UK-US Brexit trade deal ‘could fill supermarkets with cancer-risk bacon’
British stores could be flooded with “dangerous” bacon and ham from the US, marketed under misleading labels, as the result of a transatlantic trade deal, says the author of a new book based on a decade of investigation into the food industry.
The meat has been cured with nitrites extracted from vegetables, a practice not permitted by the European Commission because of evidence that it increases the risk of bowel cancer. But it is allowed in the US, where the product is often labelled as “all natural”. The powerful US meat industry is likely to insist that the export of nitrite-cured meat is a condition of a post-Brexit UK-US trade deal, which the UK government is under intense pressure to deliver.
Brexit Britain's victory over the EU on Covid vaccination is not what it seems
Sorry, but the reality is a little more complex – and not quite such a stunning UK victory.
True, Britain got a month’s head start on the EU by approving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at the start of December, and then AstraZeneca’s at the end of that month. It had to accept the terms offered by the pharmaceutical companies, however, both in paying a higher price per dose, and by waiving their civil liability in the event of adverse effects.
But, and there’s a very big but, the UK’s “success” is really an illusion: because to be fully effective, the vaccine requires two doses. And only 0.80% of the UK population has received both shots, less than that of France (0.92%), and a long way behind Denmark, which has 2.87% of its population fully vaccinated.
It is true that the EU made one massive blunder. And it can be blamed entirely on the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, not the EU as a whole. By rushing through curbs on vaccine exports after its spat with AstraZeneca, the commission, out of sheer clumsiness, managed to reignite political tensions arising from the Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland.
This was an incredible mistake and it happened only because the German president of the commission communicated exclusively with her German entourage. Had she kept the rest of the institution in the loop, the measure suspending a key part of the Northern Ireland protocol would never have seen the light of day.
But to speak of the EU’s “vaccine fiasco”, as some politicians and the media have, especially in Germany where there is political capital to be made from vaccine nationalism, is completely unjustified.
As Jacques Chirac, the former French president, used to say: only when the cattle fair is over can we count the cow dung.
Right now, the papers are focussing on things that are not important.
Financial services may well prove to be rather more important.
It is not directly relating to Brexit, but it is true to say that the current leadership are at a crossroads.
The Government want the best of both worlds. To be free to trade in Europe, while not agreeing to equivalence. It's nonsense to bleat about we are not held to the same rules as Canada. We are by far the biggest rival to the EU in Financial Services.
The UK seems to want to be both free to compete in the EU AND free to remove various things which would enable us to undercut the EU. Both in relation to subsidies/removal of worker rights to creating a relatively regulation-free Singapore-style model.
Project Fear stated that the City would already have lost 50,000 jobs to the EU. Hasn't happened-yet. Only 7,000 jobs so far-which is small in comparison to the number of jobs.
It may prove possible to diverge from EU rules on other matters. But not Financial Services. We need to choose 1 path, and 1 path only. Equivalence or what would effectively be a trade war.
I have no idea which path would be better. But trying to do both is likely to be the worst option.
Brexit gives us choices. But some of those are hard choices.
Brexit disruption in first weeks of year is sign of more to come, economists warn Difficulties cannot be dismissed as no more than teething problems, say experts
Disruption to trade seen in the first weeks of Brexit cannot be dismissed simply as “teething problems”, but represents the first signs of structural issues which will cut UK GDP for years to come, senior economists have said.
Although hard figures on the cost of quitting the single market and customs union will not emerge for a few months, experts speaking to The Independent said they had seen nothing during the first six weeks of 2021 to persuade them to amend forecasts of tens of billions of pounds of damage to the economy over the coming years.
The gloomy assessments came after the European Commission released the first formal analysis of the impact of Brexit to be compiled since the transition out of the EU’s structures on 1 January.
This predicted a 2.25 per cent hit to the UK economy by 2022 – equivalent to £40bn in lost growth over two years and more than four times the negative impact on the EU.
Boris Johnson’s government has refused to produce its own impact assessment of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement which the prime minister sealed on Christmas Eve.
Forecasts of a long-term hit to GDP as a result of Brexit were dismissed as “Project Fear” by Leave campaigners during the 2016 referendum campaign.
