Brexit (2)

The Observer view on Brexit: Tories are paying the price for their dishonesty

Seven years after the referendum, the evidence of its tragic consequences for the country are mounting

Brexit was sold to voters seven years ago on the basis it would be the answer to myriad problems. It would address Britain’s laggardly growth by putting rocket boosters under the economy. It would free up money to spend on an underfunded NHS. It would boost wages in low-paid jobs by reducing immigration levels. And it would reinvigorate our parliamentary democracy by returning sovereignty to Westminster.

None of this was ever going to materialise and recent years have only served to underline just how false these promises were. Last week, the government finally put to bed the idea it is feasible to scrap thousands of retained EU regulations in one swoop when Kemi Badenoch junked the profoundly undemocratic sunset clause in the retained EU law bill.

This bill was introduced by Jacob Rees-Mogg during Liz Truss’s premiership. It would have automatically revoked all EU regulations that were converted into domestic law at the end of the Brexit transition period at the end of this year, save those specifically exempted by ministers.

It is a totally unworkable piece of legislation. The government has not even been able to produce a comprehensive list of regulations that it covers; even the total number of 4,000 it is assumed it would apply to is just an estimate. The time allowed by the government – just a few months – to review and recodify huge swathes of domestic legislation, covering areas as diverse as employment rights, consumer protections and the environment, was completely unrealistic. The bill also gives huge discretionary powers to ministers to make changes to the law without any parliamentary oversight or consultation with the businesses, organisations and people whose lives could be deeply affected by them. The verdict of one eminent King’s Counsel is it would violate key constitutional principles in the UK, including the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, separation of powers and the rule of law, by “transferring parliament’s essential role, law-making, into the hands of ministers”.

Put simply, it would enable ministers to make sweeping changes to the laws that affect people’s everyday lives – like how much paid holiday they are entitled to, or minimum air quality standards – with absolutely no democratic scrutiny at all. It certainly does not increase parliamentary sovereignty as the government has claimed and as Brexit was meant to do; rather, it represents a massive power grab by ministers. It has also created huge legislative uncertainty for businesses who could not know what regulations would apply in a few months’ time.

The scrapping of the sunset clause means retained EU legislation will be preserved unless ministers actively revoke it. But the bill would still enable the government to amend the law with no parliamentary scrutiny and end the “supremacy” of EU law by encouraging the courts not to take into account precedent from court judgments based on EU law. The Law Society says this would “compromise the legal clarity and certainty businesses and individuals rely on”.

The honest case for the ideological pet project of the Tory right is so unappealing, voters would never have endorsed it
This false claim – that the government is restoring parliamentary sovereignty while it is actually driving this key constitutional principle into the ground – is just the latest in a long line of lies Conservative politicians have fed voters about Brexit. It started with the Vote Leave campaign: the claim that leaving the EU would free up £350m a week for the NHS that has been ruled a “clear misuse of official statistics” by the UK Statistics Authority, and the suggestion that staying in the EU would mean Britain would be set to share a border with Syria and Iraq. It continued under Boris Johnson’s premiership, with his false statement that the Northern Ireland protocol he had negotiated would involve no customs checks on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Dishonesty runs through every aspect of the Brexit pitch because the honest case for the ideological pet project of the Tory right is so unappealing that voters would never have endorsed it.

Now the Conservative party is starting to pay the political price. Getting Brexit done was the slogan that handed a handsome parliamentary majority to Boris Johnson in 2019, but it no longer has the political salience it once did with voters. The local election results show they are more than willing to punish them for the consequences. People are experiencing a toxic mix of high inflation, rising interest rates and stagnating wages: some of that is due to global factors, but the UK’s new status as a growth laggard is the main outcome of Brexit. Meanwhile, NHS waiting lists are at record highs and patients are being treated in dilapidated buildings.

The populist pretence that leaving the EU was the magic fix for all the country’s woes has had terrible consequences. It has made us all poorer, absorbed huge amounts of diplomatic capital in attempts to resolve the issues it created in Northern Ireland, and cheapened our politics by normalising the spread of misinformation by those who should know better. It has also exposed the Conservative party as divided and lacking any coherent sense of mission.

