The UK government and the EU will fail to sign a post-Brexit trade deal, with only a few days left before Boris Johnson’s July deadline, due to deadlock on a number of key issues, a report has said.
Ministers are working on the assumption that there will not be a deal, although it may be possible for a “basic” agreement to be reached if the EU gives ground in the autumn, The Daily Telegraph has reported, citing government sources.
The newspaper added that the government expects to be trading on World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms when the transition period comes to an end.
"Round five negotiations are ongoing and we remain committed to working hard to finding the outlines of a balanced agreement," the Prime Minister's official spokesman told journalists in Westminster.
"We have been clear that discussions throughout this intensified process have continued to be constructive but significant differences still remain on a number of important issues.
"Our preference is to leave with an FTA as long as it guarantees our political and economic independence. But we will make sure that we are prepared for all possible scenarios."
Last month Mr Johnson said there was "no reason" why a deal could not be sealed by the end of July. Both sides say they want an agreement in the bag by the autumn to give them time to ratify it by the end of the year when the Brexit transition period ends.
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It is not clear what the outlines of an agreement would look like, and whether one being in place other than a full deal would see the consequences of a no-deal at the end of the year.
While there is no legal basis for extending the current Brexit transition period, since the deadline to do so expired last month, some constitutional experts have suggested ways in which the UK and EU might stay tied together economically for longer using new agreements.
Michel Barnier has said a trade and security deal with Boris Johnson’s government by the end of the year appeared “unlikely”, as he complained that Britain was demanding “near total exclusion” of European fishing boats from its waters.
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In a statement, the UK’s chief negotiator, David Frost, concurred that there were “considerable gaps” but insisted that an agreement could still be reached in September. UK sources said Barnier’s assessment that the talks were “back at an impasse” accurately described the situation, but added this was for technical reasons that could be surmounted over the summer.
The two sides are due to meet for two days of informal talks next week before a formal round of negotiations in mid-August. But Johnson’s optimistic hopes of agreeing an outline of the principles of a deal by the end of this month had been dashed, Frost conceded.
Ministers are refusing to admit to the threat from terrorists and crime gangs if there is no Brexit deal, says a former national security adviser in a stinging attack.
Lord Peter Ricketts warned the likely fallbacks will be “putting the safety of the public at risk”, even as the UK and the EU both admitted an agreement is currently “unlikely”, as their talks falter.
In a damning report, the House of Lords committee headed by Lord Ricketts lambasts the security minister’s claim that “the UK has well-developed and well-rehearsed plans in place”.
It flies in the face of a warning from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) that retaining rapid access to intelligence and data is “absolutely critical” in the fight against crime, it said.
UK police checked the Schengen Information System (SIS II) database of suspects “603 million times” in 2019 alone, the committee was told – but that ability is now in jeopardy.
“Compelling evidence has been laid before the committee about the significant consequences for law enforcement in the UK if there is no deal on policing and criminal justice cooperation,” Lord Ricketts said.
“This stands in stark contrast to the government’s optimism that they have plans for non-EU alternatives that can substitute effectively for the exceptional levels of cooperation the British law enforcement and justice communities currently enjoy with their colleagues in EU countries.
“Without a deal, the loss of operational effectiveness for UK law enforcement agencies – including in Northern Ireland – will be profound, undermining modern intelligence led policing and putting the safety of the public at risk.”
The warning is impossible to ignore because the peer was national security adviser for three years until 2015 and, before that, chairman of the government’s joint intelligence committee.
LSE report says even sectors unscathed from coronavirus crisis will be severely impacted
A Brexit hit is looming for sectors that have emerged relatively unscathed from the Covid-19 pandemic, new data has showed.
A report from the London School of Economics says Brexit will deliver a double shock to the economy – with worsening business conditions for those sectors that have survived the impact of coronavirus and lockdown measures – whether Boris Johnson secures a deal with the EU or not.
The analysis, seen by the Guardian ahead of its publication on Wednesday, includes information from a monthly survey of Confederation of British Industry (CBI) members.
“Our analysis shows that the sectors that will be affected by Brexit and those that are suffering from the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown are generally different from each other,” said Swati Dhingra, co-author and economics professor at the LSE.