But Andrew Goodwin, chief UK economist at Oxford Economics, said that it was precisely the “non-tariff barriers” of additional form-filling, queueing and regulatory obstacles to trade identified by those studies which are now hitting sectors from fisheries to parcel delivery to financial services.
“All the reasons why studies like ours said that there’d be a hit to GDP are now becoming quite obvious,” he said. “And they are playing out pretty much as we said they would. What we’re seeing now in terms of delays and the cost of doing business are exactly what people like ourselves tried to model when we did our studies.
“The onus now is on the government to find ways of boosting growth in other ways.”
Rather than teething problems, the difficulties now being experienced are “the inevitable consequences of leaving the single market and the customs union”, he said.
“It’s now up to businesses to decide how they how they adapt to that. Either you keep going as you are and accept the delays as a fact of life or over time you change where you produce, do more of one thing in the UK and more of something else in the EU.”
Oxford Economics has previously forecast UK GDP will be around 3 per cent lower in the long term because of the gradual unrolling of Brexit impacts like reduced trade, loss of foreign direct investment and declining competitiveness.
And Mr Goodwin said that so far there was no indication that these expectations were misplaced: “Certainly we are heading to the sort of outcomes most of our studies forecast. We’re pretty happy with our estimate that we made back in 2016, and we see no reason to change it.”
Thomas Sampson, associate economics professor at the LSE, has predicted a 36 per cent fall in exports to the EU over the next decade.
He said it was too early to claim that economists’ forecasts been “validated” by the experience of recent weeks. The first tranche of hard data on exports is not expected from the Office for National Statistics until mid-March, and the full impact may not be known for years to come, he said.
But he said that anecdotal evidence from exporting businesses so far was “indicative that the change in relations is causing problems at the border”.
He said: “The evidence that there is some disruption is what you would expect, but how big the effect will be remains to be seen.
“At the moment we’re seeing what happens when you put in a customs border for UK exports to the EU. In July, we actually put in the customs border for UK imports from the EU. And then the other thing economists think is going to affect trade in the long run is, as the UK diverges from the EU in terms of policy and regulation that that will make it harder to trade.”
Dr Sampson said there was “some truth” in ministers’ description of disruption at the borders as “teething problems”, as companies would certainly get to grips with the additional form-filling as time went by.
But he said: “There are also permanent changes which are going to make trading harder, even once everyone understands the new system.
“You might need a staff member whose job it is to fill in those forms and that’s an additional cost for businesses. It’s going to take longer to cross the Channel. As we start to see regulatory divergence, potentially you have different standards on either side of the channel which imposes an additional cost.
“Those are the kind of things that will be permanent rather than just teething problems.”
King’s College London political scientist Prof Anand Menon, said he remained confident in the forecast of a 7 per cent hit to GDP over the next decade made by the UK in a Changing Europe think tank which he heads.
The problems reported over the last month and a half were “pretty much as we expected”, with the exception of the additional uncertainty generated by Covid.
“Some of it is teething problems, but the vast majority isn’t, and you’ve got to weigh the fact that the full gamut of checks isn’t even there yet, as controls on imports don’t come in until July,” he said.
“I don’t think you’ll find any economist who says ‘We need to change our forecast because of what we have seen since Brexit happened’,” Prof Menon told The Independent.
“One of the interesting things is you know you have this raft of forecasts that came out during the last four or five years. No one has seen it as necessary to revisit those forecasts. That tells you something, doesn’t it?
“We’re talking about long-term structural changes to the way we trade. The barriers that people expected are going to be there.”
Raab shrugs off Brexit troubles, urging people to take ‘10-year view’ Foreign secretary talks up global growth opportunities and says Brussels ‘imposing obstacles’ to trade
“I think if you take a 10-year view, as well as looking at the short-term risk, which is right to do, actually the growth opportunities in the future are going to come from emerging and developing economies around the world.”
Asked if this meant UK businesses should accept less trade with the EU and focus more on places such as Asia, Raab replied: “I wouldn’t put it quite in those terms, but it’s certainly right to say that we want to bank, if you like, the baseline of our European trade – it’s very important to us, and they are obviously our neighbours – but if you look at the opportunities for growth in the future for UK companies … the growth economies are going to come from the Indo-Pacific region.”
Raab also appeared to blame the EU for many of the barriers, saying the government was seeking to “reduce and mitigate as far as we can the bureaucratic obstacles that the EU is imposing”.
