Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

King at Windsor (House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha changed to Windsor due to First World War)

Downing Street has been forced to stress that Rishi Sunak’s hailing of Northern Ireland’s access to both EU and British markets should not be seen as an endorsement of single market benefits for the whole of the UK.

During a visit to a Coca-Cola factory in County Antrim to promote his Windsor Framework, the Prime Minister said the deal would create “the world’s most exciting economic zone”.

“If we get this right, if we get this framework implemented, if we get the Executive back up and running here, Northern Ireland is in the unbelievably special position – unique position in the entire world, European continent – in having privileged access, not just to the UK home market, which is enormous, but also the European Union single market.

“Nobody else has that. No-one. Only you guys: only here, and that is the prize.”

Critics online were swift to point out that the entire UK had full access to the EU’s single market before Brexit.

Full ratification of Windsor framework agreed with EU likely to take months as PM continues sales pitch

Downing Street has set out its apparent intent to push ahead with a new trading regime for Northern Ireland whether or not the Democratic Unionist party backs the plan – although a leading Conservative Brexiter predicted they ultimately would.

A day after Rishi Sunak unveiled his self-styled “Windsor framework”, an attempt to patch the holes in Boris Johnson’s original post-Brexit protocol for Northern Ireland, a sense of elation among Conservatives was giving way to recognition that there was a long road ahead.

Even if the DUP and more sceptical Tory MPs decide they can live with a plan that has wrung significant concessions from Brussels but still leaves scope for EU law in Northern Ireland, full ratification is likely to take months.

Perhaps the key moment of the day came shortly after 8am, when the prime minister was quizzed about his deal on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and asked whether it would be implemented even if the DUP declined to accept it.

Sunak replied: “The framework is what we have agreed with the European Union.”

On Tuesday evening, he continued his sales pitch to MPs with a speech to the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers. Speaking afterwards, Steve Baker, a leading Conservative voice on Brexit issues, who is now a Northern Ireland minister, said the response had been positive.

“The prime minister is not going to be losing any votes on this,” Baker said. “Everybody realises this is as good as it is going to get.”

But with Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, saying the party would examine the full legal text before deciding whether to accept the plan, Baker said Sunak accepted the need to take things slowly.

“People are clearly concerned about the DUP being willing to go back into power sharing,” he said. “The prime minister was clear they need to be given time to talk all the issues through. This is a very difficult issue for them. I believe they will agree that this is a good deal.”

The European Research Group, which represents many backbench Tory Brexiters, has said it will convene a sub-group of MPs and others with legal backgrounds to go through the full text and locate any potential issues.

While No 10 will be delighted with the initial reaction to the plan, they will also be aware that two leading voices – Johnson and David Frost, who negotiated the original Brexit deal – have yet to give a formal response.

Sunak and his officials are keenly aware of the pitfalls ahead, not least over the inherent contradictions of hailing a plan that gives Northern Ireland greater trading advantages than elsewhere in the UK.

Speaking to a small gathering at a tightly managed “PM Connect” event at a Coca-Cola factory in Lisburn, south-west of Belfast, Sunak was effusive in his description of Northern Ireland’s “unique” and privileged economic position of largely unfettered trade in goods with both the EU and Great Britain.

“Nobody else has that,” Sunak told the audience. “No one – only you guys only here.

“And that is the prize. I can tell you, when I go around the world and talk to businesses, they say: ‘That’s interesting.’ Nowhere else does that exist. It’s like the world’s most exciting economic zone.”

Such comments, which are likely to spark worries among some Brexiters that Sunak could be amenable to more generally open trading links with the EU, also prompted accusations from other critics that he was praising a situation that was ended for the rest of the UK by Brexit.

“The prime minister is boasting about the benefits of the single market and customs union for businesses in Northern Ireland, while denying those same benefits to businesses struggling in the rest of the UK with our current economic crisis,” said Stella Creasy, the Labour MP who chairs the Labour Movement for Europe.

Alyn Smith MP, the Scottish National party’s Europe spokesperson, said Sunak appeared to be “moonlighting as a remainer”.

Assuming the plan is not derailed by a mass rebellion, the timetable could nonetheless take months to ratify on both sides of the Channel with legislation needed in Brussels and London to amend the original withdrawal agreement.

The process of ratification will begin at a UK-EU joint committee next month but must be followed by new laws. The legislative route has yet to be set out by the government but it is expected to take the form of statutory instrument rather than primary legislation.

On the EU side some of the new pact can be agreed at joint committee level but because the original treaty is being tweaked it will require approval by members states and official sign off by the European parliament.

Although the deal is more straightforward than the trade and cooperation agreement, sources say this process could take until the summer. Government sources say it could take a year to phase in.

Rishi Sunak’s hopes of ending years of Brexit infighting with a revised deal for Northern Ireland have suffered a double blow as Boris Johnson came out against the plan while pressure mounted within the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) to reject it.