A “simultaneous impact” will be felt across the business spectrum from Brexit and coronavirus from the autumn when chancellor Rishi Sunak’s new policies aimed at supporting the unemployed end and the new trading environment for Brexit begins to bite, the research finds.
The report, titled Covid-19 and Brexit: Real-Time Updates on Business Performance in the United Kingdom by the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance shows that sectors entailing more human contact - including hospitality, air travel, restaurants, hotels, and arts and entertainment – have been the hardest hit by the pandemic.
Other sectors such as the scientific industries, professional services including accountancy, legal services and publishing have been less impacted because they can continue to operate with staff working from home.
Among those reportedly continuing to operate with remote working are firms such as Vodafone, Google, consultancy KPMG, GlaxoSmithKline, Rolls Royce and consumer goods giant Unilever.
But Brexit will impose new barriers on those trading goods or services with the EU, whether pharmaceutical companies seeking regulatory approval, banks or services needing to transfer data from servers in the bloc or car manufacturers or clothes importers required to fill in customs declarations for the first time in decades.
The report points out that as far back as 2017 the government announced that Brexit would be guided by impact assessments across sectors; it has provided detailed analysis in only 10 sectors to date.
“The government must move beyond its broad assessment of Brexit impacts to much more finely tuned plans” in preparation for the “biggest slowdown of our lifetime” said co-author, Josh de Lyon, research assistant at the LSE centre.
Dhingra said the coronavirus pandemic had “reduced the capacity of the UK economy to take further shocks” and “rushing Brexit through” would “broaden the set of sectors that see worsening business conditions”.
Using monthly data collected by the CBI on business experiences and expectations of growth or declines, along with what it describes as “state of the art” modelling, the centre has been able to assess the outlook for the next three months.
LSE, like other big institutions, is loath to put a figure on the projected combined shock to the economy although various sectors have warned of hardship coming down the tracks with Make UK, the manufacturing trade body, warning that more than half of the manufacturing sector is planning redundancies when the business support schemes end.
The report urges the government to put in place an industrial strategy that “must reflect” the cold reality of “being in a post-Brexit UK which is placed in a post-Covid world economy” in which global trade shrinks.
Northern Ireland minister says government cannot be expected to provide businesses with all information 'from day one'
Ministers have defended a lack of information about what the new sea border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland will look like from next year.
Six months after Brexit the specifics of how goods moving between Northern Ireland and Great Britain will be treated have still not been agreed.
But Northern Ireland minister Robin Walker told a House of Lords committee on Tuesday that "we cannot necessarily provide all the detail that everyone would like on day one".
The implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol is subject to negotiation by a "joint committee" between the EU and UK.
The UK argues it should not have to apply some customs controls it agreed to as part of the agreement – such as exit summary declarations for goods moving across the Irish Sea.
The checks are included in the agreement because they are part of the EU's customs code, which Boris Johnson promised in writing to implement in exchange for a Brexit deal last year.
But during the ensuring election campaign Mr Johnson said would be no checks or exit summary declarations. The British government has since argued that imposing the letter of the agreement would not be a good idea.
The hold-up means that businesses on both sides of the Irish sea still have no detail about what will happen to the border in five months at the end of the year when the transition period ends.
"I absolutely recognise that business will always want as much detail as possible as early as possible and that this is a process where we cannot necessarily provide all the detail that everyone would like on day one," Mr Walker told the Lords EU committee.
"We do have to ensure that the voice of business is heard and fed into the process, and we also have to make sure we don't give any misleading information in terms of things that haven't been fully bottomed out and agreed.
"There are elements of the approach to the protocol which still require agreement at the joint committee and it would be wrong for us to imply that those were fully decided."
Mr Walker added that there would be "more guidance coming in the coming weeks" and that it would be "as detailed as possible.
But he added: "Crucially we have to make sure that the process of the joint committee deciding these things is able to move forward."