Little wonder that opinion polls show that most people think Brexit was a bad idea. But the clock cannot be turned back; this once-in-a-generation decision will haunt us for decades to come.

Arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage has admitted that leaving the EU has “failed” as he sought to blame the government for what he described as its inability to take advantage of being outside the trading bloc.

The former Brexit and UKIP Party leader, who refused to rule out a political comeback, said the UK had not “benefitted from Brexit economically”, claiming that government policy had deterred businesses from investing in the UK.

His comments came as a row brewed in the Conservative Party over immigration with Suella Braverman, the home secretary, calling for overall numbers to come down in a speech at the National Conservative Conference that was viewed by some as a pitch for the future leadership.

In an interview with BBC Newsnight on Monday, Mr Farage said the UK had not benefitted from Brexit economically, lambasted UK politicians for being “as useless as the commissioners” in Brussels and accused the government of failing to control Britain’s borders.

Arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage has admitted that leaving the EU has “failed” as he sought to blame the government for what he described as its inability to take advantage of being outside the trading bloc.

The former Brexit and UKIP Party leader, who refused to rule out a political comeback, said the UK had not “benefitted from Brexit economically”, claiming that government policy had deterred businesses from investing in the UK.

His comments came as a row brewed in the Conservative Party over immigration with Suella Braverman, the home secretary, calling for overall numbers to come down in a speech at the National Conservative Conference that was viewed by some as a pitch for the future leadership.

In an interview with BBC Newsnight on Monday, Mr Farage said the UK had not benefitted from Brexit economically, lambasted UK politicians for being “as useless as the commissioners” in Brussels and accused the government of failing to control Britain’s borders.

n March the UK’s independent Office for Budget Responsibility said that the impact of Brexit on the UK economy was on the same “magnitude” as the Covid pandemic and energy price crisis.

In a grim assessment, OBR chair Richard Hughes also warned that it would take five years before people’s spending power recovers to pre-coronavirus levels.

Britain’s gross domestic product (GDP) would be 4 per cent smaller than if the country had stayed in the EU, he said.

The OBR chief said the country is undergoing the “biggest squeeze on living standards” on record. “But we do expect, as we get past this year and we go into the next three or four years, that real income starts to recover.”

He added: “But it’s still the case that people’s real spending power doesn’t get back to the level it was before the pandemic even after five years, even by the time we get to the late 2020s.”

Mr Hughes said economic growth had been held back because of “supply constraints” – pointing to labour shortages and an investment slump.

“We’ve lost around 500,000 people from the labour force, we’ve seen stagnant investment since 2016 and also our productivity has slowed dramatically since the financial crisis and not really recovered,” he said.

Reports on Monday morning, ahead of Ms Braverman’s speech, said the home secretary would put pressure on prime minister Rishi Sunak to bring down overall immigration.

Speaking at the conference Ms Braverman said more Britons should be trained as HGV drivers, fruit pickers and butchers so the UK does not have to rely on foreign workers to fill jobs.

Speaking to Times Radio later in the morning Nigel Huddleston, the trade minister, said Britain needs immigration to rise “now and again”, in remarks that appeared to contradict the home secretary.

Me Huddleston stressed that there would “always be peaks and troughs” in levels of immigration, with figures next week expected to show a surge in arrivals to the UK.

Downing Street later said Ms Braverman speaks on behalf of the government.

British households have paid £7bn since Brexit to cover the extra cost of trade barriers on food imports from the EU, according to researchers at the London School of Economics (LSE).

The university’s latest report estimating the impact of leaving the bloc on UK food prices found that trade barriers were consistently hampering imports, pushing up bills by an average £250.

The cost of food in the UK had rocketed by 25% since 2019, the researchers calculated, but if the post-Brexit trade restrictions were not in place then this increase would be only 17% – nearly a third lower.

