Britain now has Europe's WORST Covid outbreak as rapid spread of Indian variant sees nation overtake Spain to have continent's highest daily infection rate
Statistics compiled by the Oxford University-based research platform Our World in Data revealed that 107.3 people per million in the UK have tested positive for the virus in the last seven days.
UK closes in on US tariffs ceasefire after Brussels deal
Under the agreement reached between the EU and US, tariffs on $11.5bn (£8.2bn) of goods including wine, tractors and cheese, will be removed for five years.
The dispute over state subsidies provided to European giant Airbus and US rival Boeing dates back to 2004 and ignited transatlantic trade tensions during the Trump presidency.
1. Why does the EU have to make things so difficult for the British Isles (for want of a better term) in relation to Northern Ireland? When we were in the EU, there were no similar restrictions imposed to the parts of the British Isles that were not in the EU, such as The Channel Islands or the Isle of Man. Similarly, the Canary Islands seem to have all sorts of exemptions, allowing them to be in or out of the EU whenever it suits. It's almost as though the EU is being sulky and vindictive.
2. The various bits about petrol prices in this thread. There are only 3 significant oil exporters/producers in the Continent of Europe. Russia, Norway, and the UK. None of which are in the EU. Being in or out of the EU is irrelevant to pricing. The simple reasons why petrol is expensive in this country are because of the taxes we impose and the pandemic.
British politics is still drunk on Brexit spirit, and Boris Johnson won’t call time
There is a simple reason why Boris Johnson and European leaders failed to find common ground over Brexit at last week’s G7 summit. They are not even talking about the same thing.
For the British prime minister, Brexit is a matter of national character that cannot be described in legal documents. For continental politicians, legal texts contain the true meaning of a project that only exists in the real world as a set of rules to be implemented. To Johnson, the withdrawal agreement was a single-use tool for levering himself out of a tight spot. For Brussels, it is the chamber into which Britain levered itself.
That difference will continue to cause friction because it is not a misunderstanding. Johnson knows that legal arguments over the Northern Ireland protocol favour the European position. He chooses not to care. To concede on the principle that any part of the UK is subject to European regulatory standards – the compromise he signed to avoid a land border on the island of Ireland – would be to admit that a portion of sovereignty was conceded in the negotiations.
That would be a stain on his self-image as the man who made a clean break from Brussels. He finds confrontation more appealing, not least because he expects it to achieve more than compliance. Whether that is true depends on how you define achievement.
Johnson’s calculation doesn’t prioritise peace in Northern Ireland. If it did, he would spend time telling the Unionist community that customs checks at Irish Sea ports were an administrative fact of life after Brexit but not a precursor to severance from the UK. He would have applied some effort to rebutting the most paranoid, sectarian interpretations of the protocol. Instead he has gamed and inflamed the grievance in the belief that the threat of conflagration puts pressure on the EU to make concessions.
If Northern Ireland is on fire, any insistence from Brussels on maximum implementation of rules on sausage imports will look callous and disproportionate. The prime minister expects to avoid meeting his treaty obligations in much the same way that an arsonist expects to avoid paying insurance premiums on the house he is torching.
That technique will not do much for Britain’s reputation abroad, but Johnson’s mind rarely strays far from his domestic audience, to whom he will explain that everything is the EU’s fault. His party and most of the media will endorse that interpretation, as it always has done. Labour will shuffle uncomfortably on the opposition benches. It is a wearyingly familiar conundrum for Keir Starmer: how to prove that Johnson is the author of European strife, without sounding like Brussels’ barrister, appealing against a verdict already handed down by the court of public opinion.
When Johnson’s critics say he must be held accountable for Brexit, they use that word to mean the process and cost of severing ties with Britain’s neighbours and losing frictionless access to their markets. That is the remainer definition, even when used by people who accept there is no remain cause left to fight. When Tories say “Brexit” they mean it in the wider sense of a cultural revolution, sustained by belief and national pride.
All revolutions demand constant vigilance against disloyalty. The project’s goals are too abstract to be attainable in any economically useful sense – there are no new jobs in the sovereignty-manufacturing sector – so momentum is maintained by always reimagining and refighting the old enemy.
Starmer has no intention of disinterring EU membership. He knows that Labour’s route to a Commons majority passes through many leave-voting constituencies. But for the same reason, Johnson needs Labour to represent a suite of social attitudes that indicate persistent remainishness of the heart.
