Category Archives: Brexit

MACHIAVELLI is more of a moralist than we recognise. Everyone can run off his bon mots about fear and power, but no one bothers to recall his underlying warning-fear the public; you need them. A heavy-handed rule will only get you so far. Do not undertake actions that will offend the sensibilities of society. It is only better to be feared than loved because you cannot supply "freebies" forever.

And the latest "Brexit transition" videos are a case and point. They're hokey and rife with hawkish gibberish about "taking back control" and "unleashing" our potential. After 40 years, the good times are being ripped away and replaced with empty rhetoric about "significant opportunities".

Why are they needed at all? Finally, the Brexiteers realise what Remainers knew all along: paperwork for holidays to Spain, roaming charges and snail-pace airport queues are more pressing than bargain bucket notions "sovereignty".

READ MORE:UK government damned over lack of action over Russian interference

The UK Government is playing the oldest trick in the book with how it paints Brexit. Machiavelli knew leaders and governments could be saved or ruined by ideas of "us" and "them". He understood identity politics and how people are vicious in packs when there's a political purpose. The government is igniting a faux collective crisis to burn away the memory of what Brexit it.

Governments need the people; we seldom need them. History is replete with the names for how they've cultivated and fostered it - nationalism, patriotism, manifest destiny, revanchism, irredentism, empire: always, continually, cyclically "us", and "them".

International Relations has evolved as a field of study to explain power politics. Classical Realismfamously purports the international "system" is a continuance of human nature - fearful, reactionary and shattered along identity lines. Higher notions of "idealism" are utterly perfunctory to questions of survival.

Brexit is viscerally anathema because it goes against the grain of that self-interest. Not only are we giving up the benefits of international cooperation that make us feel safe, but we're also giving up opportunities for our children. If we're not at war or dealing with real economic challenges, then "national survival" is the argument of tyrants: you're against "us" if you're not playing for the "team". Look over there at those Europeans holding "us" back. Look further still at those dangers to "us".

READ MORE:Trade Bill: Tories reject effort to keep NHS off negotiating table

It's utterly arrogant to imply "nasty" nationalisms and arguments over race, ethnicity, language and history are a cliche of the Balkans. What we call citizenship is another name for gang warfare in a world of competing interests. For Aristotle, human beings are political animals, with an innate propensity to create and develop more complex communities. There are countless sociological, biological and anthropological arguments which state political affiliation is an inevitability of the human condition.

Political scientist Alexander Wendt famously built on this, claiming that the "anarchy" of international relations is all human-made. Political groups and states don't just exist before encountering the world; they evolve and change in response to other communities. Our operation within this system is a tactical choice between cooperation, war, defence - and peace.

All the softly spoken Brexit videos are designed to generate the kind of false unity that is both deluded and dangerous. The Downing Street countdown, the withdrawal coin, the calls for an independence day and now the latest media campaign are all designed to engender the people with a false consciousness that says it's counterproductive to go against it. Social media fact-checking, the contentiousness of the 2016 referendum (to say nothing of devolution and the national stay/leave splits) make it futile.

Worst of all, there's no excuse for it but to cover-up a monumental folly. We are neither at risk of annihilation or hemmed into a corner. Rightly or wrongly these kinds of national fictions are deployed throughout history to reshape the world. They're the beginnings of wars, the start of revolutions.

Brexit isn't even that cerebral. It's neither clever nor brave, ambitious nor bold. We must, must see these adverts, these campaigns for the nightmare they are. There's only an ideological illusion that a pyrrhic nationalism is a freedom from - well, freedom from what, exactly?

The biggest sin we can ever let come to pass is accepting it is unpatriotic to criticise a government because it goes against national morale, national purpose or national unity. That is unequivocally the beginning of tyranny, and governance by diktat. And that is the real lesson in all of Machiavelli's writings.

Alastair Stewart is a public affairs consultant with Orbit Communications. He regularly writes about politics and history with a particular interest in the life of Winston Churchill. Follow him on Twitter at@agjstewart

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The UK Government is playing the oldest trick in the book with Brexit - The National

An injection of momentum is needed in the Brexit talks between the UK & EU, taoiseach Michel Martin has said.

Speaking on the Andrew Marr Show, the Irish prime minister said the talks were "getting into an urgent timeframe and so far progress has been too slow".

On Friday, Michel Barnier said "significant divergences" remained between the EU and the UK on a post-Brexit trade agreement.

Mr Martin said a deal would be done, but it could not be "at any price".