He was bullish about the idea of EU financial centres taking considerable business from the City of London, despite Amsterdam having overtaken London as Europe’s top share trading centre.
Raab said: “[The EU] may be able to, if you like, nick a bit of business here or there from the City, but the problem is, the measures they will take to achieve that undermine their own competitiveness.”
Covid has damaged our small businesses. Now Brexit might finish them off Multinationals can just about cope with the new UK-EU trading rules, but independent businesses are mired in problems
If you had to design a scenario guaranteed to fatten up big business while squashing the rest of the economy, it would probably resemble what Britain is living through.
Thousands of independent businesses are shuttered up. Amazon and the big supermarkets, boosted by the suspension of anything other than “essential” retail but gleefully selling a huge range of stuff, have carved up consumer spending between them. And the economic impact of Covid-19 is now fusing with an issue that will endure even as lockdown restrictions are eventually eased: the dire effects of Brexit on smaller companies staring into the future with a mixture of fear and bafflement.
Amid the pandemic, there is not much room for this story to intrude. But week by week, things are starting to become clear. Figures to be published today in the latest Manufacturing Barometer survey of small and medium-sized firms show that two-thirds of such companies have seen negative price changes in their supply chains since leaving the EU. A majority, meanwhile, have seen post-Brexit “complications” with both exporting and importing. Roughly a week ago, it was reported that exports going from the UK to EU countries via British ports were down 68% year on year. By summer, the burgeoning crisis that all of this highlights may have burst into the political foreground.
We are not going to get "clear figures" as to what economic effect Brexit may have anytime soon.
Nothing to do with Brexit. Everything to do with the seismic economic change that is Covid-19. Which has totally changed the economic picture. And is the reason why the papers have nothing to report on bar meaningless tittle-tattle. We will probably never be able to accurately forecast how much damage Brexit has done.
PS. You know a reporter is getting desperate when they refer to "anecdotal evidence". That would be baseless gossip, then.
Power struggle' The main news for the Financial Times is the end of what it calls a "power struggle at the heart of Downing Street" - won by Mr Johnson's former Brexit negotiator, Lord Frost.
The peer has been given a seat in the Cabinet, charged with overseeing the UK's future relationship with the EU - replacing Michael Gove, who the FT says was given the job on an interim basis "only two days ago".
Whitehall sources tell the paper Lord Frost "had demanded a ministerial role" to shape Britain's EU relations and threatened to resign as the prime minister's adviser if he failed to get his way.
Petty Rejoiners MOCK Brexit as Lord Frost given top role - 'Thought Brexit was done?'
Labour MP Geraint Davies tweeted: "Lord Frost, whose negotiation lost us 68 percent of EU exports, is given responsibility for EU relations as, once again, incompetent loyalty is put before national interest."
Arch Europhile and former Labour minister Lord Adonis commented: "Remember we were told that Brexit was 'done'?
"Month two and Johnson has just appointed a Brexit minister because it's all falling apart."
Another anti-Brexit Twitter user added: "Nothing says you got Brexit done as much as appointing [a] Minister for Brexit two months after you got Brexit done."
However, Emily Thornberry, Labour's shadow international trade secretary, tweeted: "So we've finally got one minister taking a grip of the problems with our post-Brexit trading relationship with Europe.
"Someone who has never been elected by anyone in this country, and won't be accountable in the House of Commons to any of us who have."
Britain is keen to boost City of London firms access to the EU market which has fallen since the new deal came into effect.
Restart Brexit talks because UK is ‘less safe and less secure’, Tory group tells Boris Johnson
Talks to rebuild security cooperation with the EU must restart now after the Brexit deal left the UK “less safe and less secure”, a Conservative group says.
Boris Johnson is accused of “not being ambitious enough” after the agreement shut down access to vital criminal databases, including records of stolen identities and wanted people.
Ejection from the European Arrest Warrant system means “some criminals will not be extradited”, while leaving Europol means the UK will lose crucial influence, a report says.
Significantly, it has been carried out for the Conservative European Forum (CEF) – led by Tory heavyweights David Lidington and Dominic Grieve – and written by a former head of the Bar Council.
Large majority of Britons dissatisfied with Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal
A large majority of Britons are dissatisfied with Boris Johnson's Brexit deal and want it overhauled, a new study has found.
