Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May told her top team of ministers on Tuesday that parliament would not be asked to vote on a revised Brexit deal this week as she needed more time to negotiate with the European Union, her office said.

May is seeking changes to the deal she agreed with the bloc last year, after lawmakers rejected it largely due to concerns over an insurance policy aimed at avoiding the return of border controls on the island of Ireland.

“She said it is clear that these discussions with the EU will need a little more time to conclude and so we will not be bringing forward a meaningful vote this week,” a spokeswoman for May’s office said in a statement following May’s weekly meeting with her cabinet of ministers.

LONDON (Reuters) - British lawmakers will face a stark choice between Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal or a long extension to the March 29 deadline for leaving the bloc, May’s chief Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins was overheard saying in a Brussels bar.

Unless May can get a Brexit deal approved by the British parliament, then she will have to decide whether to delay Brexit or thrust the world’s fifth largest economy into chaos by leaving without a deal.

May has repeatedly said that the United Kingdom will leave on schedule, with or without a deal, as she tries to get the EU to reopen the divorce agreement she reached in November.

But her chief Brexit negotiator, Robbins, was overheard by an ITV correspondent at a hotel bar in Brussels saying that lawmakers would have to choose whether to accept a reworked Brexit deal or a potentially significant delay.

“Got to make them believe that the week beginning end of March... Extension is possible but if they don’t vote for the deal then the extension is a long one,” ITV quoted Robbins as saying in the hotel bar on Monday during a private conversation.

ITV said Robbins made clear that he felt the fear of a long extension to Article 50 - the process of leaving the EU - might focus lawmakers’ minds.

Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay said he did not want to comment on conversations heard second hand in a noisy bar but that the government’s position was that the United Kingdom would leave on March 29 but wanted to do so with a deal.

The spectacle of one of May’s most senior officials undermining her negotiating position in a hotel bar in Brussels indicates the scale of the United Kingdom’s Brexit crisis that has shocked both investors and allies alike.

It is unclear why Robbins, an experienced civil servant, would make such comments in a hotel bar, though his remarks will deepen the concerns of Brexit-supporting lawmakers that May could ultimately delay leaving the bloc.

Robbins said that the most controversial part of the divorce deal, the Northern Ireland backstop, had been conceived as a ‘bridge’ to the long-term trading relationship between the UK and EU.

“If the PM decides we are leaving on 29 March, deal or no deal, that will happen,” Brexit-supporting Conservative Party lawmaker Steve Baker said. “Officials advise. Ministers decide.”

But Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage said Robbins should be sacked.

“Olly Robbins represents the civil service fifth column in our country,” Farage said. “He should be sacked immediately for a combination of treachery and incompetence.”

ZURICH (Reuters) - Switzerland will introduce a quota system allowing Britons to come and work in the country in the event Britain crashes out of the European Union without an exit deal.

Under the system 3,500 British citizens coming to Switzerland for the first time will be allowed to work, the Bern government said on Wednesday. The cap for residence permits will be set at 2,100, with an additional 1,400 short-stay permits allowed.

The quota, which will apply from March 30 to Dec. 31, is intended to replace the current Agreement of Free Movement of Persons between Switzerland and Britain which runs out March 30.

The government’s push to roll over EU trade deals from which the UK currently benefits has yielded agreements covering only £16bn of the near-£117bn of British trade with the countries involved.

Despite frenetic efforts by ministers to ensure the continuity of international trade after the UK leaves the EU on 29 March, the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, has so far only managed to secure deals with seven of the 69 countries that the UK currently trades with under preferential EU free trade agreements, which will end after Brexit.

Fox’s department has yet to sign agreements with several major UK trading partners – including Canada, Japan, South Korea and Turkey – while sources have said that sufficient progress is unlikely to be made before the Brexit deadline in less than 50 days’ time.

Canada, Japan, South Korea and Turkey alone accounted for goods exports worth £25bn in 2017 and imports of merchandise worth £28.6bn, with the UK currently able to access these markets on preferential terms as part of membership of the EU.

The deals are being rolled over under a traffic-light system by the Department for International Trade. According to a document obtained by the Sun, only a handful are colour-coded in green as deals that will enter into force by March 2019. The majority are in amber and red, where deliverability is either off-track or significantly off-track, while some major trade deals, including with Japan and Turkey, are coded in black as “not possible to be completed by March 2019”.