"With regard to the issue of exit declarations the approach we've set out is that we don't think exit declarations should be required for Northern Irish goods going into Great Britain because that is trade within the internal market and customs territory as protocol acknowledges. It also has no possible means of undermining the working of the single market so I think this is something that we need to ensure there's a discussion about that the joint committee."
The discussion about the Northern Ireland protocol is running in parallel to talks to sign a free trade agreement between the UK and EU by the end of the year.
No 10 had ‘change of attitude’ after pressure from business, says commissioner
British negotiators in the trade and security talks with the EU have only started to engage with the most contentious issues “in the last week or two” after pressure from business groups, the European commissioner for trade has said.
In an interview with the Guardian, Phil Hogan, who oversees the EU’s negotiations, said there had been “a change of attitude” by Downing Street in July as they realised time was running out but that the talks were “not as advanced as we would like”.
The two sides have been engaged in intensive negotiations this month, and informal discussions have continued this week. But despite the most contentious issues of access to British waters for European fishing fleets and new rules to prevent regulatory undercutting being under discussion, common ground between the sides is yet to be found with about 12 weeks left before parliamentary ratification will need to be sought.
Hogan, a former Irish government minister, pointed to “five or six” major issues standing in the way of a deal, with the one of the most pressing being what self-limiting rules the UK government would establish on its financial assistance to companies, known as state aid.
No 10 had so far refused to to fulfil its “promise” to publish details of the subsidy control regime it would implement when the UK left the single market in December, Hogan said, leaving officials in Brussels nervous that too much was being left to the last moment.
British negotiators have recently claimed that it is not necessary for the EU to have sight of the new regime as domestic legislation is no longer relevant to Brussels.
Hogan warned, in response, that the EU could give “strategic” exemptions from its own state aid regime to allow capitals to subsidise European companies competing with British businesses unless an agreement on maintaining a so-called level playing field was found.
“We had been waiting for the last three months for the UK to come to the table in terms of meaningful negotiations,” Hogan said. “And I actually say it’s only in the last week or two that we have noticed that people are starting to engage on the UK side. We welcome that very much. I think there is now a realisation by people in the negotiating side of UK that time is running out. The British business has started to be more vocal, privately and publicly, in relation to the importance of reaching a deal.”
He added: “It’s in the interest of both sides to have a framework for state aid because I think the UK will be concerned that some of the state aid exemptions that we might introduce strategically as well might not be always in the interest of the UK.
“We are still waiting for the state aid rules that the UK promised some time ago. In order to settle this, we need to hear what they will propose.”
The transition period, during which the UK stays in the customs union and single market, ends at the end of the year along with the associated terms of trade with the rest of the world enjoyed by EU member states.
Whitehall has been busy seeking new trade deals for the UK. An agreement with Japan is reportedly set to be announced within weeks but officials have conceded it will be less ambitious than had been hoped. Negotiations with Donald Trump’s White House have faltered over US demands for lower regulatory standards for its exports into the British market with both sides conceding a deal will not be possible this year.
Hogan, speaking to five European newspapers, said there was never any advantage to be gained by negotiating from a position of weakness outside the EU.
He said: “The UK is beginning to realise that as part of the European Union they were able to negotiate an agreement with various countries on the basis of 500 million people. It is different when you have 60-70 million people and therefore what will be asked of a single albeit large economy like the UK.
“The US will be pushing as hard as they possibly can … I think the big issue of standards came into focus rather quickly [in the] discussions. And I think the British public opinion quite rightly asserted themselves in the form of petitions and political outreach to the ministers in the government to suggest that maybe this wasn’t a great idea.”
Hogan said the British public had been warned during the 2016 referendum of the difficulties the UK would face in securing preferential trade terms.
“But various people in the House of Commons like [the former Conservative cabinet minister] Owen Paterson were articulating the view that ‘we could get at the drop of a hat all sorts of very good and very beneficial international agreements for the United Kingdom if only we were away from the Trojan horse of the European Union’,” he said.
A UK government spokesman said: “The UK has engaged constructively on all issues throughout the negotiations. Unfortunately the EU’s unusual approach has meant we have only been able to progress at the speed of the most difficult issues. Both sides will need to work energetically if we are going to get an agreement in September.”