The report by think-tank the British Foreign Policy Group found just 24 per cent of the population believes the Brexit deal is the best framework for future relations with the EU.
The study, based on polling by Opinium, found that 27 per cent want the UK to pursue a much closer relationship with the bloc, eventually rejoining it.
A further 22 per cent want a closer relationship but to remain outside – a relationship resembling Norway or Switzerland's – bringing total support for closer integration to 49 per cent.
Only 12 per cent of the public want a more distant relationship with the EU, effectively a no-deal or something like it.
The findings suggest the main political parties are out-of-step with public opinion on the issue.
The government has repeatedly defended its own deal, while Labour leader Keir Starmer has also promised not to reopen or renegotiate it if he is elected in 2024.
How Boris Johnson's Brexit guru tried to quit after Carrie Symonds pals' takeover at No 10: Dramatic Downing St showdown as duo win key posts - and Lord Frost has to be bought off with Cabinet job
Lord Frost was given Michael Gove's job of overseeing the UK's new relationship with Brussels and 'driving through changes to maximise the opportunities of Brexit'. In a massive promotion, he will become a full member of the Cabinet from March 1. But insiders revealed the move was linked to an internal dispute over other recent key changes in the Prime Minister's Downing Street inner circle, involving personal and political allies of his partner Carrie Symonds. They claimed that Lord Frost, 55, had been opposed to Mr Johnson's decision last week both to appoint Baroness Finn as deputy to new No.10 chief of staff Dan Rosenfield - and to appoint the ex-Gove aide, Henry Newman as her assistant. Both Baroness Finn and Mr Newman are close friends of Miss Symonds. Pictured right, David Frost with Boris Johnson. Left, Simone Finn, Henry Newman, Dilyn and Carrie Symonds.
We are not going to get "clear figures" as to what economic effect Brexit may have anytime soon.
Nothing to do with Brexit. Everything to do with the seismic economic change that is Covid-19. Which has totally changed the economic picture. And is the reason why the papers have nothing to report on bar meaningless tittle-tattle. We will probably never be able to accurately forecast how much damage Brexit has done.
PS. You know a reporter is getting desperate when they refer to "anecdotal evidence". That would be baseless gossip, then.
Who knows if it is because of Brexit?': Multi-millionaire hedge fund manager Crispin Odey told police banker accusing him of indecent assault in his £7.75million Chelsea home was trying to make his life 'a misery'
Hendon Magistrates Court heard today that Crispin Odey (pictured) suggested to officers that Brexit and the Me Too movement could be why he was being prosecuted over historic indecent assault allegations. The 62-year-old, who attended court with his wife of 30 years (inset), has admitted in interview to propositioning the young banker but denied carrying out an assault and has said she is exaggerating what took place. Earlier today, the alleged victim described the incident as an 'octopussy-type manoeuvre' to the court and broke down in tears during the cross-examination.
We are not going to get "clear figures" as to what economic effect Brexit may have anytime soon.
Nothing to do with Brexit. Everything to do with the seismic economic change that is Covid-19. Which has totally changed the economic picture. And is the reason why the papers have nothing to report on bar meaningless tittle-tattle. We will probably never be able to accurately forecast how much damage Brexit has done.
PS. You know a reporter is getting desperate when they refer to "anecdotal evidence". That would be baseless gossip, then.
There is little in the way of good news.
A little good news is i have saved a fortune on news papers over the last 3 years as i can read all about brexit and more in your posts , while in lockdown i sit down with my cup of tea and a plate of Belgium chocolate biscuits , sets me up for the day knowing that if there is anything bad going on with brexit Haysie will be reporting on it in full ... keeps me calm and relaxed all day ... another cuppa and biscuit before i look outside to check that the sky has not fallen yet ....
Also had my text at 3pm yesterday to book a Covid vaccine first appointment 9am this morning snapped it up ... lucky we are no longer in the EU as it probably would have been 9am 2022/23 ... Big thank-you to the NHS and Boris your both doing a great job with the vaccine rollout
We are not going to get "clear figures" as to what economic effect Brexit may have anytime soon.
Nothing to do with Brexit. Everything to do with the seismic economic change that is Covid-19. Which has totally changed the economic picture. And is the reason why the papers have nothing to report on bar meaningless tittle-tattle. We will probably never be able to accurately forecast how much damage Brexit has done.
PS. You know a reporter is getting desperate when they refer to "anecdotal evidence". That would be baseless gossip, then.
There is little in the way of good news.
A little good news is i have saved a fortune on news papers over the last 3 years as i can read all about brexit and more in your posts , while in lockdown i sit down with my cup of tea and a plate of Belgium chocolate biscuits , sets me up for the day knowing that if there is anything bad going on with brexit Haysie will be reporting on it in full ... keeps me calm and relaxed all day ... another cuppa and biscuit before i look outside to check that the sky has not fallen yet ....
Also had my text at 3pm yesterday to book a Covid vaccine first appointment 9am this morning snapped it up ... lucky we are no longer in the EU as it probably would have been 9am 2022/23 ... Big thank-you to the NHS and Boris your both doing a great job with the vaccine rollout
Congrats on the vaccine.
You may have noticed that that the sky didnt fall once during the 47 years that we were members of the EU, and therefore couldnt really be listed as a Brexit benefit.
Lord Frost 'believes Michael Gove was 'too weak' in dealings with the EU over Northern Ireland border row' with his successor set to adopt a much more 'hardline' stance with Brussels Allies of Lord Frost say he plans a more 'hardline' stance over Northern Ireland Under agreement he negotiated, movements of goods have faced customs he ll There huge row with Brussels over attempt to use Brexit rules to block vaccines
Comments
British stores could be flooded with “dangerous” bacon and ham from the US, marketed under misleading labels, as the result of a transatlantic trade deal, says the author of a new book based on a decade of investigation into the food industry.
The meat has been cured with nitrites extracted from vegetables, a practice not permitted by the European Commission because of evidence that it increases the risk of bowel cancer. But it is allowed in the US, where the product is often labelled as “all natural”. The powerful US meat industry is likely to insist that the export of nitrite-cured meat is a condition of a post-Brexit UK-US trade deal, which the UK government is under intense pressure to deliver.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/uk-us-brexit-trade-deal-could-fill-supermarkets-with-cancer-risk-bacon/ar-BB1dF8aH?ocid=msedgntp
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/london-poised-for-brexit-boom-as-euro-dubbed-single-biggest-failure-in-financial-history/ar-BB1dEBsF?ocid=msedgntp
Sorry, but the reality is a little more complex – and not quite such a stunning UK victory.
True, Britain got a month’s head start on the EU by approving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at the start of December, and then AstraZeneca’s at the end of that month. It had to accept the terms offered by the pharmaceutical companies, however, both in paying a higher price per dose, and by waiving their civil liability in the event of adverse effects.
But, and there’s a very big but, the UK’s “success” is really an illusion: because to be fully effective, the vaccine requires two doses. And only 0.80% of the UK population has received both shots, less than that of France (0.92%), and a long way behind Denmark, which has 2.87% of its population fully vaccinated.
It is true that the EU made one massive blunder. And it can be blamed entirely on the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, not the EU as a whole. By rushing through curbs on vaccine exports after its spat with AstraZeneca, the commission, out of sheer clumsiness, managed to reignite political tensions arising from the Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland.
This was an incredible mistake and it happened only because the German president of the commission communicated exclusively with her German entourage. Had she kept the rest of the institution in the loop, the measure suspending a key part of the Northern Ireland protocol would never have seen the light of day.
But to speak of the EU’s “vaccine fiasco”, as some politicians and the media have, especially in Germany where there is political capital to be made from vaccine nationalism, is completely unjustified.
As Jacques Chirac, the former French president, used to say: only when the cattle fair is over can we count the cow dung.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/brexit-britain-s-victory-over-the-eu-on-covid-vaccination-is-not-what-it-seems/ar-BB1dFNyX?ocid=msedgntp
Difficulties cannot be dismissed as no more than teething problems, say experts
Disruption to trade seen in the first weeks of Brexit cannot be dismissed simply as “teething problems”, but represents the first signs of structural issues which will cut UK GDP for years to come, senior economists have said.
Although hard figures on the cost of quitting the single market and customs union will not emerge for a few months, experts speaking to The Independent said they had seen nothing during the first six weeks of 2021 to persuade them to amend forecasts of tens of billions of pounds of damage to the economy over the coming years.
The gloomy assessments came after the European Commission released the first formal analysis of the impact of Brexit to be compiled since the transition out of the EU’s structures on 1 January.
This predicted a 2.25 per cent hit to the UK economy by 2022 – equivalent to £40bn in lost growth over two years and more than four times the negative impact on the EU.
Boris Johnson’s government has refused to produce its own impact assessment of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement which the prime minister sealed on Christmas Eve.
Forecasts of a long-term hit to GDP as a result of Brexit were dismissed as “Project Fear” by Leave campaigners during the 2016 referendum campaign.
But Andrew Goodwin, chief UK economist at Oxford Economics, said that it was precisely the “non-tariff barriers” of additional form-filling, queueing and regulatory obstacles to trade identified by those studies which are now hitting sectors from fisheries to parcel delivery to financial services.
“All the reasons why studies like ours said that there’d be a hit to GDP are now becoming quite obvious,” he said. “And they are playing out pretty much as we said they would. What we’re seeing now in terms of delays and the cost of doing business are exactly what people like ourselves tried to model when we did our studies.
“The onus now is on the government to find ways of boosting growth in other ways.”
Rather than teething problems, the difficulties now being experienced are “the inevitable consequences of leaving the single market and the customs union”, he said.
“It’s now up to businesses to decide how they how they adapt to that. Either you keep going as you are and accept the delays as a fact of life or over time you change where you produce, do more of one thing in the UK and more of something else in the EU.”
Oxford Economics has previously forecast UK GDP will be around 3 per cent lower in the long term because of the gradual unrolling of Brexit impacts like reduced trade, loss of foreign direct investment and declining competitiveness.
And Mr Goodwin said that so far there was no indication that these expectations were misplaced: “Certainly we are heading to the sort of outcomes most of our studies forecast. We’re pretty happy with our estimate that we made back in 2016, and we see no reason to change it.”
Thomas Sampson, associate economics professor at the LSE, has predicted a 36 per cent fall in exports to the EU over the next decade.
He said it was too early to claim that economists’ forecasts been “validated” by the experience of recent weeks. The first tranche of hard data on exports is not expected from the Office for National Statistics until mid-March, and the full impact may not be known for years to come, he said.
But he said that anecdotal evidence from exporting businesses so far was “indicative that the change in relations is causing problems at the border”.
He said: “The evidence that there is some disruption is what you would expect, but how big the effect will be remains to be seen.
“At the moment we’re seeing what happens when you put in a customs border for UK exports to the EU. In July, we actually put in the customs border for UK imports from the EU. And then the other thing economists think is going to affect trade in the long run is, as the UK diverges from the EU in terms of policy and regulation that that will make it harder to trade.”
Dr Sampson said there was “some truth” in ministers’ description of disruption at the borders as “teething problems”, as companies would certainly get to grips with the additional form-filling as time went by.
But he said: “There are also permanent changes which are going to make trading harder, even once everyone understands the new system.
“You might need a staff member whose job it is to fill in those forms and that’s an additional cost for businesses. It’s going to take longer to cross the Channel. As we start to see regulatory divergence, potentially you have different standards on either side of the channel which imposes an additional cost.
“Those are the kind of things that will be permanent rather than just teething problems.”
King’s College London political scientist Prof Anand Menon, said he remained confident in the forecast of a 7 per cent hit to GDP over the next decade made by the UK in a Changing Europe think tank which he heads.
The problems reported over the last month and a half were “pretty much as we expected”, with the exception of the additional uncertainty generated by Covid.
“Some of it is teething problems, but the vast majority isn’t, and you’ve got to weigh the fact that the full gamut of checks isn’t even there yet, as controls on imports don’t come in until July,” he said.
“I don’t think you’ll find any economist who says ‘We need to change our forecast because of what we have seen since Brexit happened’,” Prof Menon told The Independent.
“One of the interesting things is you know you have this raft of forecasts that came out during the last four or five years. No one has seen it as necessary to revisit those forecasts. That tells you something, doesn’t it?
“We’re talking about long-term structural changes to the way we trade. The barriers that people expected are going to be there.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-trade-disruption-gdp-economists-b1801692.html
Foreign secretary talks up global growth opportunities and says Brussels ‘imposing obstacles’ to trade
“I think if you take a 10-year view, as well as looking at the short-term risk, which is right to do, actually the growth opportunities in the future are going to come from emerging and developing economies around the world.”
