Does turning away Europeans with valid paperwork really make British borders ‘safe and secure’? It’s hard to imagine
EU-derived air pollution laws that will be removed under the retained EU law bill.
Dozens of chemicals banned in the EU are still available for use in the UK.
Thirty-six pesticides banned in the EU have not been outlawed in the UK.
The UK is falling behind on reducing carbon emissions as the EU implements carbon pricing.
The EU is compensating those who are struggling to afford the costs of the green transition, while the UK is not.
The EU is implementing stricter regulations on battery recycling, while the UK is not.
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After talks with Canada hit a halt alongside those with US and India, the UK has limited Pacific agreements to show for Brexit
Negotiations over a trade deal between the UK and Canada have been halted after disagreements on beef and cheese tariffs.
The ability for the UK to secure its own global free trade deals was sold as one major benefit from the UK’s decision to leave the EU but progress has been mixed. Here we look at what agreements have been struck so far and with whom, and which other important economies are still at the negotiating table and why.
Trade deals agreed so far
Japan When in late 2020 the then international secretary, Liz Truss, signed the UK’s first major post-Brexit free trade agreement, she said that when it came into force the next year it would boost trade between the two countries by billions of pounds annually.
However, exports to Japan have not quite received the turbo charge promised, falling to £11.9bn in the year to June 2022, from £12.3bn the year before. This included a 4.9% fall in export for goods, to £6.1bn, while services fell 2%, to £5.8bn.
Australia The deal in December 2021 was almost entirely focused on goods, with tariffs being eliminated on exports from both countries for a 15-year period. The government said it would unlock £10.4bn of additional trade with the country by the 2030s while ending tariffs on all UK exports.
Others were not so positive, with UK farmers angry that Australia had been given full access to sell beef and sheep meat in the UK while there was a ban on beef going the other way. A year later, George Eustice, the former environment minister who was part of the negotiations, said it “was not actually a very good deal for Britain” and “gave away far too much for far too little in return”.
New Zealand This February 2022 deal largely mirrored the Australian one, with similar concerns from UK meat farmers about being undercut by cheaper imports. Tariffs of up to 10% on products were removed from most products, while visa restrictions for travel and residency were eased.
The government estimated that this would add £800m a year to the UK economy by the mid-2030s but the overall impact was negligible, representing just a 0.03% boost to GDP by 2035. The Australian and New Zealand trade deals came into effect in last May.
The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership While technically not a new trade deal, the UK’s joining of the CPTPP means a range of export products can be traded tariff-free with the member nations, which include Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, Canada and Mexico but not the US. The deal, agreed last March, also means countries must adhere to certain unified regulations, such as food standards.
However, the CPTPP arrangements can be overridden by individual trade deals with specific countries, which is why the UK is still trying to secure direct deals with member states such as Canada. Analysis has found that exporting to countries in the CPTPP accounted for 8% of UK exports in 2019, less than the UK’s total trade with Germany.
The deals still not struck
The US Negotiations began in May 2020 and nearly four years later there is no prospect of an agreement any time soon. Last month Joe Biden signalled he had shelved plans for a deal until at least after this November’s US presidential election.
India When negotiations began between India and the UK at the start of 2022, it was hoped that by as early as that October there would be a deal reducing tariffs on exports such as cars and Scottish whisky and providing better access to the world’s fifth biggest economy. However, we are still waiting, with experts saying any pact is unlikely before the Indian national elections this spring.
Others As well as Canada, talks are continuing with other nations including Israel, Mexico and South Korea. The UK began negotiating with the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, in July 2022. Experts have predicted that a deal with Switzerland, which is the sixth biggest market for the UK to export services to, could be the next reached.
This week sees the introduction of new government policy on the control of EU produce entering the UK, with firms fearing delays, rising costs and the ability of border posts to cope.
‘Before Brexit, we could phone up on Monday and have the plants here by Wednesday – it was dead easy,” says Richard McKenna, managing director of Provender Nurseries, as he stands surrounded by trolleys holding hundreds of plants at its 8 hectare (20 acre) site in Swanley, Kent.
From its base in the garden of England, Provender is one of the country’s largest wholesale nurseries, selling up to 5,000 different lines of plants and trees to 11,000 businesses across the south-east. More than half are imported directly from countries in the EU. “We bring in product from across Europe – we have imported around €2.5m this year,” he says.