Both sides agreed to "intensify" negotiations last month and held the first face-to-face talks since the coronavirus pandemic at the beginning of July.

If they are unable to reach a deal by the end of the transition period at the end of the year, the UK will leave the EU's single market and the customs union without any agreement on future access.

However, Northern Ireland will stay in the EU single market for goods.

Mr Martin said there was "no sense in a no-deal Brexit or a sub-optimal deal" between the EU and UK.

He said "ordinary people would suffer" if that happened.

"We must do everything to protect workers, protect livelihoods and protect the essence of our economy."

Mr Martin also said Northern Ireland could get the "best of both worlds" when it came to Brexit.

"Northern Ireland needs development, it needs economic momentum and let's turn this into an opportunity for Northern Ireland and through that the island of Ireland," he said.

In a separate interview with BBC NI's Sunday Politics programme, Mr Martin said said that "out of Brexit came a demand for a border poll", but believes it "would currently be unnecessarily divisive".

The Fianna Fil leader said "it's easy to call for a border poll" but that the "nuts and bolts of how does one share an island" need to be understood.

Mr Martin said that the most effective way forward is to "build on relationships" and to "do research" into the practicalities of these issues.

"More substance around these issues is needed and a greater understanding of the implications of what some people are calling for," he said.

The draft deal that was agreed to establish a government in the Republic of Ireland sought the establishment of a new shared-island unit within the Department of the Taoiseach.

The paper for government said this unit will be set up to work "towards a consensus on a shared island".

Mr Martin said that there is a commitment to "build relationships" with the Stormont Executive and the UK government to achieve "greater connectivity" on the island of Ireland.

Mr Martin had been previously accused of "letting down the unionist community" in Northern Ireland by not including a unionist in the Seanad.

Ian Marshall, who in 2018 became the first unionist elected to the Seanad (Irish Senate), called Mr Martin's commitment to a "shared island" a "farce".

"How can you have a shared island if you only talk to yourself?".

Responding to Mr Marshall's comments, Mr Martin said it was "a disproportionate comment" and said "having a (unionist) senator is not the be-all-and-end-all in terms of having a relationship".

"There is no issue at all with Mr Marshall, but there were political circumstances prevailing on this, particularly in the parties that came together to form a government," Mr Martin said.

"Engagement with unionism is far wider than that," he added.

On the relationship between his party and the SDLP, the taoiseach said this would continue to "grow and strengthen".

In February 2019, the SDLP voted overwhelmingly in favour of a partnership with Fianna Fil.

However, the Fianna Fil leader said this will not affect his role as a co-guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement.

Mr Martin also dismissed claims he was ignoring unionism by not electing a unionist to the Seanad (Irish Senate).

He also believes a border poll "out of Brexit" will be "too divisive".

Speaking on , Mr Martin said he will play his role as taoiseach "down the middle".

"I will continue honest and objective leadership in respect of the north," he said.

"I will be proactive in a positive and constructive way with Northern Ireland."

Mr Martin said that the SDLP has experienced "a renaissance" in Northern Ireland and said that Fianna Fil will continue to "give support to the SDLP".

You can see the full interview with the taoiseach on Sunday Politics on the BBC iPlayer.

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Brexit: Michel Martin says injection of momentum needed in talks - BBC News

Image caption "Devolution has gone so much further" than some people thought it would, according to Mark Reckless, the Brexit Party's leader in the Senedd

The Brexit Party will campaign in next year's Senedd election to scrap the current system of devolution.

Mark Reckless, leader of the party's group in the Welsh Parliament, said "devolution has gone so much further" than some people thought it would.

He is proposing a directly-elected first minister and getting rid of members of the Senedd (MSs).

The last Welsh barometer poll suggested around 22% of people supported abolishing the Welsh Parliament.

But in a multiple-choice question, the highest level of support was for leaving the settlement as it is (24%), followed by a Senedd with more powers (20%) and Welsh independence (16%).

Plaid Cymru's leader hit back at Mr Reckless and said people's understanding and awareness of devolution was at a "high watermark" as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Adam Price dismissed the Brexit Party's support for scrapping the devolution system as an attempt to turn Wales "into western England".

"What is the message of the Brexit Party in this regard? It's not just abolishing our democracy, it's abolishing Wales," he told the BBC's Politics Wales programme.