In Downing Street’s strategic conception of the electorate, the prime minister represents a mainstream of commonsense, red-blooded patriots, while the Labour leader stands for nitpicking, naysaying, “woke” scolds and herbivores. The cleavage is artificial but resonant. Even when Starmer is closer than the Tories to majority opinion – as he has been on the need for timely lockdowns and cautious reopenings during the pandemic – he gets no credit because he is typecast as that guy who tuts on the sidelines. He sounds remainy even though he never talks about Europe.
This is the long tail of Brexitism – a political mode that has its genesis in the referendum but has evolved into something much wider. Its defining feature is the flight from complex reality to symbols and fantasy. That is the habit that devotees had to cultivate in themselves to win the 2016-19 liberation struggle.
Theresa May was broken by the attempt to divert the frothing stream of leaver demands down narrow channels of responsible statecraft. Her successor declared such restraint unnecessary, and then appeared to prove the point by getting a Brexit deal done. The trick was to sign the treaty without intending to honour it.
All who serve in the current cabinet have signed up to the Johnsonian code of conduct that makes evidence and truth subordinate to the performance of boosterism. Sometimes facts fight through. Science has prevailed in the formulation of Covid policy, but not always by the most direct route. In other areas Brexitism sets the tone. There are ambitions for “levelling up” and “building back better”, but they are rhetorical zeppelins, floating on the political horizon, carrying no cargo of policy. Real-world government is a sequence of arguments over what is available on current budgets and, if more cash is needed, who will pay. Any serious plan for green energy, or reducing NHS waiting lists or reforming social care begins by telling the public about tough choices and present sacrifice for future gain.
Johnson has been forced to deliver unpalatable messages in many live coronavirus press conferences over the past year, and visibly hated every second of it. Po-faced seriousness was supposed to lie abandoned on the far shore of the Rubicon that was crossed to reach Brexit. And the journey continues, because Brexit is not really a destination but a state of mind. It is not something that government can do, but a way of deferring all the things government should be doing but would rather not contemplate. It is the drink that British politics takes in the morning to postpone the hangover for another day, and Johnson is the national bartender. He keeps the tab open and the punters in good cheer, while the ever-sober Starmer pounds his joyless temperance drum outside.
UK food and drink exports to EU fall by almost half
UK exports of food and drink to the EU dropped by almost half in the first three months of 2021 from a year earlier, in what trade groups said was a measure of the impact of post-Brexit trade barriers.
Produce to the value of £1.7bn was exported to European countries in the first quarter of the year, down 46.6 per cent from 2020, according to the Food and Drink Federation, an industry body.
The decline from 2019, when exports were unaffected by the pandemic, was even greater — a drop of 55.1 per cent, or £2bn.
‘Sold the farm!' - SNP skewers Brexit deal with Australia over fears for British jobs
The SNP Westminster leader appeared on the 17th episode of BBC Question Time to discuss where the Brexit deal sets "a terrible precedent and threatens the long-term viability of British farming". The National Farmers Union has flagged a lack of detail in the trade bill and expressed fears British jobs will be harmed by the tariff-free agreement.
Mr Blackford told host Fiona Bruce he believed the Australia trade deal will flood the UK market with Australian goods and threaten the livelihoods of many British farmers.
He said: "I have to say I'm deeply worried about what this means for farming and indeed for crofters as well.
1. Why does the EU have to make things so difficult for the British Isles (for want of a better term) in relation to Northern Ireland? When we were in the EU, there were no similar restrictions imposed to the parts of the British Isles that were not in the EU, such as The Channel Islands or the Isle of Man. Similarly, the Canary Islands seem to have all sorts of exemptions, allowing them to be in or out of the EU whenever it suits. It's almost as though the EU is being sulky and vindictive.
2. The various bits about petrol prices in this thread. There are only 3 significant oil exporters/producers in the Continent of Europe. Russia, Norway, and the UK. None of which are in the EU. Being in or out of the EU is irrelevant to pricing. The simple reasons why petrol is expensive in this country are because of the taxes we impose and the pandemic.
AstraZeneca claims victory in bitter legal spat with EU over vaccine supplies
AstraZeneca said the EU had lost its legal case, but European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the court ruling supported its view that the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant had failed to honour its commitments.
The drugmaker had committed to do its best to deliver 300 million doses to the 27-nation bloc by the end of June, but production delays led it to revise this to 100 million vaccines.
Should it miss the deadlines in the ruling, AstraZeneca would face a penalty of “10 euros ($11.8) per dose not delivered”, the judge said, less than the 10 euros per dose per day fine the EU had sought in bringing its legal action.
AstraZeneca will remain bound to do its best to deliver 300 million doses to the EU, and a new hearing is to be held in September when compliance with the contract will be assessed again, the ruling said.