Adding up the impact on all British households suggested they had paid an extra £6.95bn as a consequence, they said.

“Between December 2019 and March 2023 food prices rose by almost 25%. This analysis suggests that in the absence of Brexit this figure would be 8 percentage points (30%) lower,” the report found.

Last year, the LSE centre for economic performance said that leaving the EU added an average of £210 to household food bills over the two years to the end of 2021, at a cost of £5.8bn.

The UK has the highest food inflation rate in the industrialised world, according to recent inflation data.

It is seven years since Britain voted to leave the European Union, and all is not well. For all the fights that have been and gone over implementing Brexit – Article 50, oven-ready deals, hard borders and the rest – the promised sunlit uplands are still not upon us.

Polling by the Independent today shows most Britons now think the UK was wrong to leave the bloc – a major turnaround since the referendum.

Here are seven of the biggest Brexit issues that remain unresolved, seven years after the June 2016 vote.

NHS recruitment dries up

The NHS featured prominently in the Brexit campaign, with the Leave campaign promising more cash for the health service (£350m a week, to be precise) once Britain left.

But the most obvious effect that leaving the EU has had on the NHS is to compound staff shortages.

The Nuffield Trust says the Brexit vote has “exacerbated” long-running workforce shortages in nursing and social care especially.

Many of the problems are difficult to untangle from Covid-19.

But what is clear is that UK-wide changes in immigration rules have increased costs and bureaucracy for EU health workers, while the NHS has not been able to find enough qualified staff from elsewhere.

As a result, vacancies across the NHS in England have risen to a new record high with more than 133,000 full-time posts unfilled.

Car manufacturers heading for the exit

The private sector has suffered, too; UK car manufacturing, has been significantly hit.

Ford says leaving the single market has introduced “pointless costs,” while Jaguar Land Rover says the new rules are “unrealistic.”

Meanwhile Stellantis, the parent company of Citroën, Peugeot, Fiat and Vauxhall, has warned it might have to move some operations overseas because new bureaucracy makes UK operations unviable.

The biggest issue for manufacturers is so-called “rules of origin” that apply to international trade outside the single market and customs union; these mean a certain proportion of a car's parts have to be made in the UK or EU to avoid tariffs – a headache for complex global manufacturing supply chains such as car-making.

Mobile roaming charges return

Roaming charges were phased out by the EU, making it cheaper to use your phone abroad. But since 1 January 2021, the situation has reversed.

While the four major UK mobile networks all initially said they had no plans to reintroduce charges, this did not last.

EE, Vodafone and Three have now reversed course, leaving only O2 still offering surcharge-free roaming in the EU.

Other interim protections, such as a cap on daily charges that applied until summer 2022, have also expired. Make sure you check with your network before going abroad.

Endless queues of lorries

Queues of lorries and holidaymakers at Britain’s ports have become a familiar sight since stricter Brexit border checks came in, in 2021.

Since the end of the transition period, border formalities take a bit longer, with passports needing to be stamped and questions asked.

On the freight side, new trade rules mean that if any of the complex import/export paperwork is not in order, lorries must wait for it to be sorted out.

The result has been bottlenecks in places such as Dover. Airports and Eurostar have also been affected, with long waits now more common than ever.

Surging inflation

Inflation has hit all countries to some degree in 2023, with energy and food costs pushing up prices.

But Britain has found itself an international outlier, with the worst inflation in the G7. Unsurprisingly, Brexit is a contributing factor.

Disruption to supply chains, which has increased delivery times and costs, is thought to have had an impact, particularly on food.

But as well as affecting imports, a shortage of seasonal agricultural workers has also restricted domestic supply.

One study from the London School of Economics found that extra Brexit red tape may have added £250 in total to the typical household’s grocery shopping bill between December 2019 and March 2023.

Former Bank of England governor Mark Carney said this week: “We laid out in advance of Brexit that this will be a negative supply shock for a period of time and the consequence of that will be a weaker pound, higher inflation and it will end weaker growth ... there’s no joy in saying: ‘well, we told you so’, because people are having to live with that reality.”