Boris Johnson is facing a major Brexit test with the future of Eurotunnel operations at stake, it has emerged.
The EU wants the UK to drop its opposition to a role for the European court of justice in British affairs to ensure trains keep running between France and the UK after Brexit is implemented on 1 January.
The European commission has this week asked the European parliament and the European council to officially mandate France to urgently negotiate a new bilateral deal with the UK giving the ECJ the powers to resolve future disputes between the two countries as “union law would not longer be applicable to the part of the channel fixed link under the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom” after Brexit.
Unless there is an overarching deal with one body responsible for legal disputes regarding the entire 30-mile (50km) tunnel there will be chaos, insiders say.
“It would mean train drivers would have to have two sets of qualifications to drive on the British and French side of the tunnel. It would affect how you operate the tunnel with potential for divergence in the future on everything from signalling, voltage, the radio systems, the signalling system, ventilation, hydraulics. It would be like driving on the left- and right-hand side of the road at the same time,” said a source.
The EU’s plan to keep the ECJ as an arbiter in disputes will be anathema to Downing Street.
A senior official involved in the Brexit negotiations says there can be “no halfway house” on the ECJ and that Michel Barnier’s team have recently accepted it is a “non-starter”.
The commission’s move follows a request on 16 July by France informing it that “it would like to negotiate an agreement supplementing the Treaty of Canterbury” signed by Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand in 1986 to facilitate the undersea tunnel.
One option is to make the international court of arbitration in The Hague the apparatus for dispute resolution.
It was used in 2007 when the then Channel Tunnel Group won its £35m compensation claim against the two governments over losses suffered because of damage and security expenses arising from “multiple incursions” of migrants who were living in the Sangatte refugee camp near Calais.
Experts say that finding a way of adjudicating over future disputes between the bloc and the UK without some role for the ECJ is almost impossible and point out that it will be involved in disputes over the Northern Ireland protocol and citizens’ rights.
“From the EU’s point of view it would be very odd to have a railway in its territory that was not governed by EU law, from the UK’s point of view it would also be odd to have a railway in its territory not governed by UK courts but the Treaty of Canterbury provides for one legal regime,” said Steve Peers, law professor at the University of Sangatte.
On the wider issue of the ECJ, Catherine Barnard, professor of EU law at Cambridge, thinks “it is going to be very difficult to exclude the ECJ unless we have such a thin trade deal that it’s not worth the paper it’s written on with no principles of EU law engaged at all”.
It is understood that one option discussed at the negotiating table is a political mechanism for dispute resolution, say insiders.
But this comes with huge and expensive risks of “whack-a-mole” trade wars.
If it was up to governments to settle disputes, the UK could decide to impose tariffs on German cars, for example and the EU could retaliate by slapping tariffs on Scottish whisky, just as Donald Trump threatened earlier this year.
“If you have a problem in one area you shouldn’t be able to retaliate in another completely unrelated area,” said a senior UK official involved in the talks who hinted at an overarching agreement but with specificity on “which bits of the treaty can be suspended in response to the difficulties”.
“This could be an area for wriggle-room. It means we could say to the EU we will keep the EU happy by having one big treaty but then say the dispute resolution mechanism only applies to areas 1, 2 and 3 to stop the retaliation [or prospect of trade wars],” says Barnard.
By Mark Landler
July 31, 2020
Updated 5:43 a.m. ET
LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II threw him an extravagant state banquet at Buckingham Palace. Former Prime Minister Theresa May welcomed him to Blenheim Palace, the family seat of his hero, Winston Churchill. Her successor, Boris Johnson, refused to join a global chorus of criticism after he ordered troops to break up a Black Lives Matter protest outside the White House.
Few countries have worked harder than Britain to please President Trump. But now, with Mr. Trump trailing in the polls to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., British officials are waking up to an unsettling prospect: The president they tried so hard to accommodate may be out of power next year.
In Paris and Berlin, a Trump defeat would be welcomed as an unalloyed relief, removing a leader who has sundered alliances, threatened a trade war, and tried to dismantle the European project. But in London, where Mr. Johnson’s government just left the European Union, it is more complicated.
