Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

Four ferry firms have landed government contracts worth a total of £77.6m to provide post-Brexit freight capacity.

Brittany Ferries, DFDS, P&O Ferries and Stena Line will have the job of ensuring medical supplies and other vital goods continue to get to the UK.

The government says it wants a smooth flow of freight "whatever the outcome of negotiations with the EU",

The contracts will be in place for up to six months after the Brexit transition period ends on 31 December.

Freight operators have warned about potential delays to cross-Channel trade at major ports such as Dover and Folkestone from 1 January.

Court settlement
The government says it "continues to work with key local stakeholders and industry to prepare for the end of the transition period".

The additional capacity will be on quieter ferry routes between mainland Europe and UK ports in Felixstowe, Harwich, Hull, Newhaven, Poole, Portsmouth, Teesport and Tilbury.

In 2018, the government awarded contracts worth a total of £87m to ferry companies for similar contracts, which were not needed in the end because Brexit was postponed.

The then Transport Secretary Chris Grayling faced calls to quit after it emerged one of the contracts, worth £13.8m, had gone to Seaborne Freight, a company which had never run a ferry service and had no trading history. Seaborne Freight recently went bust.

No money was paid to Seaborne Freight - but the Department for Transport paid Eurotunnel £33m in an out-of-court settlement after the firm claimed it had been unfairly overlooked for the work and that the contracts had been awarded in a "secretive" way.

The government said the latest ferry contracts have been awarded from a shortlist of "experienced freight operators" entering bids.

'Unprecedented disruption'
Chris Grayling's successor, Grant Shapps, said: "As the transition period comes to an end, we are putting the necessary measures in place to safeguard the smooth and successful flow of freight.

"Securing these contracts ensures that irrespective of the outcome of the negotiations, life-saving medical supplies and other critical goods can continue to enter the UK from the moment we leave the EU."

But Best for Britain, which campaigned against Brexit, questioned the wisdom of relying on ferry operators to secure essential medical supplies.

The campaign group's chief executive Naomi Smith said: "Supply chains are already experiencing unprecedented levels of disruption due to Covid and a no-deal Brexit could create huge new logistical problems for medicine suppliers and those relying on them, particularly given how late these arrangements have been made.

"With time and money now in very short supply, the government would do well to channel its energy into securing an agreement with the EU to prevent the possibility of shortages in the new year."

Chief negotiator says little prospect yet of EU and UK entering ‘tunnel’ negotiations

Michel Barnier has mocked Boris Johnson for issuing a “third unilateral deadline” during a meeting with EU ministers, warning that the Brexit talks remain difficult with little prospect yet of the two sides entering a decisive “tunnel” negotiation.

With 48 hours remaining before an EU leaders’ summit in Brussels, by which time the British prime minister has demanded a breakthrough moment, the EU’s chief negotiator suggested a deal was “very difficult but still possible”.

He noted that Johnson had twice previously suggested that the UK needed the certainty of a deal by a specific date, only to later backtrack. “It is the third unilateral deadline that Johnson has imposed without agreement,” Barnier was said to have remarked. “We still have time.”

Johnson had said he wanted a deal before the end of summer, and then by the middle of October, before saying in recent weeks that a sign of a deal was all that was required.

The UK urgently wants to open a short “tunnel” negotiation during which the two chief negotiators would be given the freedom by Downing Street and the EU member capitals to be creative in solving outstanding problems on the basis that any outcome would be subsequently backed.

But after hearing Barnier’s assessment, diplomatic sources said this final phase did not appear to be on the cards “by far”.

“The negotiations are in a difficult phase,” Barnier had told the EU ministers in Luxembourg, according to senior diplomatic sources. There was a more “constructive tone”, Barnier said, but “movement on three key issues was still necessary”.

Discussions on the level-playing-field provisions, including state subsidy control, were continuing but the UK was seeking to keep the issue of EU access to British fishing waters “on the table to the last moment to ensure it can command the highest price for it”, he said.

Barnier told ministers it was important to put the issue of access to British waters in perspective. The UK was asking to in effect stay part of the EU’s energy single market, the economic value of which was “five times” that of fish, he said.

There was also a lack of UK engagement on how the terms of the trade and security deal would be policed, Barnier told ministers, according to sources.

He later tweeted: “The EU will continue to work for a fair deal in the coming days and weeks.”