British researchers locked out

While the government has sought to take Britain out of most EU institutions, one it didn’t want to leave was Horizon Europe.

But the UK has been locked out of the €95.5bn science collaboration scheme since 2020, despite universities and scientists saying it is vital for competitiveness and innovation.

Brussels blocked Britain’s “associate” participation in the scheme until the Northern Ireland border issue was dealt with but, in spite of the Windsor Framework, the UK remains on the outside.

The latest hold-up is over the price tag, with the EU wanting Britain to pay fees for participation in the scheme during the two years it was not a member; while the government is haggling over the price of entry, top researchers say ministers just need to get Britain back into the club.

Trade bureaucracy

When the Brexit transition period ended, ministers were quick to warn there would be an adjustment period to the new rules – but that problems would ease.

This doesn’t seem to have been entirely true. A study by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) two years after the new arrangements came into force found that 56 per cent of companies whose trading activities are affected by the new rules are facing difficulties importing or exporting goods.

There’s a growing understanding in Britain that the country’s vote to quit the European Union, a decisive moment in the international rise of reactionary populism, was a grave error.

Just as critics predicted, Brexit has led to inflation, labor shortages, business closures and travel snafus. It has created supply chain problems that put the future of British car manufacturing in danger. Brexit has, in many cases, turned travel between Europe and the U.K. into a punishing ordeal, as I learned recently, spending hours in a chaotic passport control line when taking the train from Paris to London. British musicians are finding it hard to tour in Europe because of the costs and red tape associated with moving both people and equipment across borders, which Elton John called “crucifying.”

According to the U.K.’s Office for Budget and Responsibility, leaving the E.U. has shaved 4 percent off Britain’s gross domestic product. The damage to Britain’s economy, the O.B.R.’s chairman has said, is of the same “magnitude” as that from the Covid pandemic.

All this pain and hassle has created an anti-Brexit majority in Britain. According to a YouGov poll released this week, 57 percent of Britons say the country was wrong to vote to leave the E.U., and a slight majority wants to rejoin it. Even Nigel Farage, the former leader of the far-right U.K. Independence Party sometimes known as “Mr. Brexit,” told the BBC in May, “Brexit has failed.”

This mess was, of course, both predictable and predicted. That’s why I’ve been struck, visiting the U.K. this summer, by the curious political taboo against discussing how badly Brexit has gone, even among many who voted against it. Seven years ago, Brexit was an early augur of the revolt against cosmopolitanism that swept Donald Trump into power. (Trump even borrowed the “Mr. Brexit” moniker for himself.) Both enterprises — Britain’s divorce from the E.U. and Trump’s reign in the U.S. — turned out catastrophically. Both left their countries fatigued and depleted. But while America can’t stop talking about Trump, many in the U.K. can scarcely stand to think about Brexit.

“It’s so toxic,” Tobias Ellwood, a Tory lawmaker who has called on his colleagues to admit that Brexit was a mistake, told me. “People have invested so much time and pain and agony on this.” It’s like a “wound,” he said, that people want to avoid picking at. The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, one of the few Labour Party leaders eager to discuss the consequences of leaving the E.U., described an “omertà,” or vow of silence, around it. “It’s the elephant in the room,” he told me. “I’m frustrated that no one’s talking about it.”

Part of the reason that no one — or almost no one — is talking about Brexit’s consequences lies with the demographics of the Labour Party. Somewhere between a quarter and a third of Labour voters supported Brexit, and those voters are concentrated in the so-called Red Wall — working-class areas in the Midlands and Northern England that once solidly supported Labour but swung right in the 2019 election. “Those voters do not want to have a conversation about Brexit,” said Joshua Simons, the director of Labour Together, a think tank close to Labour leadership.