"Is anyone seriously, when we look to the last three months, at the more careful, reasonable, thoughtful approach that the Welsh Government has shown in recent months compared to the reckless policy, the dysfunctional policy of bumbling and blustering its way through the crisis that we've seen from Boris Johnson, do we really want to take the powers that we have to protect our people and give them to Number 10 Downing Street in these circumstances? Absolutely not."

Speaking to the same programme, Mr Reckless said under his plans a directly-elected first minister would be scrutinised by Welsh MPs.

He questioned the value of having the Senedd and its members in addition to MPs in Westminster.

"A lot of people who haven't engaged with devolved politics now see the powers this place has, and many of those people would prefer to be governed on a UK basis rather than having things done differently in Wales just for the sake of it, as so often has been the case under Mark Drakeford," he said.

The Brexit Party's four MSs are its biggest group of politicians now that the UK no longer has members of the European Parliament (MEPs) following its departure from the European Union.

Mr Reckless said party leader Nigel Farage is "consulted over key decisions... but he doesn't micro-manage us here".

He said he did not "rule out" a potential rebrand of the party, as had been reported.

The Brexit Party has been very critical of the Covid-19 lockdown measures.

Asked if he believed there should be another Wales-wide lockdown, he replied: "We think it's much better to trust people's judgment. The individual knows best.

"I think what we'll see is that many more people will stay at home.

"But the idea that you tell people how many times they should exercise... I don't believe there's science for that.

"I also believe that interference with people's lives is so great when the evidence is so very limited."

Pushed on whether he was against another lockdown in the event of a steep rise in coronavirus cases, he said: "I think it should be a last resort, and I think the time when you really need to do that is if infections are at such an extent that it threatens the capacity of our health services to cope.

"I think that is a good reason for closing schools, for government intervention, in order to stop that.

"But actually, I think when we look back it was that handwashing, it was a degree of social distancing, it was more people staying at home voluntarily that saw the infection rate begin to come down and meant that capacity in the health service wasn't overcome in that way."

Former First Minister Carwyn Jones said the idea showed the Brexit Party "cannot stand the idea of Wales as a nation."

"So much for respecting the result of referendums [devolution referendums in 1997 and 2011] but let's not forget that this is really a play to get re-elected to the Senedd by appealing to a minority in the hope of getting above 5% in his region," he added.

BBC Politics Wales is on BBC iPlayer.

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Brexit Party's election campaign to scrap the Senedd - BBC News

The governments chief Brexit negotiator, David Frost, is to host his EU counterpart, Michel Barnier, for a private dinner in Downing Street on Tuesday evening in an attempt to revive flagging talks on a trade and security deal.

Less than six months before the status quo transition period is due to end, both sides have expressed concern about the lack of progress in the negotiations.

Barnier and his team of officials arrived in London on Tuesday and posed for photos wearing face masks. Informal talks between about 15 officials on both sides will take place in Whitehall on Wednesday.

The meeting follows the abrupt ending to the first round of accelerated face-to-face talks last week after which Barnier complained about a perceived lack of respect and engagement from the British government.

Asked what would be on the agenda, Boris Johnsons official spokesman said: Theyre informal talks, so there is no published agenda, but you are fully aware of the range of issues that we need to reach agreement with the EU on. Discussions will cover everything from what the EU calls the level playing field, through to governance structures.

Downing Street said Frost and Barnier would dine on halibut perhaps surprising given that fish are one of the most contentious issues between the two sides.

In a transcript of an interview with Barnier by a Lords committee published earlier on Tuesday, the EU negotiator accused the UK of continuing to seekthe advantages of being a member state but with the right to diverge on regulations.

He also warned that no deal would mean a cliff-edge for British exporters from 1 January as the EU had no intention of phasing in border controls like the UK.

We will not delay things. As of 1 January, all products coming into the single market coming from any third country anywhere in the world, including yours, because you are a third country will be checked, he said.

Meanwhile, MPs have heard that EU citizens settled in the UK are being used by the Home Office as guinea pigs for a future digital-only immigration system.

They will also face significant problems after Brexit unless the government provides them with a physical card to prove their right to remain in the UK legally, parliaments Brexit select committee was told.

A lawyer for the3million campaign group said some feared they risked ending up like the Windrush generation with difficulty evidencing their rights with landlords and employers.

There is a lot of mistrust in the way that government does things, particularly the Home Office, and that has come about because of a legacy of mistakes and because some very, very bad things that have happened to human beings. And I think a lot of EU citizens are very worried that this will happen to them, he said.

The rights of EU citizens have already been enshrined in the withdrawal agreement signed in January but the Brexit select committee heard that anxiety about their future rights remained high.