[graph at linked source]

Although the government announced a trade continuity agreement with Switzerland earlier this week, covering goods worth more than £14bn, most of the goods deals it has secured so far are worth far less to the UK.

Other countries among the seven where trade deals have been agreed so far include the Faroe Isles, with exports worth £16m and imports worth £229m; Chile, with exports worth £571m and imports worth £718m; and the Seychelles, worth a total of £123m.

But prime minister again fails to rule out extending Article 50 – which Olly Robbins is alleged to have floated, if MPs refuse to back her deal

Theresa May has dismissed the row over her chief negotiator saying she plans to threaten MPs with a “long” delay to Brexit as something “overheard in a bar”.

However, the prime minister again failed to rule out extending Article 50 – which Olly Robbins is alleged to have floated, if MPs still refuse to back her deal by the end of March.

The SNP said it showed Ms May’s claim she is ready to crash out of the EU if necessary had reached the “end of the road” because she had been “rumbled by your own loose-lipped Brexit adviser”.

Brexiteer Tories are furious after Mr Robbins was quoted as saying: “Extension [of Article 50] is possible but if they don't vote for the deal then the extension is a long one.”

Asked to “rule out” such a delay, the prime minister said: “I’m grateful that he has asked me that question, rather than relying on what someone said to someone else as overheard by someone else in a bar.

“The government position is the same. We triggered Article 50 – in fact this House voted to trigger Article 50.

“That has a two-year timeline that ends on the 29 March. We want to leave with a deal and that’s what we working for.”

Strikingly, the prime minister’s response did not deny that the choice before MPs is likely to be her deal or a long delay – rather than her deal, or a no-deal Brexit.

Officials have admitted they have “run out of time” to find ships to bring extra emergency supplies after a no-deal Brexit, following the Seaborne Freight fiasco.

No “large amount of further additional capacity” will be available across the Channel before the end of March, MPs were told – by either sea or rail.

The admission follows the embarrassment of the cancelled £13.8m contract handed to Seaborne – a firm with no ships – which has sparked calls for Chris Grayling, the transport secretary, to be sacked.

“It would not be possible to complete procurement and make it operational for 29 March,” the department for transport’s director general admitted.
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LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May was defeated in a symbolic vote in parliament on her Brexit strategy on Thursday, undermining her negotiating strength in talks with the European Union to secure changes to the agreement.

MPs voted by 303 to 258 to reject a motion asking them to reaffirm support for May’s plan to seek changes to her Brexit deal. Many pro-Brexit members of her Conservative Party planned to abstain on the vote as they feared she was softening her position on a no-deal departure.

British regional airline FlyBMI has collapsed with all flights cancelled with immediate effect, saying Brexit had created uncertainty in the industry.

The company, which employs 450 staff and operates more than 600 scheduled flights a week, announced that it had gone into administration. Earlier reports had suggested it was looking for further funding.

In the world of sport, Brexit, backstops and borders may not be foremost in the thoughts of fans.

That sport and politics should not mix is, after all, an oft repeated phrase.

But for Derry City Football Club, this year celebrating 90 years since its first competitive match, Brexit puts the club in a unique position.

When Brexit happens, the Candystripes become the only UK-based club competing in a domestic league within the European Union.

The city of Derry has a hinterland that straddles the Irish border.

After Brexit, it will straddle the EU-UK frontier.

The football club's Brandywell home ground lies less than four miles from County Donegal in the Republic of Ireland.

And for more than 30 years they have played in the Republic of Ireland's league.
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PARIS (Reuters) - France on Sunday denied British media reports that President Emmanuel Macron had offered concessions on the Irish backstop to end the stalemate over Brexit negotiations.

“These (reports) are without any foundation ... The French position is that of the European Union: the withdrawal agreement is not renegotiable,” an official from Macron’s Elysee office said.

The Times newspaper reported over the weekend that France and other EU countries were ready to provide assurances over the Irish backstop, and Macron had softened his position “to assist a last-ditch attempt by the EU to help to get the withdrawal agreement across the line.”

British airline blames Brexit for sudden collapse

Hundreds stranded as British airline Flybmi shuts down

Hundreds of passengers throughout Europe have been stranded by the abrupt collapse of the British regional airline Flybmi.