Asked if this meant UK businesses should accept less trade with the EU and focus more on places such as Asia, Raab replied: “I wouldn’t put it quite in those terms, but it’s certainly right to say that we want to bank, if you like, the baseline of our European trade – it’s very important to us, and they are obviously our neighbours – but if you look at the opportunities for growth in the future for UK companies … the growth economies are going to come from the Indo-Pacific region.”
Raab also appeared to blame the EU for many of the barriers, saying the government was seeking to “reduce and mitigate as far as we can the bureaucratic obstacles that the EU is imposing”.
He was bullish about the idea of EU financial centres taking considerable business from the City of London, despite Amsterdam having overtaken London as Europe’s top share trading centre.
Raab said: “[The EU] may be able to, if you like, nick a bit of business here or there from the City, but the problem is, the measures they will take to achieve that undermine their own competitiveness.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/feb/14/raab-shrugs-off-brexit-troubles-urging-people-to-take-10-year-view
Multinationals can just about cope with the new UK-EU trading rules, but independent businesses are mired in problems
If you had to design a scenario guaranteed to fatten up big business while squashing the rest of the economy, it would probably resemble what Britain is living through.
Thousands of independent businesses are shuttered up. Amazon and the big supermarkets, boosted by the suspension of anything other than “essential” retail but gleefully selling a huge range of stuff, have carved up consumer spending between them. And the economic impact of Covid-19 is now fusing with an issue that will endure even as lockdown restrictions are eventually eased: the dire effects of Brexit on smaller companies staring into the future with a mixture of fear and bafflement.
Amid the pandemic, there is not much room for this story to intrude. But week by week, things are starting to become clear. Figures to be published today in the latest Manufacturing Barometer survey of small and medium-sized firms show that two-thirds of such companies have seen negative price changes in their supply chains since leaving the EU. A majority, meanwhile, have seen post-Brexit “complications” with both exporting and importing. Roughly a week ago, it was reported that exports going from the UK to EU countries via British ports were down 68% year on year. By summer, the burgeoning crisis that all of this highlights may have burst into the political foreground.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/15/covid-damaged-small-businesses-brexit-uk-eu-trading
Nothing to do with Brexit. Everything to do with the seismic economic change that is Covid-19. Which has totally changed the economic picture. And is the reason why the papers have nothing to report on bar meaningless tittle-tattle. We will probably never be able to accurately forecast how much damage Brexit has done.
PS. You know a reporter is getting desperate when they refer to "anecdotal evidence". That would be baseless gossip, then.
The main news for the Financial Times is the end of what it calls a "power struggle at the heart of Downing Street" - won by Mr Johnson's former Brexit negotiator, Lord Frost.
The peer has been given a seat in the Cabinet, charged with overseeing the UK's future relationship with the EU - replacing Michael Gove, who the FT says was given the job on an interim basis "only two days ago".
Whitehall sources tell the paper Lord Frost "had demanded a ministerial role" to shape Britain's EU relations and threatened to resign as the prime minister's adviser if he failed to get his way.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-56106566
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/medical/astrazeneca-vaccine-unpopular-in-europe-amid-concerns-over-efficacy-and-side-effects/ar-BB1dLHSl?ocid=msedgntp
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/dup-u-turns-on-measure-to-reduce-irish-sea-border-disruption-following-cross-party-backlash/ar-BB1dL5j0?ocid=msedgntp
Labour MP Geraint Davies tweeted: "Lord Frost, whose negotiation lost us 68 percent of EU exports, is given responsibility for EU relations as, once again, incompetent loyalty is put before national interest."
Arch Europhile and former Labour minister Lord Adonis commented: "Remember we were told that Brexit was 'done'?
"Month two and Johnson has just appointed a Brexit minister because it's all falling apart."
Another anti-Brexit Twitter user added: "Nothing says you got Brexit done as much as appointing [a] Minister for Brexit two months after you got Brexit done."
However, Emily Thornberry, Labour's shadow international trade secretary, tweeted: "So we've finally got one minister taking a grip of the problems with our post-Brexit trading relationship with Europe.
"Someone who has never been elected by anyone in this country, and won't be accountable in the House of Commons to any of us who have."