EU data shows the company has already shipped nearly 70 million doses, more than half of which were delivered after the start of the legal proceedings.
An EU lawyer also said the judgment meant that as a proof of best effort, AstraZeneca will have to deliver COVID-19 vaccines from a factory in Britain, if needed to meet its EU commitments.
The ruling said that AstraZeneca may have committed a serious breach of the contract by reserving Oxford BioMedica’s output for the British market. However a final decision on this will be made in a second legal case.
The EU last month launched a second legal action against AstraZeneca over an alleged breach of the supply contract, which will continue after the summer. Friday’s ruling was over whether AstraZeneca must speed up vaccine deliveries.
Your hands are tied, Boris! PM sent warning as UK backed into corner over EU fishing talks
The discussions were the first to take place since Boris Johnson signed the Trade and Corporation Agreement (TCA) with the EU in December 2020.
The historic agreement enables EU vessels to continue to plunder UK waters as it was agreed fishing quotas would be gradually reduced by just 25 percent over the next five years.
Barrie Deas, CEO of the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations (NFFO), says both sides did not want to set a precedent in the annual talks and insisted the UK was negotiating with "one hand tied".
"The UK negotiated with one hand tied because the terms of the TCA cede automatic access to the EU fleets until 2026."
A report by the NFFO, which represents fishermen in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said the discussions were "heavily shaped and constrained by the limitations imposed by the TCA"
The Brexit trade deal grants EU vessels access to UK waters up to the six-mile limit during the five year "adjustment period" - a crucial red line many fishing groups argue has been crossed.
The NFFO predicts more problems ahead after the UK and EU also failed to reach an agreement on non-quota stocks such as crab, lobster and scallops, which are estimated to account for almost a third of larger UK fleets' income.
'Even the French and Dutch didn't expect this!' Furious ex-MEP blasts Boris's Brexit deal
June Mummery told Express.co.uk that French and Dutch fishermen have told her they did not expect such favourable terms on fishing for European Union states that are outlined in the post-Brexit trade agreement. Ms Mummery added the UK's fishing industry must now survive the next five years, while it is locked into the post-Brexit terms outlined in Boris Johnson's deal.
The former Brexit Party MEP said: "Another 105 vessels have been granted licences to fish inside our 6-12, we did not even secure our 6-12 miles.
"I have had French fishermen and Dutch fishermen speak to me and say we did not even expect to be able to do that.
"They would have been happy with a 5 and a half year transitional period and having the rest.
"Talk about a bad deal and talk about dreadful negotiations.
Comments
Statistics compiled by the Oxford University-based research platform Our World in Data revealed that 107.3 people per million in the UK have tested positive for the virus in the last seven days.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9688847/Britain-Europes-WORST-Covid-outbreak-Indian-variant-sees-nation-overtake-Spain.html
Under the agreement reached between the EU and US, tariffs on $11.5bn (£8.2bn) of goods including wine, tractors and cheese, will be removed for five years.
The dispute over state subsidies provided to European giant Airbus and US rival Boeing dates back to 2004 and ignited transatlantic trade tensions during the Trump presidency.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/uk-closes-in-on-us-tariffs-ceasefire-after-brussels-deal/ar-AAL4nSE?ocid=msedgntp
There is a simple reason why Boris Johnson and European leaders failed to find common ground over Brexit at last week’s G7 summit. They are not even talking about the same thing.
For the British prime minister, Brexit is a matter of national character that cannot be described in legal documents. For continental politicians, legal texts contain the true meaning of a project that only exists in the real world as a set of rules to be implemented. To Johnson, the withdrawal agreement was a single-use tool for levering himself out of a tight spot. For Brussels, it is the chamber into which Britain levered itself.
That difference will continue to cause friction because it is not a misunderstanding. Johnson knows that legal arguments over the Northern Ireland protocol favour the European position. He chooses not to care. To concede on the principle that any part of the UK is subject to European regulatory standards – the compromise he signed to avoid a land border on the island of Ireland – would be to admit that a portion of sovereignty was conceded in the negotiations.
That would be a stain on his self-image as the man who made a clean break from Brussels. He finds confrontation more appealing, not least because he expects it to achieve more than compliance. Whether that is true depends on how you define achievement.
Johnson’s calculation doesn’t prioritise peace in Northern Ireland. If it did, he would spend time telling the Unionist community that customs checks at Irish Sea ports were an administrative fact of life after Brexit but not a precursor to severance from the UK. He would have applied some effort to rebutting the most paranoid, sectarian interpretations of the protocol. Instead he has gamed and inflamed the grievance in the belief that the threat of conflagration puts pressure on the EU to make concessions.
