Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

The Tory peer and former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine has accused Boris Johnson of trying to “rub the noses of Remainers in their defeat”, after the prime minister announced events to commemorate the UK’s departure from the EU this coming Friday at 11pm.

Downing Street said that 3m special 50p coins bearing the words “Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations” will enter shops, banks and restaurants from Friday with a further 7m coming into circulation by the end of the year. Union Jack flags will also line Parliament Square and the Mall on Friday and the public will see government buildings in Whitehall lit up in red, white and blue.

To add to the celebratory mood the government wants to encourage, “a commemorative light display” will be staged in Downing Street in the run-up to 11pm, the hour that the UK will officially end its 47 year membership of Europe’s club of nations. A countdown clock will be projected on to it from 10pm. Officials said the light display will “symbolise the strength and unity” of the four nations that make up the United Kingdom.

The prime minister said last night: “Next Friday marks an important moment in the history of our United Kingdom. No matter how you voted in 2016, it is the time to look ahead with confidence to the global, trailblazing country we will become over the next decade and heal past divisions. That is what I will be doing on 31 January and I urge everyone across the UK to do the same.”

But politicians who fought to remain in the EU said the events were deeply inappropriate. Heseltine told the Observer: “Brexit is the most divisive issue of modern times. Those of us who fought to remain did so sincerely in the interests of our country and subsequent generations who we believe should be influential at the heart of Europe.

“I think it is unwise of the government to rub our noses in it by celebrating our defeat at this hour, whilst talking about unifying the country.”

He said the only comfort was that plans to chime Big Ben to mark the moment the UK leaves had been dropped.

“At least we are spared the sound of Big Ben being chimed at our discomfort.” Adapting the quote from John Donne the Tory peer added: “Send not to inquire for whom the bells tolls. It tolls for thee.”
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The message from the Brexit party MEP John Tennant could hardly have been clearer: Boris Johnson’s departure deal is “a trap” and must be voted down at all costs. But within a few paragraphs the tone changes. “It’s still a Brexit of sorts,” Tennant writes, now saying he will reluctantly support it.

A leaked email that Tennant sent to aides this week appears to show two versions of a script for a video message to be released after the European parliament’s vote on the Brexit deal on Wednesday.

The leak highlights the dilemma facing Nigel Farage’s party before what is likely to be the last significant political moment of its brief and tumultuous existence.

n the first version of the script, Tennant, one of 29 Brexit party MEPs elected in May, argues for opposing the planned deal and holding out instead for a no-deal departure. “This deal isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. It’s a trap,” he writes. “I know we probably don’t have the votes to vote this deal down, but if it did fall there would once again be a slim chance of a genuine clean-break Brexit on 31 January.

“It’s like we’re a goal down, sending the keeper up in the 93rd minute for a corner kick. There’s not much chance of it succeeding but we’ve got to try. Call it my last stand, call it Brexit’s last stand, but I’ve got to at least try to vote it down.”

The next script is still deeply sceptical of the plan, calling it “the second worst deal in history” – second only to Theresa May’s version – before abruptly changing tack. “But here’s the thing,” Tennant writes. “It’s still better than not leaving this hideous place at all. We will – mostly – get back control of our borders. We’ll get our own independent trade policy back. We’ll stop giving the EU billions of our hard-earned cash. That has to still count for something.

“It’s still a Brexit of sorts. However bad the deal is, I couldn’t in all conscience vote against Brexit. How could I deny reality and jeopardise the only Brexit that’s still reasonably possible at this stage?”

The two-script approach echoes Johnson himself, who famously drafted two newspaper columns, one pro-Brexit and one supporting remain, before opting to pick the leave side.
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The EU has rejected Boris Johnson’s claims that there will be no checks on goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland after Brexit, with Michel Barnier warning such checks are not dispensable.

Days after the prime minister said there would “emphatically” be no checks on trade across the Irish Sea, the EU’s chief negotiator told an audience in Belfast that the UK had agreed to them as part of a “creative and flexible” solution to the Irish border question.

There was no provision for ignoring them in the legal test of the withdrawal agreement, Barnier said in a speech in Queen’s University: “In agreeing the [Northern Ireland] protocol, the UK has agreed to a system of reinforced checks and controls for goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain.”

“The text is very precise. I always tell the truth,” Barnier said in response to questions from the media on whether checks could be lifted. When asked how he felt about Johnson’s repeated claims there would be checks, he replied: “I know what is written in this text.”

In his speech, he said: “I understand the fears of negative economic fallout expressed by some about these checks, but Brexit unfortunately has consequences that we must manage.”

He said it was the UK’s decision to quit the single market and customs union, and that “makes checks indispensable”.

His comments, in a keynote speech at Queen’s University, are a direct contradiction of the prime minister’s repeated claims over the last three months that there would be no checks on goods in either direction across the Irish Sea.

At one point Johnson told supporters in Northern Ireland that they could put any new paperwork “in the bin” because there would be “no forms, no checks, no barriers of any kind” on goods crossing the Irish Sea after Brexit.

He repeated the claim again last week, telling Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the Democratic Unionist party leader in the House of Commons, that it was “emphatically” the case there would be unfettered trade in either direction across the Irish Sea.

His claims have led to confusion among business leaders in Northern Ireland. Last week the Freight Transport Association warned that the “straightforward” paperwork that would be needed post-Brexit for goods transiting from Northern Ireland to Great Britain involved a complex form with more than 30 questions.

He said many of the consequences were “not so well explained to the British people”.

“There will be no possibility for frictionless trade between the EU and UK after this deal”.

Goods going in the other direction must be accompanied by customs declarations forms with “phyto-sanitary checks on food products and live animals”.

Barnier warned that neither the EU or UK could not backslide by simply turning a blind eye. The withdrawal agreement was legally binding and “cannot be re-opened under the guise of implementation”. “We will be monitoring its correct application very carefully,” he said.

Barnier also expressed bemusement over Sajid Javid’s recent remarks in a Financial Times interview that the UK would not be aligned to EU rules post-Brexit.

He said he hoped “our UK friends are reflecting carefully” on the matter because the EU will not agree to a close neighbour trying to seek an unfair advantage through subsidies to industry or a removal of stringent standards to cut costs.

“The UK cannot expect high-quality access to our single market if it insists on competing on state aid, social or environmental standards,” he said.

After a whistlestop tour of Dublin and Belfast, in which he met the taoiseach and representatives of Sinn Fein and the DUP, Barnier said that the withdrawal agreement in its current form allows for “an orderly Brexit, for now” that “limits the destruction of value of our citizens and businesses”.

As the EU and the UK count down to the formal parting of company on Friday, Barnier warned a “new clock was ticking” with just 11 months to seal a deal on trade and other issues including freedom of movement, science, Erasmus, security and financial services.

After a meeting with Barnier in Dublin, the taoiseach Leo Varadkar expressed sadness that Ireland’s nearest neighbour was no longer a member of the EU family.

“We’ll say goodbye to an old friend embarking on an adventure,” said Varadkar. “We hope it works out for them. But if it does not, there will always be a seat kept for them at the table.”

I do hope that the UK still will remember that they belong to the European neighbourhood.