In his first public comments since the Windsor framework was unveiled on Monday, Johnson used a speech to a conference in London to say he would find it “very difficult” to back the plan, arguing it would stifle the UK economically.

While Johnson’s opposition was expected, and the former prime minister did not explicitly say he would vote against the new protocol when it reaches the Commons, his careful unpicking of a policy he said would yoke the UK to European-style economic orthodoxy will strike a chord with fellow Tory Brexiters.

“We must be clear about what is really going on here. This is not about the UK taking back control,” he said of Sunak’s plan. “This is the EU graciously unbending to allow us to do what we want in our own country, not by our laws, but by theirs.”

This would, Johnson argued, “act as a drag anchor on divergence – and there’s no point in Brexit unless you do things differently”.

He also called on Sunak not to drop a bill, currently going through parliament, that would allow the UK to unilaterally change elements of the Northern Ireland protocol, arguing this was the best way to win concessions from the EU.

On the Windsor plan, Johnson said: “I’m going to find it very difficult to vote for something like this myself because I believed that we should have done something different, no matter how much plaster came off the ceiling in Brussels.

“I hope that it will work. And I also hope that if it doesn’t work, we will have the guts to deploy that bill again. Because I’ve no doubt at all, that that was what brought the EU to negotiate seriously.

Sunak’s proposal, which still includes some EU oversight of trade in the UK but seeks to placate unionists with the “Stormont brake”, which allows Northern Ireland’s devolved assembly to block new EU regulations in some circumstances, has been generally well received by Tory MPs, including many Brexiters.

However, the European Research Group, which represents the most diehard Brexit opinion, has yet to give a formal view while it fully studies the legal text of the deal. The same is true of the DUP, which has set out seven tests the plan must comply with.

The DUP leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, has said the decision on whether to support it will be “collective”, with most expecting him to take two weeks to consider independent legal opinion.

But some observers worry that the vacuum left during the wait for an opinion from Donaldson is allowing opponents of the deal within the party to build up momentum, notably Sammy Wilson, its Westminster chief whip, and senior MP Ian Paisley.

“I don’t believe it meets our tests. And there’s probably six or seven reasons why – for example, EU law will continue to apply in Northern Ireland,” Paisley told BBC One Northern Ireland’s Nolan Live programme.

One issue was that the Stormont brake “only applies to future law, not to existing EU law”, Paisley said, adding: “This is not, of course, a legal agreement. This is a political statement.”

Sunak was spending Thursday at the same hotel in Windsor where he finalised his new Brexit plan with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, for a long-planned awayday with Conservative MPs, one intended to push key messages and build unity.

The impact of Johnson’s thumbs down remains to be seen, but in an uncharacteristically reflective section of his speech he appeared to accept that his arguments over embracing divergence from EU economic orthodoxies seemed unlikely to happen.

“People wanted change in their lives. They wanted to see things done differently,” he said.

“I’ve got to put my hands up for this as much as anybody. We haven’t done enough yet to convince them that it can deliver the change they want to see.

“What I wish we had done is put a big ‘Invest here’ sign over Britain as soon as we were out of Covid.”

Rishi Sunak’s government is understood to be planning to welcome in more foreign builders to tackle a chronic post-Brexit labour shortage in Britain’s construction industry.

Despite the crackdown on illegal immigration routes, the government is said to be ready to add construction workers to a “shortage occupation list” in a bid to boost sluggish housebuilding.

The building sector has suffered from acute lack of workers since Brexit caused many European labourers to return to the EU.

The government’s Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has recommended that bricklayers, plasterers, roofers and others construction workers should be added to the shortage list, according to the Financial Times.

People in Britain have more confidence in the EU than the UK parliament, reversing a state of affairs that has lasted for more than 30 years, research reveals.

Since the UK voted for Brexit, the proportion of people declaring confidence in parliament has slumped by 10 percentage points to 22% while there has been a seven percentage point rise in confidence in the Brussels-based bloc, to 39%. Confidence in the UK government also fell from 2017 to 2021.

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Only 24% of people said they were “happy” that the UK voted to quit the EU while 49% said they were disappointed.

The findings also show the UK has joined the ranks of countries least likely to have confidence in government and parliament – falling behind France, Germany, Australia, Iran and China.

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With only 13% of people saying they have confidence in UK political parties, the nation is on a par with Brazil, Italy and France but well behind Norway (36%), Sweden (32%), Canada (24%) and Germany (23%).

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The UK was 23rd out of 24 countries in terms of confidence in the press. Media in Mexico, Italy, Russia and Brazil all enjoyed more than double the level of confidence.

“Some institutions fare better, with our courts system relatively highly rated, and the civil service coming out much better than our political institutions,” said Duffy.

The WVS is one of the largest and most widely used academic social surveys in the world, in operation since 1981. The latest UK data was collected in 2022, with data for other nations collected at various points throughout the latest wave of the WVS, which spanned 2017 to 2022.