Sheer exhaustion also contributes to making Brexit talk unwelcome: Between the vote to leave the European Union in 2016 and the final agreement in 2020, the issue consumed British politics, and many people just want to move on. Simons argues there’s also a third factor: a sense that the results of a democratic referendum must be honored. He cites a point that a mentor of his, the political philosopher Danielle Allen, made after the 2016 vote. “In the end, in democracy, sometimes you all do crazy things together,” Simons said. “And what becomes more important is not whether the crazy thing was a good or bad thing to do. It’s that you’re doing it together.”

As someone from a far more polarized country, I found this idea somewhat foreign. If the Trumpist electorate had imposed such a costly and ultimately unpopular policy on the country, I suspect there would be a rush among Democrats to reverse it. But in the U.K., referendums — which are rare and held only to address major issues — have a political gravity that it’s hard for an outsider like me to understand.

“You’ve got to respect the referendum,” said Khan. “What you can’t have is never-endums, referendum after referendum after referendum. That disrespects the electorate.”

Still, he argues that without facing the harm that Brexit has caused, the country can’t move forward: “Unless you can diagnose what the problem is, how can there be a prognosis?” Britain is not, at least in the near term, going to rejoin the E.U. But both Khan and Ellwood argue that it can still forge closer trade and immigration ties than it has now, and perhaps eventually return to the European single market, the trade agreement encompassing the E.U. countries, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

“After the next election, I can see all parties embracing the idea of rejoining the single market,” said Ellwood, adding, “I put money on it that it happens in the next five years.”

One silver lining to Brexit is that it offers a cautionary tale for the rest of Europe. After Britain voted to leave the E.U. in 2016, there’s been fear, among some who care about the European project, that France or Italy could be next. But as The Guardian reported, as of January, support for leaving the E.U. has declined in every member state for which data is available. As governments across the continent move rightward, the E.U. itself is moving in a more conservative direction, but it’s not coming apart.

“I don’t think you’re going to see other countries in the E.U. leaving the E.U. if for no other reason than because they’ve seen the impact on us,” said Khan. But there’s a larger lesson, one most Western countries seemingly have to continually relearn. Right-wing nationalist projects begin with loud, flamboyant swagger. They tend to end unspeakably.

Negotiations stalling over London’s request to quit atomic research organisation and for financial rebate

The UK’s return to the EU’s £85bn Horizon science research programme appears to be hanging by a thread after London’s request to quit the associated atomic research organisation, Euratom.

The delays are causing huge anxiety in the scientific community.

Many anticipated a deal to return to the programme to be announced in early July but negotiations are going to the wire with no sign of final agreement yet on Euratom or rebates the UK wants to compensate for its late association with the programme.

According to sources quoted by Research Professional News, a publication for academics, the European Commission has offered the UK the option of either exiting from Euroatom or a financial adjustment but not both.

Vivienne Stern, the chief executive of the vice-chancellors’ group Universities UK, told the journal it was “legitimate that the government is seeking a good deal”, but that “nobody’s blood pressure can stand another several months of delay, and more delay would have a real, actual cost”.

Stern, who was a vocal bystander to the original negotiations in 2020, urged the commission to take “a little step towards the UK”.

Diplomats in Brussels have yet to be briefed on the deal, suggesting it is still not signed off despite claims in London last week that it was “close”.

Stern also appeared to confirm the UK’s position that the European Commission had not acknowledged the “material loss” caused to the UK from a two-and-a-half-year absence from the seven-year programme.

Under the EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement, British contributions were to be based on research funds awarded to UK projects from 2019. The UK argued that contributions should be based on success rates in 2023, which would be much lower given the reduced applications to the fund due to the uncertainty over membership.

Before Brexit the UK was one of the top beneficiaries of the Horizon programme and scientists are still eligible to apply for funding, which is underwritten by the UK government.

However, the uncertainty over the UK’s membership and its inability to lead pan-EU research while outside the programme has dealt a blow.

Data from the European Commission shows a huge drop in awards to British science programmes since 2019. In that year, €959.3m (£828.8m) went to the UK in 1,364 grants, compared with €22.18m in 192 grants in 2023 to date.