Germany’s European affairs minister, Michael Roth, told reporters before the meeting that the EU was ready for a no-deal outcome.

“We are well prepared for both scenarios, everybody should know that,” he said. “No deal is the worst-case scenario, not just for the European Union but also for the UK, but we are prepared for that.”

As details of Barnier’s sombre assessment emerged, a UK government source hit back.

“The EU have been using the old playbook in which they thought running down the clock would work against the UK,” the source said.

“They have assumed that the UK would be more willing to compromise the longer the process ran, but in fact all these tactics have achieved is to get us to the middle of October with lots of work that could have been done left undone.

“This is all the more frustrating because it is clear that we have come a long way since the beginning of the year. We have approached the negotiations constructively and reasonably but time is now extraordinarily short. We need the EU to urgently up the pace and inject some creativity.”

Boris Johnson has told Britons to prepare for a no-deal Brexit unless the EU makes a fundamental change in its approach to the deadlocked trade and security talks.

In a televised statement, the prime minister stopped short of walking away from the talks, despite his self-imposed deadline for a deal having passed on Thursday.

Instead he said the country would have to prepare for a no-deal scenario on 1 January, while paving the way for the talks to continue next week as suggested by the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier.

Johnson said he was making the decision to prepare for no deal with “a high heart”.

“A lot of progress has been made on such issues as social security and aviation, nuclear cooperation, and so on,” he said, but “for whatever reason, it’s clear from the [EU] summit that after 45 years of [UK] membership they are not willing, unless there’s some fundamental change of approach, to offer this country the same terms as Canada”.

He said that given there were only 10 weeks left until the transition period ended, he had to make a judgment about the likely outcome and to prepare the country.

“I concluded that we should get ready for 1 January with arrangements that are more like Australia’s – based on simple principles of global free trade,” he told reporters in a pooled broadcast statement.

“So, we have high hearts, and with complete confidence we will prepare to embrace the alternative and we will prosper mightily as an independent free-trading nation, controlling our own borders, our fisheries and setting our own laws.”

Critically, Johnson left the door open for further talks scheduled for Monday in London, but tried to seize the upper hand by telling EU leaders they must make the first compromise over the key battlegrounds of state aid and fisheries.

“[There] doesn’t seem to be any progress coming from Brussels so what we’re saying to them is only, you know, come here, come to us if there’s some fundamental change of approach.”

Responding to Johnson’s statement, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European commission, tweeted that the EU “continues to work for a deal, but not at any price. As planned, our negotiation team will go to London next week to intensify these negotiations.”

Johnson’s remarks were also dismissed by keen Brexit watchers in the UK.

Georgina Wright, the Brexit lead at the Institute for Government thinktank, said: “This really isn’t news … Next week will be crucial”.

Manufacturing Northern Ireland, a trade lobby group, said moving to a no-deal Brexit was “reckless” and the public deserved better than “political games”.

So the prime minister has spoken. And as a result, we have a standoff. While Boris Johnson demanded a “fundamental change of approach” from the EU, the 27 heads of state and government, for their part, on Friday called on the UK “to make the necessary moves to make an agreement possible”.

There were, of course, the usual half-truths. For the record, the UK has been asking for significantly more than a Canada-style relationship, including visa-free travel for short business trips and mutual recognition of qualifications. The EU has been clear for some time that the UK’s size and proximity would necessitate safeguards that weren’t felt to be needed for the Canadians. And Australia has a number of agreements in place with the EU and is seeking a free-trade agreement to improve on World Trade Organization terms. So neither analogy is particularly accurate.

But let’s not get bogged down in facts. The key question is, what now? Nothing that has been said over the past 24 hours means a deal is impossible. Boris Johnson has not ended the negotiations, and Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, has been instructed to continue negotiations in the coming weeks. He is in fact due to arrive in London on Monday.

The issues remain those that have frustrated the two sides for months: the EU’s desire to ensure that the UK does not undercut its standards, the fear in Brussels that UK subsidies might give British companies an unfair advantage if allowed tariff free access in to the EU market, and, of course, fish.

What is clear is that a deal is not a matter of one side blinking first. Both will have to make concessions. The precise nature of such concessions will be a matter for the negotiators, but it is not beyond the wit of man to come up with solutions that ensure appropriate standards in the UK and prevent excessive subsidies, without the need for London to be explicitly bound by EU law and under the authority of the EU’s court. As for fish, given that we export most of what we catch and import most of what we eat, you would think common sense would suggest a way through.