Post-Brexit requirements mean that Provender now has to secure phytosanitary certificates – health checks – before plants can be shipped, costing tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds each year and sometimes adding a week to delivery times.
McKenna is now bracing for more delays and costs. In April, many animal and plant products coming from mainland Europe will have to undergo physical checks at newly installed UK border posts. “With the changes, it is all a big unknown. The biggest unknowns are the cost of delay, the cost of damage – it’s just more added costs,” he says.
And McKenna is not alone in his concern. Importers of plants, meat and dairy products from mainland Europe are now readying themselves for the most significant change to how goods arrive in the UK since it left the single market three years ago.
This week the government will fire the starting gun on its new border policy. The catchily named border target operating model (BTOM) will look to mirror the controls the EU has for UK companies trying to export to mainland Europe.
From Wednesday, all imported plant and animal products will be categorised as low, medium or high risk. Those seen as medium and high, which includes meat and dairy products, as well as most plants, will now require checks from plant health inspectors or vets before they can be transported.
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Health minister Dame Andrea Leadsom has dismissed the concerns of UK small business owners regarding increased costs and checks at the UK/EU border as the “price you pay” for Brexit.
Speaking on the morning media round, Ms Leadsom defended the costly brand new system for physical checks at the border, telling Sky News that “businesses are used to the costs of doing business”, and that they might consider “changing their trading arrangemnets with the EU” to bring down costs.
Ms Leadsom said: “Leaving the single market was always going to have implications.
I've had many constituency cases over the years of people who have changed their trading arrangements with the European Union as a result of different frictions, whether it's postal cost changing, whether it's border control”.
When asked if she was suggesting that businesses stop buying from Europe, the former business secretary said: “No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that businesses need to adapt to meet the changing environment. There are huge opportunities from the rest of the world.”
She added: “Obviously, what some businesses will do is continue to trade with the EU and absorb those costs, and others will choose to find access from elsewhere. But I think the key point is the UK has big opportunities from leaving the EU.”
Boris Johnson has attacked Rishi Sunak’s new Brexit deal with the DUP – warning that it could tie the UK to EU trade rules in future.
Mr Sunak’s government revealed new arrangements to remove routine checks on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland in a bid to restore power-sharing at Stormont.
Checks required under the previous so-called “green lane” will be further reduced – a tweak aimed at fixing some of the unresolved mess left by Mr Johnson’s Brexit deal.
The former PM – who has repeatedly criticised Mr Sunak since he was kicked out of No 10 – called on his successor to have the “courage” to ditch more Brussels regulations.
“We must retain the appetite and the courage to diverge from the low-growth high-regulation European model,” said Mr Johnson on X, formerly Twitter.
Last night Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, said his party was not split on the new deal and that support for it was “absolutely decisive”.
Later, MPs will pass statutory instruments that pave the way for Stormont to finally get a functioning government after nearly two years of impasse over the post-Brexit arrangements.
The Department of Trade and Industry has cherry-picked statistics to suggest the project has been a success
In the run-up to the 2016 referendum, Conservative campaigners sold Brexit as the answer to all of the country’s problems. Leaving the EU would transform the UK’s economic prospects, making us all richer. It would free up money to spend on the country’s public services, most notably the NHS. It would restore control over the country’s immigration system, helping to reduce migration levels.
Four years after Britain left the EU, and this Brexit manna is still yet to transpire. Little surprise: the campaign for Brexit remains perhaps the most dishonest political movement this country has ever seen. It is true that the referendum result itself did not push the UK into recession as then-chancellor George Osborne predicted. But none of the false promises has materialised. Brexit has left the UK poorer in the long term, and the deal negotiated by Boris Johnson pushed Northern Ireland into a damaging political stasis. Of course that has not stopped the government claiming it has been an unrivalled success. Last week, the Department of Trade and Industry published what can only be described as political propaganda, consisting of cherry-picked statistics to create the illusion that four years on, Brexit has delivered nothing but benefits.