At a moment of British isolation, Mr. Trump’s full-throated endorsement of Brexit has made the United States a safe harbor. His promise of a lucrative trade deal gave Mr. Johnson a selling point with his voters. His populist politics were in sync with the bare-knuckle tactics of the Brexiteers.
If Mr. Biden wins in November, Britain would face a president who opposed Brexit, would look out for the interests of Ireland in a post-Brexit Europe, and would have little motive to prioritize an Anglo-American trade deal. His former boss, President Barack Obama, once warned Britons that if they left the European Union, they would put themselves at the “back of the queue” in any trade talks with the United States.
“It will not be lost on Biden that the last two British prime ministers went out of their way to be nice to and about Trump,” said Peter Westmacott, a former British ambassador to the United States. “He is instinctively comfortable with Brits, but London will have to work on the relationship.”
As Mr. Trump’s polling numbers have eroded, pro-government papers have begun to make the case that a President Biden would actually be better for Britain than President Trump. Unlike Mr. Trump, he is a believer in alliances. He would not subject Mr. Johnson to rude lectures about the need for Britain to take a harder line against China. He would not be toxic with much of the British public.
In a recent column in The Sunday Times, a well-connected political journalist, Tim Shipman, quoted an unnamed government minister saying that a Trump defeat ‘‘would make things much easier.’’
That sounds like a government hedging its bets. Mr. Johnson has been careful to say nothing about the American election but he has already tried to keep Mr. Trump at arm’s length even as he avoids offending him. Mr. Trump, by contrast, called into a London radio show in the heat of the British election to praise Mr. Johnson and run down his opponent.
Britain’s uneasiness is compounded by the strangeness of this election. The Biden campaign has all but banned contact with foreign governments to avoid the questions that dogged the Trump campaign in 2016 about its ties to Russia. The pandemic has deprived Britain of its long practice of embedding a diplomat in the challenger’s campaign because there is little in-person campaigning.
Jonathan Powell, who as a young British diplomat rode on the bus during Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, said the connections he made were valuable in smoothing over bitterness Mr. Clinton’s aides felt toward Britain’s Conservative government after it had tried to dig up incriminating details about Mr. Clinton’s years at Oxford to help George H.W. Bush’s campaign. Mr. Powell later introduced Mr. Clinton to Tony Blair, who went on to become prime minister and a friendlier counterpart.
Riding the bus is less important this time, he said, given that Mr. Biden is already so well-known to British officials. But the lack of a personal connection may foretell a relationship that is destined to become more distant.
The risk for Britain, several experts said, is not a sudden rupture but a gradual slide into irrelevance. Mr. Biden’s emphasis, they said, would be on mending fences with Berlin and Paris, not celebrating a “special relationship” with London that got plenty of attention from his predecessor.
On a visit to London in October 2018, Mr. Biden, not yet a candidate, cast his opposition to Brexit in geopolitical terms, saying it would make Britain less valuable to the United States as a lever to influence the European Union.
“Had I been a member of Parliament, had I been a British citizen, I would have voted against leaving,” Mr. Biden said at Chatham House, the London research institution. “U.S. interests,” he added, “are diminished with Great Britain not an integral part of Europe.”
Charles A. Kupchan, a professor at Georgetown University who worked on European affairs in the Obama White House and is advising Mr. Biden’s campaign, said, “The question is not, ‘Will there be a special relationship?’ There will be. The question is, ‘Will the special relationship matter?’”
British officials recognize the challenge. They cite human rights and Russia as areas where Britain could carve out a robust role alongside the United States. Mr. Johnson’s recent reversal, barring the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from access to its 5G network, brings Britain in line with a more hawkish American policy toward China, which is likely to extend beyond Mr. Trump’s presidency.
He may need to patch up other lingering issues. In 2016, when Mr. Johnson was mayor of London, he recounted in a newspaper column that Mr. Obama replaced a bust of Churchill in the Oval Office with one of Martin Luther King Jr., and attributed the switch to “the part-Kenyan president’s ancestral dislike of the British Empire.”
Some say fears of tension between Mr. Johnson and Mr. Biden are overblown.
