoming clear there is no vision for Brexit and the politicians have made a mess of it. Increasingly, the public knows that Brexit is going to be a disaster. Maybe they just need to be given that little bit of hope that comes when they see how opinion is moving.

“I will be paying for one of the most detailed polling exercises ever undertaken by a campaign so that more and more people have the confidence to demand the democratic right for their voice to be heard – to get a People’s Vote on any Brexit deal or the outcome of these negotiations.”

Meanwhile, analysts have discovered that a Brexit skills shortage is already brewing, with employer investment in training per employee falling by 27% in the last decade.

Analysis of government figures by the Institute for Public Policy Research found that, despite a record level of skills shortages, employers’ investment in training is low and falling. There were 226,000 “skills shortage vacancies” last year, compared with just 91,000 in 2011.

With Brexit expected to exacerbate the problem, the analysis shows investment per employee has fallen by 27% in real terms between 2007 and 2017. Total employer investment in training has been cut by £3.7bn in real terms over that period.

The government will on Thursday publish the first in a series of technical notices designed to prepare the UK for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit.

The notices will include advice for businesses, citizens and public bodies.

Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said securing a deal was still "the most likely outcome" - but added making alternative arrangements was the "responsible" thing to do.

The European Union has already produced 68 technical notices of its own.

PARIS (Reuters) - Britain’s vote to leave the European Union could “in theory” be reversed although there is a still a strong probability it will go ahead, said the European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici on Monday.

Moscovici was replying on French radio to a question related to a move by the co-founder of fashion brand Superdry (SDRY.L) to donate a million pounds ($1.28 million) to the campaign for a referendum on the final Brexit agreement.

Asked whether the Brexit vote could be reversed, Moscovici told France Inter radio: “It is, in theory...it is up to the British themselves who have made the decision to leave, to decide ultimately if they will or not, and how they will do it.”

“The probability of Brexit is nevertheless very strong because there has been a vote of the people, a referendum...” added Moscovici.

Asked if there would definitely be a deal between Britain and the European Union regarding the terms of Brexit, Moscovici also replied: “Not necessarily.”

Asked whether the Brexit vote could be reversed, Moscovici told France Inter radio: “It is, in theory...it is up to the British themselves who have made the decision to leave, to decide ultimately if they will or not, and how they will do it.”

“The probability of Brexit is nevertheless very strong because there has been a vote of the people, a referendum...” added Moscovici.

The government will on Thursday publish the first in a series of technical notices designed to prepare the UK for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit.



The European Union has already produced 68 technical notices of its own.

The guidance includes instructions for businesses who could face extra paperwork at borders and contingency plans to avoid medicine shortages.

Britons visiting the EU could also face extra credit card charges.

Ministers say a deal is the most likely outcome but that "short-term disruption" is possible without one.

BBC political correspondent Chris Mason described the publication as a "vast swirling porridge of detail - much of it at a technical level, advising individual industries about the manner in which they are regulated in the event of a no-deal Brexit".

In the 25 documents, which cover industries including medicine, finance and farming, it says:

- The cost of card payments between the UK and EU will "likely increase" and won't be covered by a ban on surcharges
- Businesses trading with the EU should start planning for new customs checks, and might have to pay for new software or logistical help
- Britons living elsewhere in Europe could lose access to UK banking and pension services without EU action
- Pharmacists have been told to stockpile an extra six weeks' worth of medicine to ensure a "seamless" supply
- The UK would continue to accept new medicines that have been tested in the EU
- Low-value parcels from the EU would no longer be eligible for VAT relief
- New picture warnings will be needed for cigarette packets as the EU owns the copyright to the current ones

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The words are pitched to sound dryly unthreatening in a thick pea soup of technical detail – but the effect is all the more hair-raising. Brexit secretary Dominic Raab launched the first of the government’s “technical notices” ,today explaining how to prepare for Brexit in the event of no-deal with the EU, but was greeted with a renewed chorus of panic from the CBI, the TUC, farmers, NHS, financiers – all but those blinded by Brexitmania.

Raab was eager to pretend these 24 documents would have little effect on ordinary people. “These are for business,” he said, sounding like Harold Wilson making his notorious reassurance that “the pound in your pocket has not been devalued”. But the notices make clear that if no deal is reached by the time we leave on 29 March 2019, the UK faces a mountain of crisis, wrapped in burgeoning blankets of new bureaucracy. Look what businesses need to do: as well as customs declarations for goods from the EU, they must employ customs brokers, freight forwarders and logistics providers with all necessary software and authorisations. Each must register for a UK Economic Operator Registration and Identification number, with higher costs and slower processing times for euro transactions. And yes, there will be new tariffs.

This hardly encourages all those businesses Liam Fox urges to start exporting. Nor will it “only” affect business when lorries are backed halfway up Britain. Add in 1,000 extra border staff and 9,000 extra civil servants, and where is that bonfire of red tape the Brexiters promised?