This document reflects the depressing reality that today’s Conservative party is very much the political successor of the official campaign to Vote Leave, which lied to voters that Brexit would not involve painful trade-offs, engaged in a “clear misuse of official statistics” for deploying the false claim that leaving the EU would free up £350m a week for the NHS and which implausibly suggested that staying in the EU would mean sharing a border with Syria and Iraq. We are to believe that the UK’s economy has been re-engineered for the better because of a collection of free trade deals, the vast majority of which simply replace those the UK had access to via the EU anyway: the UK’s accession to the trans-pacific partnership, estimated by the government to be worth only 0.06% of GDP by 2040; and a handful of “global trade wins” that include greater access to the Mexico market for pork producers, and improved access to the Chinese beauty market, which has nothing to do with Brexit according to the British Beauty Council, and is far outweighed by the £850m it says the beauty industry has lost as a result of leaving the EU.
In presenting such an incomplete picture, this official government document is highly misleading. It is the most basic of economics that you cannot evaluate the impact of a policy like Brexit on a country’s economy without looking at both its costs and its benefits; to list only one side of the balance sheet is worse than useless. The overall impact of Brexit on the economy has been to make us much poorer. Analysis from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research estimates that at the end of last year, GDP was between 2% and 3% lower than it would have been had the UK not left the EU; the equivalent of an £850 per person loss in national income, rising to £2,300 per capita by 2035. Erecting trade barriers with our biggest and closest trading partner to chase free trade deals with smaller economies on the other side of the world could never pay off. Moreover, levels of business investment are down 30% compared with its pre-referendum trend.
This is an impoverishment the UK can ill afford. While government ministers go on the airwaves to trumpet partial statistics celebrating British economic success, the reality of people’s wages and household incomes tell a different story. Analysis from the Resolution Foundation shows that real wages will be no higher in 2024 than they were in 2006, a terrible tale of stagnation. External factors like the war in Ukraine have contributed to rising energy bills and food prices, but Brexit has not only made household incomes less resilient to these shocks, but through its impact on the levels of the pound, has itself acted to drive up inflation.
This is quite apart from the impact Brexit has had on governance in Northern Ireland. Brexit is not the only destabilising influence but has unquestionably contributed to the tensions that led to the collapse of the Northern Ireland executive between 2017 and 2020, and again from 2020 until just this last week. The latest reimagining of the border checks in the Irish Sea necessitated by Brexit has led to the restoration of power sharing which was sealed yesterday. But with some issues still unresolved, there is no guarantee that this deal will sustain it for the long term. Meanwhile, net migration has continued to increase since Brexit as a matter of economic necessity, not least to fill urgent staff shortages in the NHS and care system.
The Tories’ Brexit populism was never going to win them long-term success at the ballot box because their promises were built on sand. A poll last week found 57% of people think Brexit has been more of a failure; just 13% think it has been more of a success. But whether or not the public blames Brexit for the state of the economy, the polls suggest voters are prepared to hold the government accountable for the cost of living crisis and the state of the NHS. Ministers are unlikely to escape their complicity in misleading the public and inflicting economic pain on the country; but not before they have wreaked untold damage to the UK’s long-term interests.
Authority weighs up legal action against government over new checks on imported meat taking place 22 miles inland
The Port of Dover could become a target for criminals smuggling illegal and diseased meat into the country under new post-Brexit plans that will involve lorries from the continent being checked 22 miles inland, the port’s health authority has warned.
The Dover Port Health Authority (DPHA) is now considering legal action against the government over its decision to end physical checks of imported meat at a post within the port. Instead, lorries will be directed to a new checking facility half an hour’s drive up the M20 at Sevington, Ashford.
My son says it means taking out the player without getting the ball, all while shouting ‘Brexit means Brexit’. Sound familiar?
For the umpteenth time, my son, with an Ikea stuffed ball he has had since infancy, is playing football in the living room. He is joined by one of his best friends, an equally football-obsessed 10-year-old who, before slide-tackling in what can only be described as a deliberate attempt to knock my son’s legs off, shouts: “Brexit means Brexit!” Confused, I pass it off as an example of tweenage precocity: which 10-year-old is happy to quote Theresa May while playing football?
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So where did the “Brexit tackle” come from? The phrase “Brexit means Brexit” became a joke right from its inception because it was so obviously meaningless – as even a Tory minister admitted at the time. In the face of great complexity, we were given what Fintan O’Toole called “ludicrous tautology”. That young people now repeat the political slogan during aggressive play should tell us that the phrase has become symbolic of a kind of empty-headed belligerence. If we keep in mind that the tackler is willing to hurt themselves – either by getting sent off the pitch or injuring themselves physically – then it can also be read as a pugnacious attempt to make things worse for yourself, just to make a point.