If Northern Ireland is on fire, any insistence from Brussels on maximum implementation of rules on sausage imports will look callous and disproportionate. The prime minister expects to avoid meeting his treaty obligations in much the same way that an arsonist expects to avoid paying insurance premiums on the house he is torching.
That technique will not do much for Britain’s reputation abroad, but Johnson’s mind rarely strays far from his domestic audience, to whom he will explain that everything is the EU’s fault. His party and most of the media will endorse that interpretation, as it always has done. Labour will shuffle uncomfortably on the opposition benches. It is a wearyingly familiar conundrum for Keir Starmer: how to prove that Johnson is the author of European strife, without sounding like Brussels’ barrister, appealing against a verdict already handed down by the court of public opinion.
When Johnson’s critics say he must be held accountable for Brexit, they use that word to mean the process and cost of severing ties with Britain’s neighbours and losing frictionless access to their markets. That is the remainer definition, even when used by people who accept there is no remain cause left to fight. When Tories say “Brexit” they mean it in the wider sense of a cultural revolution, sustained by belief and national pride.
All revolutions demand constant vigilance against disloyalty. The project’s goals are too abstract to be attainable in any economically useful sense – there are no new jobs in the sovereignty-manufacturing sector – so momentum is maintained by always reimagining and refighting the old enemy.
Starmer has no intention of disinterring EU membership. He knows that Labour’s route to a Commons majority passes through many leave-voting constituencies. But for the same reason, Johnson needs Labour to represent a suite of social attitudes that indicate persistent remainishness of the heart.
In Downing Street’s strategic conception of the electorate, the prime minister represents a mainstream of commonsense, red-blooded patriots, while the Labour leader stands for nitpicking, naysaying, “woke” scolds and herbivores. The cleavage is artificial but resonant. Even when Starmer is closer than the Tories to majority opinion – as he has been on the need for timely lockdowns and cautious reopenings during the pandemic – he gets no credit because he is typecast as that guy who tuts on the sidelines. He sounds remainy even though he never talks about Europe.
This is the long tail of Brexitism – a political mode that has its genesis in the referendum but has evolved into something much wider. Its defining feature is the flight from complex reality to symbols and fantasy. That is the habit that devotees had to cultivate in themselves to win the 2016-19 liberation struggle.
Theresa May was broken by the attempt to divert the frothing stream of leaver demands down narrow channels of responsible statecraft. Her successor declared such restraint unnecessary, and then appeared to prove the point by getting a Brexit deal done. The trick was to sign the treaty without intending to honour it.
All who serve in the current cabinet have signed up to the Johnsonian code of conduct that makes evidence and truth subordinate to the performance of boosterism. Sometimes facts fight through. Science has prevailed in the formulation of Covid policy, but not always by the most direct route. In other areas Brexitism sets the tone. There are ambitions for “levelling up” and “building back better”, but they are rhetorical zeppelins, floating on the political horizon, carrying no cargo of policy. Real-world government is a sequence of arguments over what is available on current budgets and, if more cash is needed, who will pay. Any serious plan for green energy, or reducing NHS waiting lists or reforming social care begins by telling the public about tough choices and present sacrifice for future gain.
Johnson has been forced to deliver unpalatable messages in many live coronavirus press conferences over the past year, and visibly hated every second of it. Po-faced seriousness was supposed to lie abandoned on the far shore of the Rubicon that was crossed to reach Brexit. And the journey continues, because Brexit is not really a destination but a state of mind. It is not something that government can do, but a way of deferring all the things government should be doing but would rather not contemplate. It is the drink that British politics takes in the morning to postpone the hangover for another day, and Johnson is the national bartender. He keeps the tab open and the punters in good cheer, while the ever-sober Starmer pounds his joyless temperance drum outside.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/british-politics-is-still-drunk-on-brexit-spirit-and-boris-johnson-won-t-call-time/ar-AAL5L1X?ocid=msedgntp
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/the-uk-shall-crumble-leo-varadkar-says-irish-reunification-will-happen-warning-to-no10/ar-AAL5POF?ocid=msedgntp
UK exports of food and drink to the EU dropped by almost half in the first three months of 2021 from a year earlier, in what trade groups said was a measure of the impact of post-Brexit trade barriers.
Produce to the value of £1.7bn was exported to European countries in the first quarter of the year, down 46.6 per cent from 2020, according to the Food and Drink Federation, an industry body.