Words like angry, anxious, alienated, annoyed, unwanted, upset and unwelcome, were the feelings cited in a survey of 3,000 EU citizens, which also found that 89% said they wanted a physical card.

Concerns were also raised at about EU citizens wrongly being granted pre-settled status.

As many as 1.3 million of 3.3 million people who had gone through the settlement process had been granted pre-settled status with fears raised several times in the past year that some people were accepting the inferior status without realising they were entitled to the full settled status.

Piper told of the serious consequences for those that did not reapply or the vulnerable, such as children in care or people with dementia who for some reason miss the 30 June 2021 deadline for applications.

Without the status, they would become unlawfully resident and lose their right to work and access to the NHS and housing until they acquired a legal status.

Coram, the childrens charity, recently published a report on children and settled status. It found that local authorities had secured status for just 500 of the estimated 9,000 children and young people in the care system.

A Home Office spokesperson said: Nobody has been granted pre-settled status without first being offered the opportunity to submit evidence that they qualify for settled status. Both pre-settled status and settled status mean people can work, study, receive healthcare and access benefits and services as they do now.

The EU settlement scheme also protects the rights of EU citizens in UK law and gives them a secure digital status which, unlike a physical document, cannot be lost, stolen or tampered with.

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UK Brexit negotiator meets EU counterpart in bid to revive talks - The Guardian

The international trade secretary, Liz Truss, joins a long list of people concerned that the UK may not be as ready for Brexit on 1 January 2021 as it needs to be.

In a letter to cabinet colleagues this week, she has reportedly raised concerns that the UK will not be operating a World Trade Organization (WTO) compliant border when we leave the EU. It was an embarrassing revelation, particularly coming on the same day as the UK was nominating her predecessor, Liam Fox, as the man to lead the WTO into a new era.

Truss joined an array of business groups in the UK, as well as the Scottish and Welsh governments and the Northern Ireland Assembly, who have argued Britain needs more time: either to seek an extension to the transition period, or to seek an adjustment period once transition ends to allow business to get ready.

On 1 July, the UK lost its right to ask for an extension to the transition period, under the terms of the withdrawal agreement with the EU. It might be able to engineer more time at a later point, but that is more risky legally and will depend on a heap of EU goodwill. For now, the only basis on which to plan is that we need to be ready on 31 December at 11pm to complete the process of Brexit, deal or no deal.

The immediate crunch is that this means government and business need to be ready to operate on two new borders: a border with the EU27 across the Channel, and a border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The shape of the Irish sea border is clearer. The text was agreed last October. But the UK government initially refused to acknowledge the political inconvenience of what it had actually conceded, impeding proper preparation. The government is gradually admitting what was in the small print when it signed up to the deal: there will be customs forms, there will be border inspection posts.

But there are big issues outstanding. Two weeks ago, Michel Barnier told the House of Lords EU committee that detail in key areas was still lacking. It was a long list: customs, tax, VAT, duty, sanitary and phytosanitary arrangements, and fisheries. The thing Truss is most worried about is the readiness of the dual tariff regime; designed to allow Northern Ireland to stay behind the EU external customs border but remain part of the UK customs territory and benefit from new trade deals that may be negotiated. That promise was important to unionists in Northern Ireland.

The depth of the Irish sea border also depends on the UK-EU deal. But even if the EU simply signed on the dotted line of the UKs draft texts, businesses trading with the EU or Northern Ireland will have to be ready for big changes.

On Monday we will find out the detail of the UKs border operating model, but we know now that the EU will treat the UK as a third country with new checks, forms and bureaucracy. The negotiations will determine how intrusive they are and whether there are tariffs on top. Whatever happens, it will be very different.

Some businesses will already be preparing; others will have pushed it down the to-do list as they struggle with Covid-19. Expect a Get ready for Brexit this time its for real campaign soon to persuade businesses who sensibly banked on a transition last year that they cant put it off any longer.

Meanwhile, the UK government has already admitted that it wont be able to operate a fully functioning border between Great Britain and the EU on 1 January (not a luxury it has for the Great Britain-Northern Ireland border). Instead changes will be phased in, so only this time next year, 1 July 2021, will it be fully operational.

Truss is worried that before then, by waving EU imports through, we will face complaints in the WTO. There may be reputational damage, but the WTO will not act fast and by the time it does, we should have a functioning border up and running.