There’s a healthy dose of irreverence in there too – you have to admit, there’s something very funny about one child barking “Brexit means Brexit!” to another in a muddy park. You get the sense they’re having fun at older generations’ expense. Ask any parent of a tweenager or older: no one is better able to comprehensively make fun of, or call attention to, adult flaws and hypocrisy.
By adopting “Brexit means Brexit” and transforming it into a symbol of almost dangerously rough play, you get the sense that children are holding up a mirror to the adult world. They’re using it as a joke, to be sure, but it’s a timely reminder that politicians’ words and political stances extend far beyond the immediate context, seeping into the fabric of our children’s lives. Their playful satire draws on the overt aggression of our Punch and Judy politics, which started at Westminster and has now made it on to the school football pitch. Wouldn’t it be nice to have politicians whose shallowness and hypocrisy aren’t so easily mocked by 10-year-olds?
The irony may be that Nigel Farage has done more for unification than generations of Republicans
Aweek before the Brexit vote on 23 June 2016, a reporter from an Irish radio station caught up with Nigel Farage on the campaign trail. He asked the Ukip leader if Britain’s departure from the EU would have any implications for the island of Ireland.
“Don’t worry, we’ll still buy your Guinness,” replied Farage, which chimed with the leave side’s broader dismissal of the consequences for the Good Friday agreement arising from the vote.
As it turned out, Brexit had a profound impact on Ireland – not least that it put the constitutional question firmly on the table. Before the Brexit referendum, very few people expected a border poll on Irish unity to take place within the following 25 to 50 years. Northern Ireland was settling into peaceful coexistence. Once implacable foes, the DUP and Sinn Féin ruled together in a power-sharing administration. But everything changed the day after the result was called: Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Féin deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, called for a border poll. For the first time in living memory, the main political parties in Dublin began addressing the issue of Irish unity.
The genius of the Good Friday agreement is that it smoothed over grievances that had plunged Northern Ireland into decades of bloody conflict. People could choose to be British, Irish, Northern Irish, European, or all of these. What’s more, the border between the six counties of Northern Ireland with the 26-county southern state – a source of deep antagonism for many in the nationalist community – had been made invisible through the UK and Ireland’s common membership of the EU.
Brexit sundered the legislative underpinning of the historic 1998 peace accord. People were once again forced to choose between being British or Irish as the UK’s exit from the bloc undermined Northern Ireland’s “shared space” that enabled people to have fluid identities.
More importantly, however, Brexit tested Northern Ireland’s position within the union, perhaps more than any other event over the past century. Hardline Brexiters wanted a complete exit from the EU, including leaving the customs union and single market. The EU insisted that the UK honour its obligation to maintain a seamless border between the north and south of Ireland as part of the peace accord. The two positions were irreconcilable.
To break the impasse, the Irish government proposed putting the border down the Irish Sea, which prompted a furious backlash from unionists. They said that they would never accept any border that put Northern Ireland on a different constitutional footing from the rest of the UK. They were given reassurance in 2019 when, during his campaign to become prime minister, Boris Johnson gave a solemn pledge to unionists that he would never accept a border down the Irish Sea. In October 2019, he signed a deal that put a customs border down the Irish Sea. Even though Johnson had no intention of honouring this legally binding agreement, it was a profound jolt to unionism.
Opinion polls show that the majority of people in the Republic of Ireland want a border poll within five years and will vote for a united Ireland, with caveats. People in Northern Ireland want a border poll over a 10-year timeframe but the majority want to stay in the union. In reality, it is impossible to gauge the appetite for unification among people on both sides of the border until they know what a “new” Ireland would look like. Is it a reversal of the current arrangement whereby the devolved Stormont administration could continue in a federal Ireland, with unionists free to maintain their British citizenship? Would a united Ireland have a new flag? A new constitution? A new national anthem? These are extremely complex issues, not least for people in the republic who cherish these symbols and are reluctant to give them up.
If there is to be a referendum, there needs to be extensive dialogue between nationalist and unionist communities in Northern Ireland and the south. The Dublin government is wary about planning for unification in case it further destabilises an already fragile political backdrop in Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, the main unionist political parties refuse to engage in any talks about a united Ireland, although they privately acknowledge that a border poll is coming. Just as republicans never accepted British rule in Northern Ireland, hardline unionists and loyalists will never accept a united Ireland.