British Midland Regional Ltd., which operates as Flybmi or bmi, said it's filing for administration — a British version of bankruptcy protection — because of higher fuel costs and uncertainty caused by Britain's upcoming departure from the European Union.

"Current trading and future prospects have also been seriously affected by the uncertainty created by the Brexit process, which has led to our inability to secure valuable flying contracts in Europe and a lack of confidence around bmi's ability to continue flying between destinations in Europe," the airline said on its website late Saturday.

The collapse will have a major impact on the Northern Ireland city of Derry, also known as Londonderry, which will lose its only air connection to London. Officials at the City of Derry Airport said they were urgently seeking a new carrier to keep the link open.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Ireland is spending “hundreds of millions of euros” on preparing for a no-deal Brexit, which would be a “crazy outcome” of three years of EU-UK negotiations, Ireland’s Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Monday.

Coveney said the European Union wanted to find ways to help UK parliamentary ratification of the Brexit deal but that the lawmakers’ asks needed to be “reasonable”.

He said the bloc would not remove the contentious Irish border backstop from the deal to replace it with “wishful thinking” solutions, or accept a fixed time-limit on the insurance measure.

With no deal estimated to mean billions of pounds in extra costs, here’s what firms are doing

The British aerospace sector is bracing for a no-deal Brexit, which it estimates could mean billions of pounds in extra costs.

The impact on some goods could equate to 38% of their sale value, according to one no-deal Brexit scenario modelled by ADS, a lobby group for the aerospace and defence sectors.

The group estimates that new customs checks alone will cost an extra £1.5bn per year. While tariffs are less of an issue for the sector, as most finished aerospace parts are not caught by the levies, import VAT and tariffs on generic parts and raw materials could still add significant costs.

That scenario also includes customs checks taking only 70 seconds per vehicle, which the Department for Transport estimates could cause six-day delays at the border.

“When you’re selling an aircraft you can’t have any parts missing,” the chief economist at ADS, Jeegar Kakkad, said. “One part stops the whole process.”

The output of British aerospace manufacturers fell for the first time in four years in 2018, according to the Office for National Statistics, with concerns around global growth as well as Brexit clouding the outlook.

Airbus, one of the UK’s largest aerospace employers at its wing factory and design centre, has warned that a no-deal Brexit could cost it €1bn (£875m) per week, while indicating that it could leave the UK altogether in the event of a disorderly departure. Kakkad added that smaller suppliers are likely to be more vulnerable to problems with cashflow.

The aerospace and defence sectors together employed more than 260,000 people in Britain in 2017, according to ADS figures but future expansion by non-British companies could be threatened if new frictions are introduced in the trade between the UK and the EU.

Kakkad said: “The issue isn’t about what we have now; it’s if we look halfway through the next decade when decisions are being made on the next set of wings; the next supply chain.”

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It takes a lot to anger the unfailingly polite, anglophile Japanese. But Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, and Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, appear to have managed it with their ill-judged attempt to hustle Tokyo into a quick-fire Brexit trade deal.

The diplomatic fumble has highlighted rapidly escalating difficulties facing “global Britain” – the government’s nebulous vision for life after the EU – in forging new business and trade relationships around the world without an agreed post-Brexit strategy.

Leading Brexiters such as Fox, David Davis and Nigel Farage predicted the process would be quick and easy, but events are proving them wrong. With 29 March fast approaching, Britain has replaced only seven of the EU’s 69 collective preferential trade deals.

The “magnificent seven” comprise Switzerland, Chile, Mauritius, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, the Faroe Islands and the Seychelles. Together, they account for a mere £16bn out of a current total of £117bn in British trade with EU-partnered countries.

In contrast, preferential arrangements with bigger EU partners such as Japan, South Korea, Turkey and Norway have not been replaced, nor does it appear they will be before the deadline.

With market analysts warning a no-deal Brexit is a growing possibility, pressure on Fox is intensifying. This may explain last week’s clumsy warning to Japan, in a letter co-authored with Hunt, that “time is of the essence”.

Like his predecessors, Shinzō Abe, Japan’s prime minister, has pursued a close diplomatic and security relationship with Britain. Japanese businesses and carmakers have invested heavily. So officials in Tokyo reportedly took strong exception to the Fox-Hunt suggestion of foot-dragging, suggesting it smacked of arrogance.

Fox was already struggling with tougher than expected Japanese negotiating tactics. Given widespread perceptions of British weakness, bordering on desperation, other countries, less well disposed than Japan, can be expected to take an even harder line.