She should be more worried that many of the businesses she wants to benefit from her new trade deals beyond the EU will instead be struggling to cope with the disruption they face in maintaining trade with the UKs biggest export market.

Jill Rutter is a senior research fellow at UK in a Changing Europe

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Liz Truss is suddenly worried about a Brexit deal but for the wrong reason - The Guardian

The Scottish Government has repeatedly called for the transition period to be extended with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon writing to Boris Johnson, warning "fundamental issues" still remained between the UK and EU negotiators.The party said they have concerns less than six months before the end of the Brexit transition period as recent talks reached a deadlock.

EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier has repeated the bloc's openness to an extension in a letter to leaders of smaller parties in Westminster, including the SNP, Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru after they contacted him about the talks.

He said: "Such an extension of up to one or two years can be agreed jointly by the two parties. The EU has always said we remain open on this.

But under the terms of withdrawal from the EU, Britain only had until July 1 to decide whether to extend the transition period.

Now the SNPs Westminster leader Ian Blackford will formally stress that the UK economy must come first.

Mr Blackford will say that with no good deal in sight and the country facing an economic crisis, it would be "reckless in the extreme" for the government to go ahead and pile a no-deal Brexit on top.

He will add: Boris Johnson must put his responsibilities towards the economy first and agree to the Brexit transition extension on offer from the EU to protect peoples jobs and living standards.

The MP will stress that the UK cannot afford the added damage a no-deal Brexit would add to an economy which needs all the help it can get.

He will point out many businesses are already struggling to survive because of COVID-19 and thousands of jobs have been cut.

READ MORE:Sturgeon ally slams rival who urged nationalists to boycott SNP

At the same time, the Scottish Governments Monthly Economic Report stressed that a no-deal Brexit would have a significant impact on economic activity in Scotland.

It continued: COVID-19 has resulted in an economic crisis in Scotland, through the direct impact on the economy but also the secondary impacts on health and society from a weaker economy.

As we also move towards formally exiting the EU transition period (31 December 2020) uncertainty regarding future trade arrangements with key markets has the potential to impact already weakened business sectors and have a significant impact on economic activity, particularly if there is no deal.

Scotland has already felt the impact of the pandemic after figures showed GDP fell 18.9 percent in April, the first full month of lockdown, and around 23 percent over March and April combined.

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However, figures for the month of May are due to be published by the Scottish Government next week.

Ms Sturgeon wrote in her letter to Boris Johnson: "No-one could reproach the UK Government for changing its position in the light of the wholly unforeseeable COVID-19 crisis, particularly as the EU has made it clear it is open to an extension request.

"We, therefore, call on you to take the final opportunity the next few weeks provide to ask for an extension to the transition period in order to provide a breathing space to complete the negotiations, to implement the outcome, and the opportunity for our businesses to find their feet after the enormous disruption of recent months.

"At the time the Withdrawal Agreement was signed, no-one could have imagined the enormous economic dislocation which the COVID-19 pandemic has caused - in Wales, Scotland, the whole of the UK, in the EU and across the world."

The letter claimed that, at best, there would only be a "bare-bones" trade deal in place by December, or a move to a no-deal exit from the EU.

But Boris Johnson and UK chief negotiator David Frost has ruled out any such extension.

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Meddling SNP to demand Brexit extension with six months to go 'reckless in the extreme' - Express.co.uk

Anger and alarm about China is mounting rapidly in government circles and especially among Tory rightwingers, anxious about national security, unfair trade practices and Hong Kong. Its certainly true that the increasingly aggressive behaviour of President Xi Jinpings authoritarian regime is deeply worrying. Its a pity that the Tory grandees who are making the most noise now did not raise their concerns much earlier, before Britain became dependent on Beijings favours to escape its Brexit mess.

As pressure grows on Boris Johnson to exclude the telecoms company Huawei from the UKs 5G rollout and to review Chinese investment in nuclear, transport and other security-related projects, Iain Duncan Smith and former ministers David Davis, Liam Fox and Owen Paterson are backing an interparliamentary alliance to scrutinise Chinas activities. Separately, Tories in the new China Research Group, modelled on Westminsters pro-Brexit European Research Group, are boldly promising greater vigilance.

China believes it can exploit British economic, financial and political neediness to get its own way

Of immediate concern is Chinas draconian national security law in Hong Kong. Beijings curt dismissal of British protests was followed by threats of unspecified consequences should the UK open its borders to millions of British overseas passport holders in the former colony. This in turn has focused Tory attention on wider problems, including Chinas escalating intimidation of Taiwan and its punitive measures against Australia following Canberras call for an independent inquiry into the pandemic.