Ultimately, a border poll will be decided by the growing middle ground in Northern Ireland – moderate unionists and nationalists and those who identify as neither. They will want reassurance over identity and rights in any new dispensation, but by far the biggest factor that will sway their votes is economics.
This is the biggest challenge facing advocates for a united Ireland. People in the republic will not vote for unification if it means paying more taxes. People in Northern Ireland will not vote to make themselves poorer. The UK government transfers about £10bn every year to plug Northern Ireland’s fiscal deficit. Not only would Dublin have to guarantee this annual subvention, it would have to show that Northern Ireland could prosper after unification.
Again, Brexit could play a role. Ireland’s economy is booming thanks in part to investment that would have otherwise gone to the UK before its departure from the EU. The UK economy has been suffering since the 2016 vote. Ironically, Brexiters such as Farage have done more for Irish unity than the countless Irish republicans who have made blood sacrifices in the name of freedom over the past few centuries.
German Deli in east London is known for its wide variety of traditional sausages, but the post-Brexit border changes brought in last month means stocks are running worryingly low.
Offering 22 types of fresh sausage, from the classic Bavarian leberwurst to the Oktoberfest currywurst, the online retailer has become popular with expats and lovers of German cuisine since it launched in 2004.
But the company’s accounts manager, Susann Schmieder, says: “We only have stuff left over from before the new border changes came in, and those are approaching their best before dates.”
It has not received a delivery of sausages at its warehouse in Walthamstow since 31 January, when the government brought in the first stage of its border target operating model (BTOM), which requires a vet to sign off all meat and dairy imports before they can be shipped.
“The issue is our supplier is still waiting for feedback from their local food and veterinary office on which papers and checks they need,” Schmieder said.
German Deli is far from alone. Other UK delis are struggling to stock some of their staple goods as their European suppliers wrestle with new the post-Brexit import rules. One in London that stocks products from across the continent expects a dozen of its providers to stop exporting to the UK because of the new red tape.
Another, ScandiKitchen, also in London, has stopped stocking 20 items, largely sausages and pates, because of confusion about what was required
Its managing director, Jonas Aurell, who has run the business since 2006, said: “Our main suppliers are struggling to get all the paperwork together and getting their head around it. We’re looking for other suppliers to fill the gap.”
Another key supplier had abandoned the UK completely because it did not have the resources to cope with the paperwork, instead focusing on its domestic market, he said.
Schmieder, who says she has lost sleep over the situation, said German authorities were still unsure of what exactly UK government required.
“When I rang the UK government to ask what our supplier needed to do, it said I had to get in contact with our local veterinary office in Germany. It’s completely stupid,” she said.
Even if her supplier does get through the certificate impasse, it has said it will probably have to cut the number of sausage types it supplies from 16 to just four, because of the cost and time associated with obtaining the health certificates.
Major disruption at the border has been averted so far by the government taking a light-touch approach to the checking paperwork, but it will introduce new border checks on 30 April that will involve astricter regime for those that do not have correct documentation.
David Josephs, the chief executive of Panzer’s Delicatessen in St John’s Wood, north London, said the latest requirements were just adding another layer of red tape for businesses trying to bring in products from Europe.
“The addition of this paperwork, on top of what has come before, has led to lots of suppliers saying, ‘No way. We’re not doing this any more, it’s just not worth it,’” he said.
Since the country left the EU single market, 37 of his regular suppliers had stopped exporting to the UK, he said. He expects a dozen more will probably opt out as a result of the new rules.
Andreas Gheorgiou, the managing director of Andreas in Chelsea, London, said the health certificates meant it was harder to get meat products such as chicken and pork, and he expected more problems to come from his most remote suppliers.
“If the supplier is in the middle of the Tuscan mountains, finding an actual vet to do it, and do it to the standard it needs to be done, would be hard,” he added.
A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “The new necessary border controls follow extensive consultation with industry and will be introduced progressively to protect the UK’s biosecurity from potentially harmful pests and diseases while maintaining trust in our exports.
“We are confident that our border control posts will have sufficient capacity and capability to handle the volume and type of expected checks, while we have engaged closely with EU member states to ensure they are prepared for these changes and have so far expressed a high level of confidence in their ability to meet this.”