However carefully Raab tries to cotton-wool these warnings, today brought an avalanche of reminders of the dire Brexit effects we have already been told about. Supermarket CEOs say shelves will be emptied as a third of food is imported from the EU. Health secretary Matt Hancock tells drug companies to stockpile an extra six weeks’ worth of drugs – but warns hospitals and patients not to panic-buy, for fear of running short. The City is rumbling with Brexit warnings amid movements to other EU capitals. The 300,000 expat pensioners living in Europe are warned that no deal may threaten their pensions and healthcare. Even small parcels from the EU will incur VAT, and credit card charges will rise for visitors to the EU. Police warn of the risk of losing data exchanges on EU crime. Who knew until these notices that no deal means a stoppage of Danish sperm bank donations? Jacob Rees-Mogg calls all this “absurdly overstated”, yet Raab has admitted that even “no deal” needs basic agreement on ports, banking, data – or disaster follows. Naturally, Northern Ireland’s border remains unresolved. Traders must consult Dublin. “We will provide more information in due course.” Ah! We are still full steam ahead for the Irish iceberg on which Boris Johnson’s “titanic success of Brexit” will founder.
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No one suggests the cataclysm of Brexit compares to nuclear annihilation – but the tactical thinking is the same. In trying to frighten the enemy, all the Brexiters have done is terrify their own side. People are at last hearing the news of what no deal – and indeed almost any kind of Brexit – will really mean for everyday life, rather than the sunlit promised land of Brexlandia. Even Rees-Mogg has admitted we may not reach that place for half a century.

I would rather be worse off financially in a full democracy once again

Theresa May has come under fire for claiming to have secured the UK’s first post-Brexit trade deal, because it is merely a “rollover” of an existing EU agreement.

Critics said the announcement – to replicate a deal with six southern African nations – fell far short of boasts, before the referendum, of a new free trade area much larger than the EU.

They also pointed out that it came amid doubts about whether the UK will be able to retain deals the EU has struck recently with Canada and Japan – which are far bigger economies.

Last year, Britain exported £2.4bn worth of goods to the six African countries included in Ms May's deal - just 0.7 per cent of the value of its exports to the EU and the rest of the world combined, which were worth £339bn.

MPs could be denied analysis of economic harm from no-deal Brexit
The government has acknowledged the risk of a “loss of trade” after Brexit with such countries, admitting they could demand more favourable terms to agree a rollover with the UK.

Speaking in Cape Town, the prime minister announced an additional £4bn of UK investment in African economies, with the hope of further match investment from the private sector to come.

And she said: “That’s why I’m delighted that we will today confirm plans to carry over the European Union’s Economic Partnership Agreement with the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) and Mozambique once the EU’s deal no longer applies to the UK.

“As a prime minister who believes both in free markets and in nations and businesses acting in line with well-established rules and principles of conduct, I want to demonstrate to young Africans that their brightest future lies in a free and thriving private sector.”

Countries in the SACU agreement include Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland, with Mozambique also included in the pact with the EU that the UK will take on.

Of those countries, South Africa was Britain's largest trade partner in 2017, buying £2.4bn worth of exports, followed by Namibia (£39m), Botswana (£24m) and Mozambique (£11m). Lesotho and Swaziland purchased less than a million pounds worth of exported goods from Britain each.

But Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman, said: “Theresa May is clearly delusional.

“Simply replicating deals already struck by the EU proves the Tories are in such a mess that their aspirations reach no higher than the status quo.”

And Gareth Thomas, a Labour supporter of the People’s Vote campaign for a fresh Brexit referendum, said: “Two years ago, Brexiters were promising a new free-trade area ‘ten times’ the size of the EU.

“Now they’re reduced to celebrating an agreement to rollover a fraction of the existing trade deals that we already benefit from as EU members.”

Mr Thomas said that Brexit “threatens to tear up” fresh EU deals “like the recent one with Japan”.

Lord Boateng, a Labour peer who is chairman of the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund, also warned the UK’s trade drive had “a lot of catching up to do” with the likes of China, France, India and Germany.

Britain hopes to rollover all of the EU’s current trade deals, with Chile, Israel, Egypt, Mexico, Russia, South Korea, Switzerland and Turkey among others.

However, the government was forced to drop a claim that the process was assured, while maintaining that “all partner countries have agreed to work with us to ensure continuity”.

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Separating agricultural quotas is believed to be a key controversy, some countries rejecting a plan by the EU and the UK to divide the allocations between them, after the UK’s departure.

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) said strong trade ties with Africa will be “crucial” after Brexit, with 35 per cent of its exporting members sending their goods to Africa.

Mike Cherry, its national chairman, said: “Export vouchers should be made available to small businesses, as this can pave the way to new export deals.

“Our own figures have shown that members are increasingly looking at the emerging markets and it’s important that this continues in the coming years.”

A Conservative party donor has called for a referendum to be held on the final Brexit deal, amid new warnings about the huge financial costs of leaving the EU without an agreement.

Sir Simon Robertson, the former banker and Rolls-Royce chairman, said that he was “deeply depressed” by the direction of the Brexit debate and believed there should be a chance for a vote on the final deal hammered out with Brussels.

His backing for a second public vote suggests that there is support for the move among senior Tory remainers. However, campaigners only have a narrow window in which to secure it.
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