“There is a lot of water under this bridge and we just need pragmatism and an acknowledgment that there has been a material loss to the UK through the a deal,” Stern told Research Professional adding there was “a real risk that everyone stands on principle”.

Expectations that talks between Rishi Sunak and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on the sidelines of the recent Nato summit in Vilnius would seal the deal have been followed by radio silence.

One source insisted that the European Commission would not be reopening the terms of the original deal post-Brexit. “That is [the vice-president of the European Commission for inter-institutional relations] Maroš Šefčovič’s job – to be inflexible,” the diplomat said.

The UK had been a full member of Horizon Europe and would have remained in the programme through an “associate” deal open to non-EU countries as part of the trade deal clinched in December 2020.

But the EU delayed the ratification of the UK’s associate membership and eventually admitted it was being withheld in retaliation over the row over Brexit trading arrangements in Northern Ireland.

After a resolution to that row was brokered with a new Windsor framework, Von der Leyen promised re-entry to the programme would be swift.

A UK government source said there was “no update” and negotiations continued. But they added that the alternative Pioneer programme being proposed by Sunak was a “pretty strong” alternative.

Government bows to pressure from industry over costs of switching over to British marking

The UK will retain the EU’s product safety mark indefinitely, in the latest climbdown from proposed post-Brexit changes, after the government bowed to pressure from industry and manufacturers.

The CE (Conformité Européenne) mark is used by the bloc to certify that a wide range of items – from electrical goods and construction materials to medical devices and toys – meet safety standards.

The safety marking had been expected to be replaced by a new UKCA (UK Conformity Assessed) mark for goods sold in Great Britain from the end of 2024, after several extensions to the deadline for the changeover.

Businesses had called on the government to extend the use of the CE mark, saying that forcing them to meet new UK rules, which would initially duplicate EU product standards, would add significant costs at a time when many have been trying to get over the disruption caused by the pandemic and stubbornly high inflation.

The UKCA mark would not have been recognised in the EU, so would have been required only for goods to be sold in Great Britain.

Government source reportedly says there are concerns extra red tape could fuel further inflation

Brexit checks on fresh farm produce coming to the UK from the EU have been delayed for the fifth time, according to reports.

The decision to suspend plans to enforce the controls, which have been applied in the other direction to British exports to the EU since January 2021, is due to be announced imminently, according to the Financial Times.

The delay is intended to give the government and exporters in the EU more time to prepare for the checks, setting Rishi Sunak on a collision course with domestic UK food producers who have long argued that it gives a free pass to continental rivals while they have to endure checks on all fresh food exports to the bloc.

According to reports, there are concerns the extra red tape would increase the cost of food imports to consumers and fuel further inflation.

The decision comes just days after the government abandoned plans to force manufacturers to label their products with an alternative to the EU’s CE (Conformité Européenne) safety mark.

Industry representatives welcomed the delay.

“The government has made the right decision to postpone. UK food retailers, hospitality businesses and consumers were in line for major disruption because many EU food-producing businesses supplying into the UK are not ready for the new requirements,” said Shane Brennan, the chief executive of the Cold Chain Federation.

He was concerned that EU producers, some of whom are small producers of specialist products such as cheese, were not even aware of the new requirements that could also have led to shortages on shelves.

Another industry source said it was a “Treasury purge” of all changes that would cause disruption to the supply chain, given the sensitivity of the food market to price increases in the current economic climate.

Before Brexit, exporters could send chilled and fresh food to the EU without any paperwork because the UK was a member of the single market.

Since the UK’s departure from the EU, fresh and chilled foods such as sausages or cheese, along with animal and plant products including timber and leather, are subject to sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) checks and can only be exported with a health or veterinary certificate.

Exporters from the EU have not had to endure the paperwork after the British government failed to build new SPS systems or secure land for SPS parks to conduct random physical checks.

The Brexit cliff-edge in 2021 left British exporters of fish and other fresh goods in chaos with a lack of customs agents and veterinary staff to certify whether the produce complied with EU standards.