“It’s part of the job for American presidents to get along with prime ministers,” said Tom Tugendhat, a Conservative member of Parliament who is chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and has spoken with advisers to Mr. Biden.
Still, there are potential land mines, not least Northern Ireland. A devoted Irish-American, Mr. Biden will fiercely defend Ireland’s interests, as will his allies in the Democratic Party’s Irish lobby on Capitol Hill. In speeches, Mr. Biden’s go-to literary reference is from ‘‘Easter 1916,’’ a poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats about the Irish uprising against British rule.
British diplomats gamely point out that Mr. Biden has English roots, too. He has talked of a great-great-great grandfather who was a captain in the British East India Trading Company. But they say that as far as Brexit goes, his primary concern is likely to be the preservation of the Good Friday Agreement, the Clinton-era accord that ended decades of sectarian strife in Northern Ireland.
“Biden is very keen on his Irish Catholic roots, though he has British ones too,” Mr. Westmacott said. “If the U.K. ends up with a no deal or other Brexit outcome which is bad news for Ireland, he will not be impressed.”
So far, Mr. Johnson has avoided that problem by striking a withdrawal agreement with the European Union that leaves an open border on the island of Ireland. But Ireland could still suffer economic damage if Britain fails to negotiate permanent trading arrangements with Brussels.
Trade is another area where Mr. Biden could prove frustrating. Mr. Trump’s promise of a blockbuster deal with Britain had already begun to fade, with his trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, saying last month it was unlikely before the election. Were Mr. Biden to win, experts said, he would face a Democratic Party deeply skeptical of a deal, at a time when free trade is in retreat worldwide.
British officials recently floated the idea of both countries joining the successor agreement to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Mr. Trump pulled out of in 2017, as a way to sidestep the thorny issues in a direct negotiation.
But even if Mr. Biden were to rejoin T.P.P. — a big if — analysts noted that its provisions on food sanitation were largely written by the United States and would raise the same objections that have stymied trans-Atlantic talks.
“In other words,” said Sam Lowe, a trade expert at the Center for European Reform, “the chlorine chicken debate is here to stay.”
orthern Ireland is to be left out of the UK’s green car emission restrictions from 1 January, resulting in “Great Britain-only” regulations for carmakers.
Under the Northern Ireland protocol, the UK and the EU have agreed a special status in an effort to avoid a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Indications that Northern Ireland is being treated differently from England, Scotland and Wales are politically sensitive because of the support of many prominent unionist politicians for Brexit. However, the protocol means that many EU regulations will remain in place in Northern Ireland after 1 January, regardless of the outcome of trade negotiations between the UK and the EU. Those regulations include those limiting CO2 emissions from cars.
All major carmakers who sell cars in the EU must reduce their average carbon emissions to below 95g per kilometre over the course of 2020 and 2021, and the UK has pledged rules that are at least as stringent. Carmakers who do not meet individual targets face fines worth potentially hundreds of millions of euros, with equivalent penalties in sterling in the UK.
A government consultation published this month revealed that Northern Ireland will count as a member of the EU for the purposes of working out average emissions, to avoid the possibility of a car being double-counted.
Just 6.2 per cent backed Boris Johnson’s party in last year’s election – throwing doubt on whether he will carry out pledge to abolish time limit on expat voting
Britons living in the EU have deserted the Conservatives on a dramatic scale, new research shows, throwing doubt on a pledge to abolish the time limit on expat voting.
Just 6.2 per cent backed Boris Johnson’s party in last December’s general election it found – a collapse of two-thirds since 19.4 per cent did so just four years earlier.
At the 1992 election, more than 60 per cent of the overseas vote supported the Tories, but last year – as the prime minister vowed to “Get Brexit Done” – more than half sided with Labour.
Now academics behind the research have suggested it is in Mr Johnson’s interest to quietly dump a long-standing promise to abolish the 15-year limit on expat voting rights.
The pledge has been made in three successive Tory manifestos, but has not been enacted – and was left out of the first Queen’s Speech of the Johnson administration.
“There would seem to be little or no future partisan advantage for the Conservatives in extending voting rights to all British expatriates,” predicted Dr Susan Collard, at the University of Sussex.