And so the key question is more the perceived cost of failure than what is needed to achieve success. Certainly, the difference between a deal and a no-deal outcome is smaller now than it has been in the past. The withdrawal agreement signed last year resolves a number of the issues outstanding from UK membership, as well as the fraught question of the Irish border. And the trade deal being sought by the British government is significantly thinner than that negotiated by the previous incumbent of No 10.

Be this as it may, there are still real advantages to getting a deal. For one thing, it would limit the economic cost and the disruption once the transition period comes to an end on 31 December. For another, it would mean that relations between London and the 27 member states would remain (relatively) cordial rather than descending into mutual recriminations and finger-pointing. And, last but not least, it is surely easier politically for the prime minister to sell a deal as a triumph than it is for him to explain his failure to secure one.

All of which leads me to think that a deal is still possible, if not probable. But it is important not to view a trade deal as some kind of panacea. Even if one were signed, modelling by Thomas Sampson of the London School of Economics suggests that the negative economic impact will, over time, be larger than that of the pandemic. Whatever the outcome of the next few weeks, Brexit will continue to cast a shadow over what the prime minister has said will be a “year of recovery and renewal”.

Leaders of Anglican church say internal market bill risks being a ‘disastrous precedent’

The Anglican church has publicly challenged the government’s willingness to break international law over Brexit, with five archbishops from the UK’s four nations joining together to condemn what could be a “disastrous precedent”.

In a rare step, the archbishops of Canterbury and York, plus their counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, have written a joint letter warning that such a step would have “enormous moral, as well as political and legal, consequences”.

If the internal market bill, due to be debated by peers on Monday, became law, it would “profoundly affect” the relationship between the four nations of the United Kingdom, the archbishops said.

They added: “We believe this would create a disastrous precedent. It is particularly disturbing for all of us who feel a sense of duty and responsibility to the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement – that international treaty on which peace and stability within and between the UK and Ireland depends …”

The archbishops said that the UK government was preparing to breach the Northern Ireland protocol, which had been agreed to facilitate the UK’s departure from the EU.

The letter said: “If carefully negotiated terms are not honoured and laws can be ‘legally’ broken, on what foundations does our democracy stand?”

The letter, published in the Financial Times, came after the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, told MPs last month that the proposal would allow the government to break international law in a “limited and specific way”.

It caused a furore, with Conservative pro-Brexit peer Michael Howard demanding to know how the UK could criticise Russia, China and Iran for their conduct when it was prepared to flout international law.

The letter is signed by Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury; Stephen Cottrell, archbishop of York; Mark Strange, primus of the Scottish Episcopal church; John Davies, archbishop of Wales; and John McDowell, archbishop of Armagh.

They were “taking the rare step of writing together because the decisions implemented in this bill will profoundly affect the future of our countries and the relationships between them”, their letter said.

It would result in an “entirely novel system, replacing one that evolved slowly and by careful negotiation over decades”.

The archbishops urged legislators “to consider this bill in the light of values and principles we would wish to characterise relationships across these islands long after the transition period”.

Responding to the archbishops’ move, Steve Baker, a former Brexit minister, told the Mail he was “extremely disappointed that the archbishops are sowing disunity and division at a time when they could instead build up much-needed harmony in our nation”.

Another former Brexit minister, David Jones, said their comments went “way beyond the remit of the church. It is a straightforward question of constitutional propriety. Once again, the archbishops seem to have swallowed every scrap of remain propaganda unquestioningly and are now regurgitating it.”

Welby voted remain in the 2016 referendum but urged the result of the poll to be respected. Cottrell, who was enthroned as archbishop of York on Sunday, said in the lead-up to the referendum that “a vision for Europe and the world which emphasises our belonging to and our responsibility for each other” was needed.

Boris Johnson has told the Greek prime minister there will be no more Brexit trade talks with Brussels unless the bloc fundamentally changes its stance on the discussions – again claiming the EU “have effectively ended those negotiations”.

It comes as EU negotiator Michel Barnier held another phone call with his counterpart David Frost, telling the No 10 official: “We should be making the most out of the little time left. Our door remains open.”

It comes as Tory MP Steve Baker suggested the PM should consider disestablishing the Church of England if bishops continue to intervene in the Brexit debate. Meanwhile, senior Tories have reportedly been “war gaming” to prevent a second Scottish independence referendum.