But in the UK Brexit checks were pushed back in 2020, on two occasions in 2021 and then again last year by the then Brexit opportunities minister, Jacob Rees-Mogg.

In April the government announced the checks would finally be phased in from 31 October, with further checks implemented in 2023 and 2024.

The checks in October were to involve paperwork known as “pre-certification” that would alert authorities to the arrival of food products with public health compliance requirements.

It is expected these checks will now be pushed back to the end of January when the physical SPS checks are due to become operational.

Government insiders told the FT that further details of the rules applying to food imports would be published “very soon” but the introduction would be pushed back.

“The driving force behind this is the need to bear down on inflation, that’s why there will be a delay. There will be additional costs at the border,” the FT said, quoting its sources.

If departing the EU has failed to deliver, why is the UK still so divided? Seven years on, we ask behavioural psychologists if cognitive dissonance can be overcome

Latest hold-up is intended to cut risk of new charges being passed on to consumers amid cost of living crisis

A fifth delay on the introduction of post-Brexit import checks on food and fresh produce arriving in Britain is to be officially announced imminently, the Guardian understands.

The decision to once again push back plans to enforce the controls – which have been in place for exports from the UK to the EU – is linked to concerns that the move could further fuel food price inflation during the cost of living crisis, while traders have also asked for more time to adapt to the new rules.

The plan to delay the new border controls has been backed by the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, according to the Financial Times, which broke the news earlier this month that the postponement was on the way.

The government’s post-Brexit border strategy, including inspections of animal and plant products arriving in Britain, was originally supposed to be introduced in 2021.

According to the most recent timetable, import checks had been expected to introduced in three stages over the course of a year, beginning with new paperwork requirements – including health certificates for certain animal and plant products, as well as high risk food products – from the end of October this year.

Meanwhile, physical checks at the UK border had been expected to begin on 31 January 2024.

However, after the latest delay, the schedule has moved back by three months, according to the FT, meaning that new paperwork will not be needed until the end of January, while physical inspections of goods will not start until the end of April.

A full announcement regarding the new timetable and the final border strategy is expected to be published shortly by the Cabinet Office.

Under the strategy, the government is expected to introduce a charge of up to £43 on each consignment of food or plant imports arriving in the UK, whether or not they need to be checked.

The latest delay to border controls is intended to reduce the risk of new import charges being passed on to consumers, reigniting food inflation just as prices are thought to have peaked.

Businesses in the food industry and hauliers had also expressed their concern that uncertainty about the government’s final border strategy, known as the target operating model (TOM), left little time for them to adapt to the new rules.

However, the further hold-up will once again put the government at odds with UK domestic food producers, who have long argued that a lack of import controls gives a free pass to continental rivals while they have to endure checks on all fresh food exports to the bloc.

Before Brexit, exporters could send chilled and fresh food to the EU without any paperwork because the UK was a member of the single market.

Since Britain’s departure exports of fresh and chilled foods such as sausages or cheese, along with animal and plant products including timber and leather, have been subject to sanitary and phytosanitary checks and are only able to be exported with a health or veterinary certificate.

However, the UK’s corresponding post-Brexit import checks have been pushed back on four occasions already: in 2020, twice in 2021 – partly because border infrastructure was not going to be ready on time – and then again last year by the then Brexit opportunities minister, Jacob Rees-Mogg.

The move to delay import controls once again comes days after the government abandoned plans to force manufacturers to label their products with an alternative to the EU’s CE (conformité Européenne) safety mark.

The government, considering when to impose a costly new customs bureaucracy, announced last week that now is not the right time. Post-Brexit checks on goods entering Britain from the EU were first supposed to be implemented in January 2021. After serial postponements, they were due to begin next month. Now it won’t happen before 2024.

Goods moving in the other direction are already subject to customs paperwork, making life difficult for UK exporters and pushing some out of business altogether. Ministers have recognised that British consumers and businesses could do without the same penalty being applied to imports. The government admits that import checks would stoke inflation. This is a quiet acknowledgment that friction between the UK and the trading bloc on its doorstep is a drag on the economy. But Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, cannot say so aloud because that would concede the folly of quitting the single market in the first place.