The question of ministerial incompetence aside, Britain is further disadvantaged by a lack of trade talks specialists – a point made by the Japanese – and ongoing domestic political divisions.

Add to that well-founded concerns about a contracting global economy, the US-China trade war and a broader sense that Britain’s standing on the world stage is in decline, and the future negotiating environment looks hostile.

Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, served up what he and others among Britain’s European friends see as an unpalatable truth. Britain is “a waning country” that is “too small to appear on the world stage on its own”, Rutte said last week.

All this renders the task of creating new bilateral trade deals with the world’s largest economies, outside the EU’s 69-nation umbrella framework, ever more daunting.

China’s weekend decision to cancel high-levels talks over disobliging remarks by the defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, showed how vulnerable Britain is to geopolitical as well as financial pressure from the big emerging powers.

The UK’s dependence on Chinese investment, for example in nuclear power, is another weakness open to exploitation. Britain’s refusal to ostracise the controversial Chinese telecoms giant Huawei may please Beijing but will infuriate the US. Was the decision influenced by Brexit considerations?

There could also be a high price to pay, in terms of political values and human rights, in obtaining deals from repressive regimes in China, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

And Britain’s often unhappy colonial legacy must be factored in, too. Many in India will view London’s new neediness as a chance to redress old wrongs.

For his part, Donald Trump, a Brexit enthusiast, has criticised May for conceding too much to the EU while promising an expanded relationship. The US is already Britain’s biggest non-EU trade partner, and London clings rather pathetically to its so-called special relationship.

Money-minded, hard-nosed Trump is certain to drive a hard bargain, and there a real risk of bullying. Any agreement with the US could come with political as well as commercial and health and safety strings attached, for instance on Iran, where current policy diverges.

Trump’s deep hostility to to the World Trade Organization (“one of the worst deals ever”) means, meanwhile, that a no-deal default to WTO rules would not necessarily win Washington’s approval or support.

Such an outcome would truly leave Britain all at sea, lost and adrift somewhere between Europe and America.

David Gauke, Amber Rudd, Greg Clark and David Mundell tell PM to rule option out

Four cabinet ministers have demanded the prime minister stop using the threat of no deal as a negotiating tactic, telling Theresa May that businesses and manufacturers now needed to be given certainty.

The demand was made in a meeting with the prime minister on Monday by the justice secretary, David Gauke, the work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, the business secretary, Greg Clark, and the Scottish secretary, David Mundell.

Toto Wolff has issued a strong warning of the dangers facing Formula One and the sport’s place in the UK because of Brexit, describing it as the “mother of all messes”. The Mercedes team principal was speaking as teams gave their cars their full track debut at the first test here. Ferrari were quickest but Williams suffered a severe blow, admitting they were not ready to run for the opening two days of testing.

Seven of the 10 F1 teams are based in Britain and there are nine European races this season. They employ a large number of people with a wide range of nationalities and are reliant on parts, equipment and materials coming in and out of the EU. Wolff warned Brexit would have a major impact.

“Any major disruption with borders or taxes would damage the F1 industry in the UK,” he said. “Our team is an international team, including many EU citizens, and there is uncertainty at whether the industry will be impacted by a no-deal Brexit or a Brexit. That is damaging to what is to me one of the outstanding industries in the UK. It is the mother of all messes.”

He was also concerned about the ability of F1 teams to attend races and perform at the highest level, reflecting a similar view to those the McLaren chief executive Jonathan Neale expressed in November.

“If a no-deal Brexit happens like it is being discussed, it would have a major impact in terms of our operation going to the races and getting our car developed and ready,” said Wolff. “That is a nightmare scenario that I don’t want to envisage.”

Mercedes have won the past five drivers’ and constructors’ championships and Lewis Hamilton has taken four of his five titles with the team, who employ what is understood to be approximately 1,100 people from 26 nationalities. They, as well as McLaren, Williams, Force India, Renault and Red Bull are based in the UK, while Haas have their headquarters in the USA but with a base in Banbury.

Wolff also warned the potential upheaval caused by Brexit could affect Mercedes’ ability to compete. “Everybody at Ferrari, Toro Rosso [both based in Italy] and also Alfa Romeo in Switzerland will have a massive advantage over every UK-based team,” he said.