Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

Boris Johnson compares Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion to the UK's vote for Brexit.

The year-long celebration of creativity, commissioned by Theresa May, is not what anyone expected. Will the public take it to their hearts?
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Unboxed is a series of 10 art, science and technology projects with ambitious (if at times amorphous) aims such as sending music to the moon and back, transporting a North Sea oil rig to the beach at Weston-super-Mare and turning it into a multimedia centre, and asking people in Wales to imagine what life might be like in 2052. These are all no doubt admirable, inclusive and challenging, but it is fair to say that they are somewhat removed from the Festival of Britain-type idea that Theresa May announced at the Conservative party conference in 2018 and which Brexit backers imagined would involve flag-waving, bangers and mash, and replays of speeches by Churchill. You would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at the way their assumptions have been upended.

The original notion was that the festival, the Queen’s platinum jubilee and this summer’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham would come together in a glorious reforging of a newly confident nation. Some hope – with war in Ukraine, Covid still rampant, inflation rising and Brexit divisions far from healed. Julian Knight, the Conservative chair of the DCMS committee, complains that the three-pronged opportunity has been missed: “There is no golden thread linking them all together.” But a country’s elite cannot impose a national narrative. Politicians like to latch on to the sort of unifying “national traditions” that Eric Hobsbawm and others have exposed as bogus, and invest in grand projects such as the Millennium Dome. Such top-down impositions are doomed. TS Eliot hinted at that with his own banal list of what signifies a culture: “a cup final, the dog races, the pin table, the dart board, wensleydale cheese, boiled cabbage cut into sections, beetroot in vinegar, 19th-century Gothic churches, the music of Elgar”.

The Festival of Britain in 1951 worked because it was a day out, an antidote to austerity. It captured a moment, but it didn’t encapsulate a culture. Danny Boyle had a good go at telling our “national story” in his widely admired Olympic opening ceremony in 2012 (symbol of a happier age), but even his pastoral-radical retelling was partial. What about the English civil war, the relationship with Ireland, empire, slavery, and postwar decline? Identity is a contested mess that doesn’t lend itself to being contained; it has to be suggestive, tangled, unresolved.

Unboxed contends with enduring suspicion about its origins on one side, and scepticism about its results on the other. Its programme suggests it will be admirably true to itself – and almost universally disliked or ignored by those who long for simple stories, linear narratives, easy resolutions. It will stand or fall on whether it can engage and enthuse the wider public.

The UK appears set to criminalise illicit refugee crossings and could ship asylum seekers for processing in other countries after ministers easily saw off a potential rebellion in the Commons over the controversial borders and nationality bill.

Despite a number of Conservative backbenchers expressing concerns about aspects of the bill, the government convincingly won a string of votes to restore elements changed in the House of Lords, including the idea of Australian-style third country processing.
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In all, seven Lords amendments were put to the vote, with other areas including family reunions and targeting illicit entry to the UK, and all were overturned by significant majorities, the lowest being 59.

The bill will now be reconsidered by the Lords, possibly at the end of this month.

"Only today we have 150 Ukrainian children who were killed by Russian soldiers and Russian artillery," he said when asked about Prime Minister Johnson's comments.

"Can I ask you how many houses were destroyed because of Brexit? We have whole cities that have been completely destroyed," he said, adding: "With this situation, please, no comparison."

Non-Irish EU citizens will need US-style waiver to cross border

Dublin has issued a protest at the UK government’s insistence on imposing controls on non-Irish EU citizens crossing the border into Northern Ireland.

Conservatives last night voted to reinstate for a US-style visa waiver requiring EU citizens who are not Irish to apply online for pre-travel clearance –known as Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) –before entering the UK at the Irish border.

Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney denounced the decision as “regrettable” and said that Dublin’s concerns over disruption to free movement on the island of Ireland had been “ignored” by London.

But Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis insisted that it would not result in the imposition of controls on the border with the Republic.

And he said the UK’s commitment to the common travel area permitting free movement between the two countries remains “absolute”.

The row is the latest spat between London and Dublin over the fallout from Brexit, and comes against the backdrop of continuing divisions over Boris Johnson’s Northern Ireland Protocol which has disrupted trade on the island.

MPs voted by a majority of 298 to 216 on Tuesday to overturn an amendment introduced in the House of Lords, which would have exempted Northern Ireland from the ETA legislation.

The human rights group the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) condemned the move, which it said was “unworkable and risks a hard border for many non-British and non-Irish citizens in Border communities who have been able to freely cross the Border to date”.

And Mr Coveney said: “This decision is regrettable and contrary to the approach that UK and Irish governments have supported for many years to protect free movement on the island of Ireland for everyone.

“Our concern on this has been communicated clearly but has been ignored.”

Mr Lewis responded in a tweet: “There will be no controls on the border. UK and Irish citizens will continue to be able to travel freely.