Peers opposing the Brexit bill that the government admitted will break international law have inflicted the heaviest defeat for more than 20 years.

A motion warning the legislation “would undermine the rule of law and damage the reputation of the United Kingdom” was passed by 395 votes to 169 – a majority of 226.

A total of 39 Conservative peers rebelled against Boris Johnson, including Lord Keen of Elie, the former advocate general for Scotland, who resigned over the Internal Market Bill last month.

Lord Judge, a former lord chief justice, who proposed the regret amendment, said: "The fact of the matter is the law would be broken.

“There can be no getting away from it. You don't have to be a lawyer to understand the reputational damage to the United Kingdom.

“We cannot resile from the fact that we are breaking the law if this bill is enacted.”

The Constitution Unit, a research centre, said the defeat was the biggest government defeat in the House of Lords since reform in 1999.

The defeat, on a ‘regret’ motion, is essentially symbolic and does not, by itself, overturn any of the provisions in the legislation.

However, it signals to the government that there is almost no chance of it getting through its remaining stages in the Lords without significant changes.

Former terror law reviewer Lord Anderson warns of serious impact on fight against cross-border crime

Police in the UK “will be increasingly unable to cope” in the event of a no-deal Brexit because existing data-sharing agreements with the EU will be cut, a former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation has said.

David Anderson is one of a number of senior figures increasingly concerned that failure to strike a Brexit deal could have a serious impact on Britain’s ability to fight cross-border crime, as UK-EU talks remained stalled for their fifth successive day on Tuesday.

“Without the ability to exchange data and intelligence across frontiers, law enforcement will be increasingly unable to cope,” the crossbench peer said. “Everything from extradition to notification of alerts, crime scene matches and criminal record searches will be much slower, at best.”

Anderson’s warning comes a day after the former prime minister Theresa May openly mocked the Cabinet Office minister, Michael Gove, in the Commons after he claimed border security could be better in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

The growing standoff in negotiations between London and Brussels has raised the prospect that no agreement will be reached on security and law enforcement cooperation because it is bound up with the overall deal.

Without a deal, the UK would lose real-time access to EU databases of criminal records, arrest warrants and passenger information, dramatically slowing investigations, Anderson said.

Currently police in the UK can obtain fingerprints and DNA information from their EU counterparts in 15 minutes using the Prüm system. Prior to its introduction, the Met police said “it used to take four months” to receive the same information.

Border officials at Dover and elsewhere have real-time access to systems that allow officials to immediately arrest someone wanted in an EU country. Experts have said it is not clear what would replace this.

Peter Ricketts, a former national security adviser, told the Guardian: “Police would be trying to solve crime in a fast-moving world with one hand tied behind their backs.” Falling back on pre-EU agreements was not viable in a world where population movements had rapidly increased, the crossbench peer said.

British police checks via the European Criminal Records Information System are instantaneous. Similar checks via alternative systems would take, on average, 66 days, according to evidence given by the Met to a Lords committee earlier this year.

Anderson called on both the UK and the EU “to mitigate the damage as far as possible, and that means putting operational concerns ahead of ideology”. He said he hoped that at some point “mutual self-interest” would kick in and a security agreement would at least be reached.

Labour also called on both sides to strike a security deal, arguing that cooperation with the EU was needed to combat terrorism, human trafficking and the drugs trade. “The government’s negotiations must provide certainty to UK policing and the security services,” said Conor McGinn, the shadow security minister.

Earlier on Tuesday, Michel Barnier accused Downing Street of wasting precious time after a 30-minute afternoon phone call with David Frost, the UK’s chief negotiator.

Barnier hinted at the frustration in Brussels over the continued suspension of talks. “My message: we should be making the most out of the little time left,” the EU’s chief negotiator tweeted. “Our door remains open.”

Clément Beaune, France’s European affairs minister, told the country’s National Assembly that there would be “no new approach” from the EU. He said: “It is up to them to tell us now, beyond tactics, if they want to continue negotiating. We are ready for it.”

Boris Johnson has insisted since Friday, when the government declared the talks in effect to be over, that the EU must show willingness to move on its negotiating positions before he would be willing to re-engage with Brussels negotiators.

Downing Street said Tuesday’s call with Barnier had still not met the government’s threshold of there being a “fundamental change” in the EU’s approach to talks. A spokesman said: “Lord Frost and Michel Barnier had a constructive discussion. The situation remained as yesterday, and they will remain in contact.”

Senior EU diplomats in Brussels remain confident, however, that the impasse will be broken within days, given the EU’s evident willingness to meet Downing Street’s calls for a more flexible approach. EU leaders held a two-hour debate last Friday at the end of a summit, during which leeway was found within the bloc’s red lines.

The House of Lords also voted by 395 to 169 to express its disapproval of the controversial internal market bill permitting the government to breach international law by overwriting parts of the Brexit withdrawal agreement.

The rebel majority was 226 and a total of 39 Conservatives voted against the government.

Further votes are scheduled in the coming weeks as the Lords consider the legislation in detail but it highlights the slim hope Downing Street has of getting the bill through parliament with the contentious clauses intact.

Ivan Rogers, former UK ambassador to the EU, says prime minister will think ‘history was going his way’ if Donald Trump is re-elected

Senior figures in European governments believe Boris Johnson is waiting for the result of the US presidential election before finally deciding whether to risk plunging the UK into a no-deal Brexit, according to a former British ambassador to the EU.
[...]
Rogers said: “Several very senior sources in capitals have told me they believe Johnson will await clarity on the presidential election result before finally deciding whether to jump to ‘no deal’ with the EU, or to conclude that this is just too risky with Biden heading for the White House, and hence live with some highly suboptimal (for Johnson) skinny free-trade agreement.”

The former ambassador to the EU – who quit under Theresa May’s premiership because of disagreements over Brexit strategy – remains in regular contact with senior government figures in EU capitals. Rogers said that if Trump won he and others in Europe believed Johnson would think “history was going his way” with his rightwing ally still in the White House. The prime minister would therefore be more likely to conclude he could strike a quick and substantial post-Brexit US-UK trade deal than if Biden emerged as president after the 3 November poll. By contrast, a Biden administration would prioritise rebuilding relations with the EU that have been damaged by Trump.

Rogers joined other former UK diplomats last night in warning that a Democratic administration under Biden would prove hugely problematic for Johnson and the UK government, threatening the so-called special relationship. “I don’t think either Biden or his core team are anti-British, but I think they are unimpressed by both Johnson and his top team,” he said.

“They believe him to have been an early and vigorous supporter of Trump, and that Brexiteer thinking – which they think has damaged the unity of the west – has many parallels with Trumpism. So I really doubt there will be much warmth in the personal relationship. And Biden’s would simply not be an administration which viewed European integration as a negative.

“The UK’s absence from the EU will make it clearly less influential because it can no longer lead European thinking on the geo-strategic issues which will matter hugely to Biden. So [Biden] will put Berlin and Paris – and indeed Brussels – back at the heart of US thinking: not uncritically, because the US will still have serious issues with EU approaches on economic and security issues..”

Kim Darroch, a former UK ambassador in Washington, who quit the post in 2019 after the leaking of diplomatic cables in which he criticised the Trump administration as “inept”, said Biden might even favour a US-EU trade deal over one with the UK.

The chief negotiators for the UK and EU will continue post-Brexit trade talks in London until Wednesday, says No 10.

Michel Barnier arrived in the UK on Thursday to restart negotiations with Lord David Frost after they stalled last week - but he was due to return home on Sunday.

EU sources told the BBC more talks are also planned in Brussels from Thursday.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said the extended talks were "a very good sign" a deal can be done.

But he told the BBC's Andrew Marr: "We have got to make sure it is a deal that works, not just for our partners in Europe... but one that works for the United Kingdom."
[...]
On his arrival, Mr Barnier told reporters "every day counts" and the two sides shared a "huge common responsibility" in the talks.

The discussions had been expected to wrap up later on Sunday with the possibility of consequent conversations, but EU sources have told the BBC they will now continue in London for three more days, before moving to Brussels.

Mr Lewis said he was "always an optimist" around reaching a free trade agreement and he believed there was "a good chance we can get a deal".

But he told Andrew Marr: "The EU need to understand it is for them to move as well, so that we can get a deal that works for the UK as well - a proper free trade agreement that recognises us as the UK being a sovereign nation."

In line with a demand made by the UK, the talks resumed on all subjects based on proposed legal texts prepared by officials.

They also said that "nothing is agreed" until progress has been reached in all areas - which has been a key demand of the EU.