Scrapping the limit would give up to 3.5 million more Britons the right to vote – at a time when Brexit has put their rights at their “greatest threat for 40 years”, the report argues.
They will lose free movement rights when the transition period ends in December and are already being refused job interviews as a consequence, MPs were told recently.
Paul Webb, professor of politics at the University of Sussex, said its research pinpointed “the implications of a hard Brexit” as a key reason for the Tories’ slump in support.
“Many British expatriates living in the EU feared they would lose reciprocal rights that EU member states accorded to their citizens living in other EU countries,” he said.
“The Europhobia of a growing part of the Conservative Party, and the willingness of the leadership to bend their policy to accommodate it, seems likely to have undermined the electoral appeal of the party to Britons living in the EU.”
Dr Collard, a senior lecturer in contemporary European studies, pointed out that Theresa May’s government had killed off a backbench bill to give expatriates "votes for life".
Scrapping the limit of living abroad for no more than 15 years had been mooted as an "issue of principle rather than pursuit of electoral gains", but she added: “That position will now be put to the test.”
The research team surveyed more than 3,200 British expatriates in the EU immediately after the December election.
It found that 95 per cent who voted in the 2016 Brexit referendum backed Remain over Leave, while three-quarters said the issue definitely influenced their voting choice in 2019.
Many Remainers defected to Labour or the Liberal Democrats with fewer than one-fifth of Remainers who supported the Conservatives in 2015 voting for the party again in 2019.
Pharmaceutical companies should stockpile six weeks’ worth of drugs to guard against disruption at the end of the Brexit transition period, the government has said.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has written to medicine suppliers advising them to make boosting their reserves a priority.
The letter, published online on Monday, reiterates that ministers will not be asking for an extension to the transition period past 31 December, despite the coronavirus pandemic.
There are concerns that the Covid-19 crisis has led to a dwindling of some medical stocks and that a disorderly exit without a trade deal could cause significant disruption.
Suppliers were advised all scenarios must be planned for, including reduced traffic flow at short Channel crossings such as between Calais and Dover.
“We recognise that global supply chains are under significant pressure, exacerbated by recent events with Covid-19,” the letter says.
“However, we encourage companies to make stockpiling a key part of contingency plans, and ask industry, where possible, to stockpile to a target level of six weeks’ total stock on UK soil.”
The number of British nationals emigrating to other EU countries has risen by 30% since the Brexit referendum, to a level akin to a country experiencing “economic or political crisis”, experts have found. Analysis of data from the OECD and Eurostat shows the number leaving was 73,642 a year in 2016-18, with a 500% increase in those who then took up citizenship in an EU state. In Germany’s case 31,600 Britons have naturalised since the referendum – a 2,000% rise. The biggest jump in migration has been to Spain, followed by France.
The withdrawal agreement signed in January enshrines residency, work and social rights of EU citizens in the UK and Britons in the bloc, but failed to guarantee the free movement rights of British migrants – restricting future employment and residency prospects in other member states. Unless British nationals take out citizenship in their host country, they can no longer work in or offer a service to another EU member state, impacting professions including accounting, law, architecture, translation and health.
Emergency traffic measures to last until 'the end of October 2021' - with a giant lorry park to hold 2,000 goods vehicles
Chicks exported to the EU will die unless they can be rushed through the chaos expected at UK ports next year, the government has admitted.
A new document warns that Brexit will bring up to 10 months of disruption, with emergency traffic control measures in Kent to last until “the end of October 2021”.
It admits a 27-acre “clearance centre” being built near Ashford – which Michael Gove denied would become a giant lorry park – will, in fact, hold around 2,000 trucks.
And it raises fears for live products which lose up to 60 per cent of their value if they fail to reach EU destinations “within 1 to 2 days” – in particular day-old chicks.
“They cannot be fed in their vehicle, and delays risk dehydration and mortality,” the document, published by transport secretary Grant Shapps, states.
The document has been published as a no-deal Brexit at the end of the transition period, at the end of December, remains a real threat, as negotiations remain deadlocked on key issues.