Britain is keen to boost City of London firms access to the EU market which has fallen since the new deal came into effect.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/petty-rejoiners-mock-brexit-as-lord-frost-given-top-role-thought-brexit-was-done/ar-BB1dMB0u?ocid=msedgntp
Talks to rebuild security cooperation with the EU must restart now after the Brexit deal left the UK “less safe and less secure”, a Conservative group says.
Boris Johnson is accused of “not being ambitious enough” after the agreement shut down access to vital criminal databases, including records of stolen identities and wanted people.
Ejection from the European Arrest Warrant system means “some criminals will not be extradited”, while leaving Europol means the UK will lose crucial influence, a report says.
Significantly, it has been carried out for the Conservative European Forum (CEF) – led by Tory heavyweights David Lidington and Dominic Grieve – and written by a former head of the Bar Council.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/restart-brexit-talks-because-uk-is-less-safe-and-less-secure-tory-group-tells-boris-johnson/ar-BB1dLuY7?ocid=msedgntp
A large majority of Britons are dissatisfied with Boris Johnson's Brexit deal and want it overhauled, a new study has found.
The report by think-tank the British Foreign Policy Group found just 24 per cent of the population believes the Brexit deal is the best framework for future relations with the EU.
The study, based on polling by Opinium, found that 27 per cent want the UK to pursue a much closer relationship with the bloc, eventually rejoining it.
A further 22 per cent want a closer relationship but to remain outside – a relationship resembling Norway or Switzerland's – bringing total support for closer integration to 49 per cent.
Only 12 per cent of the public want a more distant relationship with the EU, effectively a no-deal or something like it.
The findings suggest the main political parties are out-of-step with public opinion on the issue.
The government has repeatedly defended its own deal, while Labour leader Keir Starmer has also promised not to reopen or renegotiate it if he is elected in 2024.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/large-majority-of-britons-dissatisfied-with-boris-johnson-s-brexit-deal/ar-BB1dLxua?ocid=msedgntp
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/wales-could-split-uk-as-independence-calls-grow-we-won-t-be-good-schoolchildren-anymore/ar-BB1dMIog?ocid=msedgntp
Lord Frost was given Michael Gove's job of overseeing the UK's new relationship with Brussels and 'driving through changes to maximise the opportunities of Brexit'. In a massive promotion, he will become a full member of the Cabinet from March 1. But insiders revealed the move was linked to an internal dispute over other recent key changes in the Prime Minister's Downing Street inner circle, involving personal and political allies of his partner Carrie Symonds. They claimed that Lord Frost, 55, had been opposed to Mr Johnson's decision last week both to appoint Baroness Finn as deputy to new No.10 chief of staff Dan Rosenfield - and to appoint the ex-Gove aide, Henry Newman as her assistant. Both Baroness Finn and Mr Newman are close friends of Miss Symonds. Pictured right, David Frost with Boris Johnson. Left, Simone Finn, Henry Newman, Dilyn and Carrie Symonds.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9271875/How-Boris-Johnsons-Brexit-guru-tried-quit-Carrie-Symonds-pals-takeover-No-10.html
Hendon Magistrates Court heard today that Crispin Odey (pictured) suggested to officers that Brexit and the Me Too movement could be why he was being prosecuted over historic indecent assault allegations. The 62-year-old, who attended court with his wife of 30 years (inset), has admitted in interview to propositioning the young banker but denied carrying out an assault and has said she is exaggerating what took place. Earlier today, the alleged victim described the incident as an 'octopussy-type manoeuvre' to the court and broke down in tears during the cross-examination.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9274557/Junior-banker-26-sobbed-phone-boyfriend-alleged-assault-Crispin-Odey.html
Also had my text at 3pm yesterday to book a Covid vaccine first appointment 9am this morning snapped it up ... lucky we are no longer in the EU as it probably would have been 9am 2022/23 ... Big thank-you to the NHS and Boris your both doing a great job with the vaccine rollout
You may have noticed that that the sky didnt fall once during the 47 years that we were members of the EU, and therefore couldnt really be listed as a Brexit benefit.
Allies of Lord Frost say he plans a more 'hardline' stance over Northern Ireland
Under agreement he negotiated, movements of goods have faced customs he ll
There huge row with Brussels over attempt to use Brexit rules to block vaccines
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9278047/New-Brexit-minister-Lord-Frost-believes-Michael-Gove-weak-dealings-EU.html