In an interview with the Hudson Institute last week, Duncan Smith was rich in hindsight. In a race for trade and investment over the past decade, he said, the free world has marched somewhat blindly into the embrace of [the] Chinese Communist party. Unfortunately, it was now clear that China was intent on complete dominance globally. Speaking to the BBC last month, he went so far as to suggest that revolution was afoot: While China is a great nation, its posing a threat to the natural order.

Leaving aside what Duncan Smith meant by the natural order, all this Tory angst comes a bit late, and sounds a tad hypocritical. Why on earth, if the threat is so great, did these people not speak out when David Cameron and the then chancellor, George Osborne, launched their bogus golden era in UK-China relations, promising ever closer ties? Where were they in 2015 when Dave took Xi down the pub for a pint? Providing the crisps, perhaps.

Even if they had not yet heard of the brutal treatment of Xinjiangs Uighurs, were they truly unaware of Chinas long record of oppression and social engineering in Tibet? Were they themselves among those blind free world decision-makers who wilfully disregarded the anti-democratic nature of Communist rule, Chinas predatory trade and debt practices, its industrial espionage, intellectual property theft and systematic persecution of dissidents, writers, academics, Christians and journalists?

Its hard to imagine that such eminent parliamentarians were oblivious. So why did they not object earlier? One possible explanation is that Duncan Smith, Davis, Fox, Paterson and other new-minted human rights defenders were ardent Brexiters, before and after the 2016 referendum. Their overriding priority was pushing Brexit through and for this the appearance of a friendly relationship with economically powerful China was crucial.

A key argument perhaps the key argument of Brexit ministers and their supporters was that Britain, freed from the EUs shackles, would forge independent, mutually beneficial and respectful trade, business and investment relationships with the worlds leading powers, principally the US and China. Predictions that leaving the EU would, on the contrary, weaken Britains sovereign control and freedom of action were rejected out of hand.

Yet now, six months after Britain formally left the EU and only a few short months away from a calamitous no-deal crash, what is Britains position? It is some way off even a basic trade pact with the EU. Desperate to cut a deal with Washington, its ability to resist unpalatable US demands declines by the day. Donald Trump is even pushing Britain to sign a loyalty oath, giving preference to the US over China. He wants UK backing for his dangerous new cold war narrative. Therein lies another huge trap.

In China itself, meanwhile, Britain faces a vastly more powerful, scornful opponent that lacks respect for its values, believes (with some justice) that it can exploit British economic, financial and political neediness to get its own way, and which does as it likes in Hong Kong as evidenced by last weeks withering tirade from its London ambassador, Liu Xiaoming.

How to understand the contradiction between the hard Tory Brexiters previous positive take on China as a partner for global Britain and their open hostility now? Its not difficult. As international trade secretary, for example, Fox boasted in 2018 of cutting lucrative deals during successive visits to Beijing. This, they said, was the future. In their blind fervour for Brexit at any cost, they did not think things through.

Britain requires balanced, boundaried relationships. Yet thanks to these short sighted Tories, the UK is more limply beholden than ever to not one but two overbearing foreign powers with hegemonistic tendencies and nasty tempers. Too late they realise their mistake.

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The Observer view on post-Brexit UK-China relations - The Guardian

The cost of household staples, ranging from meat and cheese to school uniforms and drinking glasses, will substantially increase if there is no Brexit trade deal, British retailers have warned.

With just six months to go before the UK leaves the EU entirely by exiting the single market and the European customs union, retailers fear further damage to a sector already reeling from the coronavirus crisis, with 5,600 job losses announced on Thursday from Boots and John Lewis alone.

In a report on the prospect of a no-deal Brexit, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said the public should be aware that no deal will mean a hike in the prices of not just luxury goods but ordinary household goods that every consumer has to buy and replenish.

Its not foie gras that were talking about, its mince, its cheese, its oranges, you know, said Aodhn Connolly, the director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium in a Brexit press briefing.

It doesnt matter whether its Great Britain, or its Northern Ireland, the people who will suffer most because of these cost rises will be those people who are most economically vulnerable.

The BRC has calculated that beef, which is imported in huge quantities from the Republic of Ireland, will go up in price by 48%, with cheddar cheese, another staple imported from across the Irish Sea, expected to cost 57% more.