The decline from 2019, when exports were unaffected by the pandemic, was even greater — a drop of 55.1 per cent, or £2bn.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/brexit/uk-food-and-drink-exports-to-eu-fall-by-almost-half/ar-AALaZvw?ocid=msedgntp
The SNP Westminster leader appeared on the 17th episode of BBC Question Time to discuss where the Brexit deal sets "a terrible precedent and threatens the long-term viability of British farming". The National Farmers Union has flagged a lack of detail in the trade bill and expressed fears British jobs will be harmed by the tariff-free agreement.
Mr Blackford told host Fiona Bruce he believed the Australia trade deal will flood the UK market with Australian goods and threaten the livelihoods of many British farmers.
He said: "I have to say I'm deeply worried about what this means for farming and indeed for crofters as well.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/sold-the-farm-snp-skewers-brexit-deal-with-australia-over-fears-for-british-jobs/ar-AALaV2A?ocid=msedgntp
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/music/chopper-s-politics-ireland-will-follow-the-uk-out-of-the-european-union-says-brexiteer-peer-kate-hoey/ar-AALax0P?ocid=msedgntp
AstraZeneca said the EU had lost its legal case, but European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the court ruling supported its view that the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant had failed to honour its commitments.
The drugmaker had committed to do its best to deliver 300 million doses to the 27-nation bloc by the end of June, but production delays led it to revise this to 100 million vaccines.
Should it miss the deadlines in the ruling, AstraZeneca would face a penalty of “10 euros ($11.8) per dose not delivered”, the judge said, less than the 10 euros per dose per day fine the EU had sought in bringing its legal action.
AstraZeneca will remain bound to do its best to deliver 300 million doses to the EU, and a new hearing is to be held in September when compliance with the contract will be assessed again, the ruling said.
EU data shows the company has already shipped nearly 70 million doses, more than half of which were delivered after the start of the legal proceedings.
An EU lawyer also said the judgment meant that as a proof of best effort, AstraZeneca will have to deliver COVID-19 vaccines from a factory in Britain, if needed to meet its EU commitments.
The ruling said that AstraZeneca may have committed a serious breach of the contract by reserving Oxford BioMedica’s output for the British market. However a final decision on this will be made in a second legal case.
The EU last month launched a second legal action against AstraZeneca over an alleged breach of the supply contract, which will continue after the summer. Friday’s ruling was over whether AstraZeneca must speed up vaccine deliveries.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-eu-brussels-b941464.html
The discussions were the first to take place since Boris Johnson signed the Trade and Corporation Agreement (TCA) with the EU in December 2020.
The historic agreement enables EU vessels to continue to plunder UK waters as it was agreed fishing quotas would be gradually reduced by just 25 percent over the next five years.
Barrie Deas, CEO of the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations (NFFO), says both sides did not want to set a precedent in the annual talks and insisted the UK was negotiating with "one hand tied".
"The UK negotiated with one hand tied because the terms of the TCA cede automatic access to the EU fleets until 2026."
A report by the NFFO, which represents fishermen in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said the discussions were "heavily shaped and constrained by the limitations imposed by the TCA"
The Brexit trade deal grants EU vessels access to UK waters up to the six-mile limit during the five year "adjustment period" - a crucial red line many fishing groups argue has been crossed.
The NFFO predicts more problems ahead after the UK and EU also failed to reach an agreement on non-quota stocks such as crab, lobster and scallops, which are estimated to account for almost a third of larger UK fleets' income.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/your-hands-are-tied-boris-pm-sent-warning-as-uk-backed-into-corner-over-eu-fishing-talks/ar-AALcPu1?ocid=msedgntp
June Mummery told Express.co.uk that French and Dutch fishermen have told her they did not expect such favourable terms on fishing for European Union states that are outlined in the post-Brexit trade agreement. Ms Mummery added the UK's fishing industry must now survive the next five years, while it is locked into the post-Brexit terms outlined in Boris Johnson's deal.
The former Brexit Party MEP said: "Another 105 vessels have been granted licences to fish inside our 6-12, we did not even secure our 6-12 miles.
"I have had French fishermen and Dutch fishermen speak to me and say we did not even expect to be able to do that.
"They would have been happy with a 5 and a half year transitional period and having the rest.
"Talk about a bad deal and talk about dreadful negotiations.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/even-the-french-and-dutch-didn-t-expect-this-furious-ex-mep-blasts-boris-s-brexit-deal/ar-AALcTpz?ocid=msedgntp
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/brexit-still-isn-t-done-but-we-certainly-have-been/ar-AALd9sq?ocid=msedgntp