“This new ETA requirement is about protecting the Common Travel Area from abuse. Our commitment to the Common Travel Area is absolute, as seen throughout the pandemic.”

Putin was a huge supporter of Brexit.

Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union has affected the level of overseas trade, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has acknowledged.

Giving evidence to the Commons Treasury Committee on last week’s Spring Statement, Mr Sunak said it was “inevitable” that UK trade with the EU would fall as a result of Brexit.

At the same time, he said that it was too early for the benefits of trade deals the UK had struck with other countries to kick in.

Mr Sunak was challenged by the committee chairman, Tory MP Mel Stride, about new figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility, showing that while other countries’ “trade intensity” had come back “quite strongly” since Brexit and the pandemic, the UK’s had not.

“Doesn’t that tell you that the main distinction between ourselves and them is that we went through Brexit and they didn’t?” Mr Stride said.

Mr Sunak said it was too soon to disentangle the effects of the pandemic and of Brexit, but acknowledged that leaving the EU had had an impact.

“We are still trying to work through what all the impacts are,” he said.

“It was always inevitable that there would be a change in our trade intensity with Europe as a result of the change in the trade relationship.

“Without doubt we are changing our trading relationship with the EU and that means a different set of controls and things people will have to do and that will obviously have an impact.

“That is, I am sure, a big part of the reason why this is happening. I think it is maybe a bit early to be definitive about which bits are doing what.”

Mr Sunak, however, rejected the suggestion that the UK was becoming “a more closed economy”, insisting the Government wanted it to be much more open to the world on trade.

“The benefit of new trading relationships takes time. They don’t happen all over night. Of course, that will happen over a period of time,” he said.

More than 7,000 finance jobs have moved from London to the EU as a result of Brexit, down 400 from the total anticipated in December, the consultants EY have said

While the total is well down on the 12,500 job moves forecast by firms in 2016, when Britain voted to leave the bloc, more could follow, EY said in its latest Brexit tracker.

Further relocations could result from European Central Bank checks on whether Brexit hubs in the EU opened by banks that used London as their European base had sufficient staff to justify their new licences, EY said.

The Bank of England is scrutinising these to avoid banks in London being left with too few senior staff.

“Staff and operational moves across European financial markets will continue as firms navigate ongoing geopolitical uncertainty, post-pandemic dynamics and regulatory requirements,” Omar Ali, the EMEIA financial services leader at EY, said.

Dublin is the most popular destination for staff relocations and new hubs, followed by Luxembourg, Frankfurt and Paris.

EY said that new local hires linked to Brexit totalled 2,900 across Europe, and 2,500 in Britain, where just over 1 million people work in the financial services sector.

The DUP will not return to a powersharing executive at Stormont until the Government acts to restore Northern Ireland’s status within the UK internal market, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has insisted.

The party leader said he was a committed devolutionist and claimed direct rule from Westminster would result in bad decisions for the region, but he said Stormont could only work if it was built on solid foundations.

He made clear that changes to Brexit’s contentious Northern Ireland Protocol, which has created trade barriers on goods shipped to the region from Great Britain, had to be delivered before he would consider returning to a fully functioning executive.

Recurring traffic gridlock at Dover is damaging the reputation of the UK overseas as well as to the economy, business and logistics chiefs have said.

Several days of chaos at the port has been blamed on the suspension of sailings by P&O Ferries – but the failure of Brexit IT system and the burden of new customs checks have also added to the hold-ups.

Food producers have warned perishable goods were going bad and losing their value due to the congestion, with some saying delays were costing their business up to £800 per lorry.

“We cannot keep seeing this,” said Rod McKenzie, head of policy at the Road Haulage Association (RHA). “It is expensive and damaging for the economy and reputation of the UK. It is time to take decisive action and deal with this long-term problem.”

Shane Brennan, chief executive of the Cold Chain Federation, said Britain had developed a “post-Brexit perception problem”.

Conservative and Brexit supporters want the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen to become president of France in this weekend’s election, a poll shows.

The National Rally (RN) – formerly National Front – leader is backed by 37 per cent of Tory voters at the last election, while just 24 per cent support the centrist Emmanuel Macron.

The margin is even greater among Leave voters at the 2016 Brexit referendum, who prefer Ms Le Pen over the current president by 35 per cent to 19 per cent.
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The strong correlation between support for Ms Le Pen and for the Conservatives is seen as evidence of how Boris Johnson has tapped similar “populist’ sentiment.

Across the UK population as a whole, Mr Macron is by far the preferred candidate, the Pollsters YouGov found, by 37 per cent to the RN leader’s 19 per cent.

However, no less than 44 per cent of the public replied “don’t know”, suggesting widespread ignorance about politics across the Channel.

Remain and Labour voters overwhelmingly back the sitting president, by 62 per cent to 7 per cent and 53 per cent to 8 per cent, respectively.