Oranges from Spain will cost 12% more, while the price of cucumbers will rise by 16%. Trousers imported from Italy will have a 12% levy slapped on them , porcelain kitchenware will also go up by 12% and drinking glasses made in Poland up 10%.

Connolly said it was a misunderstanding to think that retailers and their suppliers had built up huge Brexit war chests and added that Covid-19 had exposed the fragility of the supply chain.

The ability and bandwidth, both financially and time-wise, of retailers to deal with a no-deal Brexit at the end of this year has been greatly diminished, he said.

About half of all food consumed from restaurants or shops comes from the EU, with 30% of produce in supermarkets from the bloc.

Trade deal talks continued this week in London, with the second face-to-face meeting between negotiators Michel Barnier and David Frost. Little was said to suggest that progress had been made and public pronouncements last week suggested they were a long way from a deal.

Deal or no deal, the UK is facing a new trading regime from 1 January as the country exits the single market and the customs union, forcing customs and food health checks on goods entering the country.

That is going to increase a level of friction that we havent seen since 1972, said the BRC trade expert William Bain.

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No-deal Brexit will raise cost of UK household staples, say retailers - The Guardian

Anne Applebaum can look at the wreck of democratic politics and understand it with a completeness few contemporary writers can match. When she asks who sent Britain into the unending Brexit crisis, or inflicted the Trump administration on America, or turned Poland and Hungary into one-party states, she does not need to search press cuttings. Her friends did it, she replies. Or, rather, her former friends. For if they are now embarrassed to have once known her, the feeling is reciprocated.

Applebaums latest book, Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends, opens with a scene a novelist could steal. On 31 December 1999, Applebaum and her husband, Radosaw Sikorski, a minister in Polands then centre-right government, threw a party. It was a Millennium Eve housewarming for a manor house in the western Poland they had helped rebuild from ruins. The company of Poles, Brits, Americans and Russians could say that they had rebuilt a ruined world. Unlike the bulk of the left of the age, they had stood up against the Soviet empire and played a part in the fall of a cruel and suffocating tyranny. They had supported free markets, free elections, the rule of law and democracies sticking together in the EU and Nato, because these causes surely were the best ways for nations to help their people lead better lives as they faced Russian and Chinese power, Islamism and climate change.

They were young and happy. Historys winners. At about three in the morning, Applebaum recalls, one of the wackier Polish guests pulled a pistol from her handbag and shot blanks into the air out of sheer exuberance.

Applebaum was at the centre of the overlapping circles of guests. For the Americans, she was a child of the Republican establishment. Her father was a lawyer in Washington DC and she was educated at Yale and Oxford universities. Now her Republican friends are divided between a principled minority, who know that defeating Trump is the only way to save the American constitution, and the rest, who have, to use a word she repeats often, collaborated as surely as the east Europeans she studied as a historian collaborated with the invading Soviet forces after 1945.

Even when she was young, you could see the signs of the inquiring spirit that has made her a great historian. She went to work as a freelance journalist in eastern Europe while it was still under Soviet occupation and too drab and secretive a posting for most young reporters. She then made a standard career move and joined the Economist. But it was too dull for her liking and she moved to the Spectator in the early 1990s. The dilettante style of English conservatism charmed her. These people dont take themselves seriously and could never do serious harm, she thought, as she watched Simon Heffer and his colleagues compete to see who could deliver the best Enoch Powell impersonation. She came to know the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton and Margaret Thatchers speechwriter John OSullivan, figures taken with unwarranted seriousness at the time. They had helped east European dissidents struggling against Soviet power in the 1980s and appeared to believe in democracy. Why would she doubt it? How could she foresee that Scruton and OSullivan would one day accept honours from Viktor Orbn, as he established a dictatorship in Hungary, whose rigged elections and state-controlled judiciary and media are now not so far away from the communists one-party state.

What was life in the English right like then, I asked in a call to her Polish lockdown in that restored manor house in the countryside between Warsaw and the German border. It was fun, she said.

It isnt now.

Her husband knew Boris Johnson. They were both members of the Bullingdon Club at Oxford. She assumed that he was as much a liberal internationalist as Sikorski was. When the couple met Johnson for dinner in 2014, she noted his laziness and all-consuming narcissism, as well as the undoubted charisma that was to seduce and then ruin his country. In those days, Johnson appeared friendly. He was alarmed by the global challenge to democracy, he told them, and wanted to defend the culture of freedom and openness and tolerance. They asked about Europe. No one serious wants to leave the EU, he replied, which was true enough as Johnson was to prove when he came out for Brexit.