Also last week, the government agreed to protect workplace rights at risk of erasure when EU law is expunged from UK statutes. Under EU treaty provisions, women are entitled to be paid the same as men doing equivalent work as long as there is a common “source” – a condition that protects employees of outsource providers. Labour has committed to replicate that protection in UK law and the government has been shamed into pledging the same.

Earlier this year, it diluted the law that would have seen many other social protections automatically expunged from the statute book at the end of this year. This was a concession to investors who preferred continuity of existing rules to the Eurosceptic fantasy of a vast regulatory bonfire.

Last month, the government abandoned plans to require a UK-specific quality assurance mark for goods sold in Britain, recognising that the European CE mark will suffice “indefinitely”. That was a belated recognition that exporting businesses would need the European certification anyway and none wanted the additional cost of a superfluous UKCA mark – a pointless symbol of hollow sovereignty.

A pattern of discreet Brexit dilution is emerging. Each climbdown confirms hardline Eurosceptic suspicion that their dream is being betrayed. Mr Sunak is caught between a political obligation imposed by his party to pretend that leaving the EU was a great achievement and the economic requirement imposed by reality to palliate the cost of rupture from the continent. He can sustain this ludicrous posture only because the opposition is committed to a similar contortion – pledging closer proximity to the EU without substantial reintegration.

This would be a manageable problem if the pain from Brexit were stable or likely to ease. But the opposite is true. Brexit was not an event, it set a trajectory. It is not an obstacle to be worked around, but a course to be corrected.

That will take time. The bilateral structures that might bring the UK and the EU into closer political and economic alignment barely even exist and there is not yet the political will to conjure them into being. But the alternative is worsening economic debilitation for the sake of a doctrine avowed by a dwindling number of people. The tacit encroachment of reality-based thinking into Mr Sunak’s European policy is a welcome shift. The moment when that reality is expressed with a fuller voice cannot come too soon.

Sunak said: “We have worked with our EU partners to make sure that this is the right deal for the UK, unlocking unparalleled research opportunities, and also the right deal for British taxpayers.”

The deal was sealed after a call between Sunak and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on Wednesday night.

According to a Downing Street statement, the UK will also rejoin the EU’s Copernicus Earth observation satellite programme, which has been crucial in monitoring this summer’s weather events, including wildfires across Europe.

But the EU has agreed to the UK’s demand not to rejoin the Euratom programme. The UK will instead pursue a domestic fusion energy strategy.

The European Commission said the UK would contribute about £2.6bn on average a year to Horizon and Copernicus, with the UK’s contributions due to start from January 2024. Downing Street said this would also “provide breathing space to boost the participation of UK researchers in open calls for grants before we start paying into the programme”.

The deal is being seen as another reset moment for relations between the UK and the EU. Von der Leyen said: “The EU and UK are key strategic partners and allies, and today’s agreement proves that point. We will continue to be at the forefront of global science and research.”

The science community expressed immense relief the deal was finally over the line. Sir Adrian Smith, president of the Royal Society, described the announcement as “fantastic news not just for the UK but for scientists across the EU and for all the people of Europe”.

Paul Nurse, director of the Francis Crick Institute, said he was “thrilled to finally see that partnerships with EU scientists can continue”.

He added: “This is an essential step in re-building and strengthening our global scientific standing. Thank you to the huge number of researchers in the UK and across Europe who, over many years, didn’t give up on stressing the importance of international collaboration for science.”

Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said: “There will be relief throughout the research community that the uncertainty of the last two-and-a-half years has come to an end.

“Nearly three-quarters of respondents to our survey of cancer researchers cited funding from the EU as important for their work, showing how crucial Horizon Europe association is for the future of cancer research.”

In a statement, the European Commission said: “Today’s agreement remains fully in line with the EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement (TCA). The UK will be required to contribute financially to the EU budget and is subject to all the safeguards of the TCA.”