It comes after the government advised medicine suppliers to begin stockpiling again, by building up six weeks’ worth of drugs for the end of the year.
The emergency traffic measures are needed because the controls brought in for port approach roads last year – called Operation Brock – lapsed at the end of 2019.
The UK government has announced a £355m package to cushion Northern Ireland businesses from the costs of trading with the rest of the UK because of Brexit.
Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, said on Friday £200m would be spent on a trader support service (TSS) to help firms handle new bureaucracy to move goods across the Irish Sea, turning the government into a de facto customs agent for traders.
A further £155m will be spent on digital technology to streamline processes required by the new internal border created by the Northern Irish protocol, part of the Brexit deal that aligns the region to the UK customs territory and the EU customs code.
It means all businesses sending goods to the region from Great Britain will have to make formal declarations for the first time.
First details of the new trading conditions across the Irish Sea emerged last month, with businesses obliged to complete customs, security and transit forms on all goods being transported to Northern Ireland.
Boris Johnson, the prime minister, was accused of misleading the public about the Brexit deal last November after footage emerged of him telling exporters in Northern Ireland they would not need to fill in extra paperwork. Downing Street continues to insist Northern Ireland will have unfettered access to markets in Great Britain.
A company that backed Brexit and has donated to the Conservatives is in line to save £73m as the only direct beneficiary of a post-Brexit trade reform.
Under plans that will come into force at the end of the year, the government has confirmed that companies will be able to import 260,000 tonnes of raw sugar cane from anywhere in the world, tariff-free.
The only company that currently imports raw sugar cane, however, is Tate & Lyle Sugars – one of the only large employers that publicly backed Brexit. Its name also adorned the lanyards worn by attendees of the 2017 Tory conference. The sponsorship is recorded as an £8,000 donation by the Electoral Commission.
The new tariff-free quota equates to a £72.8m saving, according to analysis by Greenpeace’s Unearthed investigations team. The quota’s introduction comes after a long and public lobbying campaign by the company. Greenpeace said Tate & Lyle had held at least 10 meetings with senior ministers over the last three years.
The reform is the latest chapter in a Brexit subplot that has split the UK’s sugar industry. Tate & Lyle’s main rival makes sugar from sugar beets produced by British farmers. “This is all to do with them wanting to be able to import cane sugar more easily than they did before and it looks like the government has granted them their wish,” said Sam Lowe, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform thinktank.
“Tate and Lyle Sugars had a legitimate issue in that the only reason that these barriers existed was because the EU was trying to protect domestic sugar producers,” Lowe added.
Boris Johnson’s promise of lucrative post-Brexit trade deals as the UK “takes back control” of its rules is on course to fail, a study warns today.
Three years have been wasted failing to agree what Britain wants from its negotiations, the Institute for Government finds – handing the advantage to countries on the other side of table.
It means the controversy over the US demand to sell its chlorinated chicken – which has stalled a deal with Washington – will be repeated, its report concludes.
The think tank criticises the “unforced error” of launching into complex trade talks before ministers have decided what they want their post-Brexit regulations to be.
“Three years ago, we warned that the government had not set up the necessary structures for effective decision making on key trade policy issues,” said Maddy Thimont Jack, a senior researcher.
“The government did not heed that warning then, but it now needs to move urgently to put them in place. Otherwise it will find itself losing control of trade and regulatory policy to better-prepared partners.”
The criticism comes as trade talks with the EU remain deadlocked because the government cannot agree its future state aid rules and needs to satisfy Brussels’ fears of undercutting.
Hopes of a deal with the US this year have been abandoned – and even a revamped deal with Japan has run into trouble, in a row over access for UK agricultural products.
Notoriously, Brexit-backing Conservatives claimed it would be easy to strike numerous lucrative deals with other countries, once the UK was free to negotiate alone.
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” Mr Johnson said before the 2016 referendum. “I think there is a huge opportunity. Do free trade deals, believe in ourselves.”
In fact, a deal with the US, even if it can be struck, would add only 0.2 per cent to GDP in the long run, the Treasury has estimated – and a continued deal with Tokyo only 0.07 per cent.