As for the Poles at the party, they knew Applebaum as a friend who had co-authored a Polish cookbook, and published histories of communism, which never forgot its victims.

Today she is a heretical figure across the right in Europe and America. Many of her guests would damage their careers if they admitted to their new masters they had once broken bread at her table.

Heretics make the best writers. They understand a movement better than outsiders, and can relate its faults because they have seen them close up. Religions can tolerate pagans. They are mere unbelievers who have never known the way, the truth and the light. The heretic has the advantages of the inside trader. She can use her knowledge to expose and betray the faithful. One question always hangs in the air, however: who is betraying whom? Although Applebaum has left the right, and stopped voting Conservative in Britain in 2015 and Republican in the US in 2008, she can make a convincing case that the right betrayed her.

In person, Applebaum combines intense concentration with an exuberant delight in human folly. You can be in the middle of a deadly serious conversation and suddenly she will break into a grin as the memory of a politicians hypocrisy or an incomprehensible stupidity hits her. As the western crisis has deepened, the intensity has come to dominate her writing as she provides urgently needed insights.

You can read thousands of discussions of the root causes of what we insipidly call populism. The academic studies arent all wrong, although too many are suspiciously partial. The left says austerity and inequality caused Brexit and Trump, proving they had always been right to oppose austerity and inequality. The right blames woke politics and excessive immigration, and again you can hear the self-satisfaction in the explanation.

Applebaum offers an overdue corrective. She knows the personal behind the political. She understands that the nationalist counter-revolution did not just happen. Politicians hungry for office, plutocrats wanting the world to obey their commands, second-rate journalists sniffing a chance of recognition after years of obscurity, and Twitter mob-raisers and fake news fraudsters, who find a sadists pleasure in humiliating their opponents, propelled causes that would satisfy them.

Applebaum let out a snort that must have been heard for miles around her Polish home when I mentioned the journalist and author David Goodharts pro-Brexit formulation that we are living through an uprising by the people from somewhere against the people from nowhere a modern variant on the old communist condemnations of rootless cosmopolitans, incidentally. Its a war of one part of the elite against another part of the elite, she says. Brexit was an elite project. The game was to get everyone to go along with it. Were all the southern Tories who voted for it a part of the oppressed masses? And who do you think funded the campaign?

She is as wary of the commonplace view that supporters of Trump, say, are conformists, who have been brainwashed online or by Fox News. They may be now in some part, but brainwashing does not explain how populist movements begin. Their leaders werent from small towns full of abandoned shops and drug-ridden streets. They were metropolitans, with degrees from Oxford in the case of Johnson and Dominic Cummings. The men and women Applebaum knew were not loyal drones but filled with a dark restlessness. They may pose as the tribunes of the common people now but they were members of the intellectual and educated elite willing to launch a war on the rest of the intellectual and educated elite.

Populist activists are outsiders only in that they feel insufficiently rewarded. And their opponents should never underestimate what their self-pitying vanity can make them do.

One of Applebaums closest Polish friends, the godmother of one of her children, and a guest at the 1999 party, provided her with the most striking example. She moved from being a comfortable but obscure figure to become a celebrated Warsaw hostess and a confidante to Polands new rulers. She signalled her break and opened her prospects for advancement with a call to Applebaum within days of the Smolensk air crash of April 2010. She let her know she was adopting a conspiracy theory that would make future friendship impossible.

Outsiders need to take a deep breath before trying to understand it. Among the dead was Lech Kaczyski, the president of Poland, who controlled the rightwing populist party Law and Justice with his twin brother, Jarosaw Kaczyski. The party has grown to dominate Polish politics, and the supposedly independent courts, media and civil service. The flight recorder showed that the pilot had come in too low in thick fog, and that was an end to it. Jarosaw Kaczyski and his underlings insist that the Russians were behind the crash, or that political rivals in Warsaw, including Applebaums husband, allowed the president to fly in a faulty plane, or that it was an assassination. Repeating the lie was the price of admission to Law and Justices ruling circles and the public sector jobs they controlled. As Applebaum noted in the Atlantic magazine: Sometimes the point isnt to make people believe a lie its to make people fear the liar. Acknowledge the liars power, and your career takes off without the need to pass exams or to display an elementary level of competence.

Other friends from the party showed their fealty to the new order by promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories. The darker their fantasies became, the more airtime Polish state broadcasters gave them. They had not suffered or been left behind in any way, Applebaum says. