Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

The EU will urge the US to allow the export of millions of doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to Europe, it has emerged.
The European Union also wants Washington to allow the free flow of vaccine ingredients for production, according to the Financial Times.

This came after the commission and Italy blocked the shipment of AstraZeneca jabs to Australia as it tried to boost its vaccine rollout which has been behind that of nations like the UK.

Construction only just started at the key livestock port of Portsmouth, while the facility at Dover is just ‘a muddy field

A string of British ports are urging the government to delay the next wave of Brexit red tape, saying that border checkposts will not be ready for the July deadline, while inland customs facilities being built are also behind schedule.

With the Brexit minister, Lord Frost, reportedly considering reviewing plans for full customs checks on all imported goods, pressure is building on ministers to push back their deadlines, and set out measures for scaling back controls.

Exports into the EU from the UK have been subject to controls since 1 January, but the British government decided to delay import controls until the summer to give traders time to prepare. From 1 July, however, ministers expect checks to take place at more than 30 designated border control posts (BCPs), where goods, plants and animals entering from the EU by sea, rail or air can be inspected.

“It’s obvious not all of the facilities are going to be ready; how much of it will be is still up for debate,” said Richard Ballantyne, chief executive of the trade body British Ports Association (BPA). “Our frustration with government is they are not willing to share what the plan B is.”

With less than four months to go, construction has only just begun at ports including Portsmouth, Purfleet on Thames in Essex, and Killingholme on the Humber.

The National Farmers Union (NFU) is warning that livestock trades could grind to a halt, because no Channel port is planning facilities to check incoming farm animals.

And the location of some inland border checkpoints – such as Holyhead on Anglesey and in south-west Wales to serve the ports of Fishguard and Pembroke – has not even been announced yet, while the Kent site named White Cliffs, where goods arriving at Dover will be inspected, is described as a “muddy field”.

Next to Portsmouth’s container docks, works on the control post are underway, but it is far from ready. The 4,500 metre square site still resembles a car park, and is half-covered in paving stones. A digger is preparing the ground before the building’s foundations can be laid.

The port’s owner, Portsmouth city council, says its contractors expect the facility to be constructed by mid-August, when it will have to be certified by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), as well as the animal and plant health agency, a process which could take several more weeks.

Port operators say the delay is partly the result of complications with the government’s funding process for these multimillion-pound infrastructure projects.

A £200m taxpayer funded Port Infrastructure Fund was oversubscribed, leading the government to impose a 34% haircut on the grants provided to Portsmouth and 40 other successful applicants.

Portsmouth applied for £32m in funding, but only received £17.1m, leaving the publicly owned port with a significant shortfall, meaning it has had to scrap plans for a live animal inspection post.

The port, which contributes £8m a year to the UK economy, is a main point of entry into the UK for racehorses, and in total, 60,000 breeding animals, including pigs, sheep and cattle, enter and exit the UK through Portsmouth each year.

With other Channel ports unwilling to invest in the facilities, the NFU is warning that the livestock breeding business could grind to a halt.

“If we hadn’t had our funding cut, we would have been able to accelerate the project and I am pretty confident we would have achieved it,” said the director of Portsmouth International Port, Mike Sellers.

Border control posts might resemble industrial units or distribution warehouses from the outside, but the interior must be biosecure, so that inspection of live animals, meat and plants can take place without risk of contamination, with vets on hand to carry out the controls. They must also provide space for HGVs to park, all of which makes them costly and complex to construct.

In places where there isn’t space for a checkpoint next to the terminal, such as Dover and Holyhead, the government has taken on responsibility for building 10 inland border facilities, or is working jointly with devolved administrations in Wales and Scotland.

Several of these facilities are far from finished and unlikely to be ready for July, and ports have written to ministers to warn them. The Guardian understands that government departments including the Cabinet Office, Department for Transport and Defra have been warned of delays.
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Not everyone is behind. Southampton, Plymouth, Hull and Immingham, operated by the company Associated British Ports (ABP), are all expected to be ready on time.

Given delays elsewhere, the government has several options of how to proceed,: for example, checks on goods currently take place at their destination, and this could continue. But this is not considered a permanent solution, as it could leave the UK border open to fraud and smuggling.
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Not everyone is behind. Southampton, Plymouth, Hull and Immingham, operated by the company Associated British Ports (ABP), are all expected to be ready on time.
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“The context for this discussion is to ensure that supermarket shelves remain stocked, and that the fresh food on which the UK relies continues to reach those shelves,” said Tim Reardon, head of EU exit at Port of Dover. “Infrastructure doesn’t flex, therefore the process must.”

‘We never sulk’: Brussels shrugs off Frost claim of ill-will in Brexit row

Boris Johnson today claimed he was “optimistic” about a satisfactory settlement of the UK’s latest row with the EU over trade with Northern Ireland, insisting that critics who have accused him of burning up trust and goodwill with Brussels would be “pleasantly surprised” by the outcome.

The EU is threatening legal action after London said for the second time that it was prepared unilaterally to tear up the terms of the Northern Ireland Protocol negotiated as part of Mr Johnson’s Brexit deal, which created a customs border in the Irish Sea.

But speaking at a 10 Downing Street press conference, Mr Johnson insisted that “goodwill and imagination” were all that was needed to iron out what he claimed were “teething problems”.

Brexit minister Lord Frost has insisted that the UK’s plan to delay until October checks on supermarket goods and parcels entering Northern Ireland is “lawful”, despite an agreement reached with the EU that initial “grace periods” should expire in April and July.

He used a newspaper article at the weekend to accuse Brussels of being driven by “ill-will” towards the UK.

European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer shrugged off Lord Frost’s accusations, telling a Brussels press conference: “We never sulk. We don’t have moods. We are an institution, so we try to work on a day-to-day basis with a very, very even temper.”

And Mr Johnson’s government was itself accused by Theresa May’s former chief of staff Gavin Barwell of “dishonesty” in its approach to the protocol.

And the former civil service head of the Department for Exiting the EU said the Johnson administration was “burning” trust and goodwill with Brussels by “playing games around Brexit” for domestic political reasons.

Philip Rycroft told BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour: “It is deeply worrying and frankly deeply depressing that with the ink barely dry on the protocol and on the Trade and Co-operation Agreement, we’re already running into these sorts of problems. Brexit, far from being done, is going to be with us for a long time to come.”

Mr Rycroft said that problems in Northern Ireland were caused in part by the government misleading local traders about the likely impact of Mr Johnson’s deal, which requires time-consuming checks on goods moving from mainland Britain to Northern Ireland.

“There are undoubtedly issues about the protocol,” he said.

“Traders simply aren’t ready to do the things that are required on the protocol, not leastbecause the government spent the best part of last year saying to them they wouldn’t have to do anything, despite knowing full well that all of these checks would have to come in.

“Extending those grace periods is not an unreasonable thing to ask for, butthe way that David Frost has gone about this, to tell the Commission he was unilaterally extending without doing his opposite number in the Commission the courtesy of picking up the phone, suggests that they’re still playing games around Brexit.

“It’s all about the politically attractive ploy of playing hardball with the EU, rather than accepting their responsibilities for the deal that he and the prime minister negotiated.” Mr Rycroft said: “This is a complicated deal, the Northern Ireland Protocol, it’s the least worst option, it’s there to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.

“It is so important to the peace process in Northern Ireland that this protocol is able to work and that’s going to require a huge amount of goodwill and trust on both sides, I’m afraid that trust is being burnt at the moment.”

But asked about the protocol at a 10 Downing Street press conference, Mr Johnson insisted that he still believed he had secured “a great deal”.

“Insofar as there have been teething problems - and there’s no question that there have been - we’re fixing those now with some temporary technical things that we’re doing to smooth flow, which I think are very, very sensible,” said the PM.

“I’m sure that they can all be ironed out, sorted out - insofar as the EU objects to that - with goodwill and with imagination and that’s what we intend to bring to it and I’m sure that our friends will as well.”

Lord Barwell said that Lord Frost was “adding insult to injury” for the people of Northern Ireland by refusing to acknowledge the barriers to trade that are the consequence of the Brexit deal which he negotiated, which “explicitly created barriers when goods move from GB to NI”.

The former 10 Downing Street chief of staff said it was “dishonest” to pretend that Brexit bureaucracy was not having a harmful impact on trade.

“The deal which David Frost negotiated does not keep ‘open and free trade’ between the UK and EU - it introduces significant barriers to trade,” said Lord Barwell.

“Dismissing the difficulties he has caused for many businesses as ‘the details of customs and form-filling’ adds insult to injury

“His argument that setting your own laws in every area of national life is ‘vital to economic success’ will come as news to countries like Ireland that have grown strongly whilst members of the EU and music to the ears of the SNP.

“No-one is suggesting that bureaucracy prevents trade altogether, but introducing it clearly has a cost and it’s dishonest to pretend otherwise. If you think other benefits outweigh those costs make that case, but don’t pretend trade with the EU is as free today as it was in 2020.

“Why do you expect open and free trade within the UK? Our government signed a treaty that explicitly created barriers when goods move from GB to NI.”

Dominic Raab has summoned the EU’s UK representative amid government fury over claims by the president of the European council that the UK has banned exports of vaccines, which the government says are entirely false.

In a row that threatened to reopen the rift between the UK and EU over vaccine policy, the foreign secretary wrote to Charles Michel expressing considerable concern at the statement he released on Tuesday and accused him of publishing false information.

Anger in Whitehall has been building for a number of days about the portrayal of the UK’s export policy in Brussels by senior EU politicians, not just Michel, as well as worry that the claim is widely circulating in European media.

A government source said the claim had been repeated at various levels within the EU and the commission and the UK had repeatedly privately corrected the record on every occasion – but intimated that Raab now needed to “draw a line in the sand”.

A representative of the EU’s delegation to the UK has since been summoned to a meeting at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

Michel made the claim in a fierce defence of the EU’s vaccine policy published on Tuesday in his newsletter. He said the EU should not have been accused of hoarding vaccines via its export controls and said the UK had stronger prohibitions on exports.

The Northern Ireland Secretary has failed to explain the legal basis for shelving post-Brexit Irish Sea checks, as a furious EU prepares to launch its court action.

Brandon Lewis was challenged to set out under which part of the Northern Ireland Protocol the incendiary unilateral action falls – amid claims it will breach international law.

“Is it Article 16, which allows the UK to unilaterally take appropriate safeguard measures? And, if not, which other article is he citing?” Labour’s Hilary Benn asked.

But – despite repeatedly insisting the government is acting “lawfully” – Mr Lewis was unable to point to any part of the Protocol that allows it.

In the Commons, he repeated his warning that Northern Ireland was faced with “empty shelves, potentially, in just a couple of weeks’ time”, if the action had not been taken last week.

And he lashed out at Labour for “defending the EU rather than defending the actions of the UK government, which is standing up for the people of Northern Ireland”.

Mr Lewis insisted London is keen to get back round the table with the EU, to reach agreement on extending ‘grace periods’ before the checks are introduced.


However, the failure to set out the basis for unilaterally delaying the checks is likely to be seized upon, as Brussels prepares to take its legal action.

That is likely to include a formal “infringement proceeding” that could end up at the European Court of justice, as well as triggering the dispute mechanism in the Brexit withdrawal agreement.

EU27 ambassadors are said to be in full agreement that the EU “had to act firmly” and action could begin as early this week.

Boris Johnson confirmed in his ‘correction’ of European council president over outright ban claim
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The EU’s ambassador João Vale de Almeida was summoned to the Foreign Office but he was in Brussels. Instead, the EU’s charge d’affaires in London, Nicole Mannion, the Irish deputy head of the Brussels delegation to the UK, was received on Wednesday morning by Sir Philip Barton, the permanent under-secretary of the Foreign Office. Barton is understood to have conveyed the government’s irritation about the claims.
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Germany’s ambassador to Britain, Andreas Michaelis, called for an end to the sparring between the EU and UK. Michaelis, a former head of Germany’s diplomatic service, said the relationship had to improve in the wake of disputes over vaccines and the Brexit withdrawal agreement. “It should not continue like this,” he tweeted. “We have important things to do. Jointly!”

Introduction postponed until 2022 because border post infrastructure will not be ready in time

The UK government has been forced to delay the introduction of import checks by six months, in a U-turn in post-Brexit policy, because a network of 30 border posts being built to process incoming goods would not have been ready on time.

Exports to the EU from Britain have been subject to controls since 1 January, but the government decided to opt for a phased approach on EU imports to give hauliers and business more time to adapt.

Checks were due to be introduced in stages from 1 April and from 1 July, but in recent days traders and ports have said they are not ready and that the introduction of processes as originally planned could lead to empty supermarket shelves.

Michael Gove, the minister for the Cabinet Office, told the House of Commons on Thursday that the government had responded to businesses’ requests for more time and announced what he called a “revised timetable”.

Gove blamed the need for delays on the pandemic, telling MPs the previous timetable was “based on the impacts of the first wave of Covid” but that the government had reviewed deadlines because the disruption had been wider and longer-lasting than expected.

Most import checks have now been pushed back to 1 January 2022, meaning Britain will begin these processes a year later than the EU.
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There have also been severe teething problems in the implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol and new trading rules with the EU.

The EU is preparing to launch legal action within days after the government last week announced it was unilaterally extending a series of “grace periods” to allow businesses in Northern Ireland more time to adapt to post-Brexit rules.

Speaking to journalists on Thursday, the EU’s ambassador to the UK, João Vale de Almeida, said both sides should “give up on trying to score points” and work to rebuild trust.

It is understood Vale de Almeida has not yet met David Frost, the cabinet minister in charge of UK relations with the EU and the former trade negotiator. EU sources are understood to feel alarm at rumours circulating that the UK government has motive to make the Northern Ireland protocol inoperable in order to force a renegotiation – a situation tha Brussels would face down in the strongest possible terms.

In the first month since Brexit on terms agreed by Boris Johnson’s government, official trade figures showed exports of goods to the EU plunged by 40.7%, or £5.6bn, in the biggest monthly fall in UK imports and exports to the bloc in more than 20 years.

The slump in trade with the EU, excluding gold and other precious metals, is a reflection of disruption at UK borders.

January saw the biggest monthly fall in imports and exports since Office for National Statistics records on trade began in 1997.

The headline figures seem to say it all. In January – the first month after the end of the post-Brexit transition – UK exports to the rest of Europe collapsed by 40 per cent, according to the latest official trade figures from the Office for National Statistics.

By contrast exports to non-EU countries rose slightly in the month.

This seems to be clear evidence that Brexit is having the negative impact on UK exporters to the EU that businesses and economists warned about so loudly.
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One solitary and volatile month of trade figures, in itself, does not prove or disprove anything.

But these latest figures are certainly consistent with the predictions of trade economists that Brexit will, over the years, result in considerably less trade with our European neighbours than otherwise would have taken place –and that this trade destruction will act as a drag on the UK’s long-term growth prospects.

Emily Thornberry has accused the government of failing to carry out an economic impact assessment of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, after two key government departments told the shadow international trade secretary they had no such document.

As official figures showed a 40.7% decline in exports to the EU in January, Thornberry wrote to the international trade secretary, Liz Truss, to ask why she had published assessments of many much less significant deals, but not the crucial Christmas Eve trade agreement with the EU.

When Thornberry challenged Truss in the House of Commons to produce economic analysis of the deal in January, the minister referred her to the EU taskforce in the Cabinet Office, which spearheaded the fraught negotiations.

But when Thornberry made a freedom of information request to the Cabinet Office, she was referred to the Treasury, which replied that it “does not hold a specific document meeting the terms of your request”.

Johnson’s spokesman had previously said the government would not be publishing its analysis of the economic impacts of the deal, but Thornberry has now written to Truss to ask whether the government failed to carry out an analysis at all.

“It appears not that the government is refusing to publish the economic impact assessment it has conducted in relation to the UK-EU deal, but that no economic impact assessment was ever produced,” she said, in a letter seen by the Guardian.

“For an agreement of such immense importance for our country’s economy, business, jobs and trade, that is utterly staggering. And when we compare it to the approach taken to the assessment of every other UK trade deal signed over the last two years, it makes no sense whatsoever.”

She gave the example of the department’s recent publication of analysis of the deal struck with Albania, a country with which trade was worth £45m in 2019. Trade with the EU is worth 15,000 times as much.

Boris Johnson has said the Northern Ireland protocol is not working as he had expected and needs to be "corrected".

The prime minister said he did not think arrangements he agreed with the EU would involve restrictions on the movements of food products such as sausages, on parcel deliveries and on soil from Great Britain entering Northern Ireland.

Asked about legal challenges against the protocol on a visit to the region, Mr Johnson said he would like to work with the European Union to "iron out" any issues before deferring to the courts for a decision.

Asked about several legal challenges against the protocol, he said: “Before we get to other people’s legal actions against the protocol, what we want to see is to work with our friends in Dublin, in Brussels, to make sure that we iron this thing out, because at the moment it feels to me like it’s not operating in the way that it’s intended to do,” he said.

“It’s there to protect the EU single market but also the UK single market and the Good Friday Agreement, and all we’re looking for is some balance and some common sense.

“There are more immediate ways of addressing the issues with the protocol and more practical and commonsensical ways than doing it through the courts.”

Simon Coveney suggests UK, US, Canada and EU should pursue joint deal

Ireland’s foreign minister has accused the UK of “perverse nationalism” and “narrow-minded thinking” in attempting to race ahead of the EU to reach a trade deal with Washington alone.

Calling for a more collaborative effort, Simon Coveney said that rather than “competing for attention” in Joe Biden’s administration, Britain, the EU, the US and Canada should work together to come to a joint agreement.

In an interview with The Times, however, he also reiterated concerns about trust in the UK as a negotiating partner being weakened after the unilateral decision to extend the so-called “grace period” in the Northern Ireland Protocol.

But addressing the prospect of a US trade deal — something desired by Brexiteers who argued for an independent trading policy — Mr Coveney claimed there was “enough division and competition globally rather than creating more locally”.

“Rather than the EU and UK competing for attention in Washington, looking to be the first to do a trade deal, it makes sense for UK, EU and US and Canada to do one together,” he said.

“The idea that Britain can get their first is narrow-minded thinking, frankly. It’s a perverse nationalism when actually Britain and the EU should work together as partners.”

When pressed on his remark in a separate interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Coveney appeared to soften his language, saying: “I was asked a question about a transatlantic trade deal and I said I don’t think it makes any sense for some in the UK to see this as a race to see who can get a trade deal with the US first.


He added: “We should be looking at a transatlantic trade deal that involves the EU, the UK, the US and Canada and others if they want to be involved.

“We all run economies that are based on very similar rules and structures and in my view a transatlantic relationship involving Britain should be a powerful one economically and globally.”

His call for a joint trade deal is unlikely to be accepted by No 10, as Mr Johnson has often touted a transatlantic trade agreement between the UK and the US as a benefit of leaving the bloc and has previously said it will “reflect the unique closeness of our two great nations”.

Speaking after a damaging row between the EU and the UK over the Northern Ireland Protocol, Mr Coveney also told The Times: “It has reinforced an awful lot of the doubts in Brussels about whether or not this really is a British government we can rely on to be a trusted partner when it comes to implementing what has already been agreed.”

Earlier this week, Brussels indicated it was ready to initiate legal action against the UK government over the decision to unilaterally extend the grace period for fully implementing the Northern Ireland Protocol of the Brexit agreement.

The grace period – a temporary relaxation of checks for supermarkets and suppliers – was put in place to allow firms time to adapt to new trade barriers across the Irish Sea and was due to expire at the end of March.
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In a separate interview, the cabinet minister Brandon Lewis admitted a tweet posted by the government’s Northern Ireland Office claiming there “will be no border” in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Northern Ireland after Brexit had not stood the test of time.

He told the News letter newspaper: “That tweet has not stood the test of time very well and you’ve got to try to learn from those experience; you’ve got to fall down a bit to know how to get back up... I’ll make sure that I’m bearing those issues in mind when I tweet in the future.”

Joe Biden will discuss Northern Ireland with the Irish Taoiseach, Micheal Martin, when they meet next week on St Patrick’s Day, the White House has announced.

Next Wednesday’s virtual meeting will cover support for political and economic stability in the region after Brexit, among other bilateral issues as the leaders “reaffirm” the historical partnership between the two nations.

Earlier, Ireland’s foreign minister Simon Coveney said the UK government deliberately undermined trust with the EU by moving to unilaterally extend the post-Brexit grace period.

The timetable for the major new controls that have already been imposed and those that have been delayed

The UK government has made eight major U-turns on its adopted timetable for customs controls on trade with the EU.

In early March, ministers prompted a row with Brussels after unilaterally delaying two sets of controls on goods entering Northern Ireland from Britain. On Thursday, after warnings that controls on imports from the EU could lead to empty supermarket shelves in July, the government delayed a further six measures, a tally by the Guardian shows. Ministers set back to January 2022 the opening of a network of more than 30 customs posts, which had been scheduled for 1 July.

Deadlines for controls on incoming animals, plants and certain food products were also pushed back to 2022.

The decision to delay imposing yet more Brexit red tape on businesses already hamstrung by EU customs checks came a day before official figures on Friday revealed that exports from Britain to the EU crashed by 40% in January, highlighting the impact of leaving the single market, coupled with the pandemic.

Ahead of Britain’s departure from the EU, the British government adopted a phased approach to the movement of goods, services and people between the two jurisdictions. While the EU has stuck to its timeline for controls, which largely came into force on 1 January, the UK has pushed back the deadlines that it had set for itself. Other deadlines for financial services, data and citizenship remain in place – for now.

Here is a timetable of the controls that have already been imposed, and those that are upcoming.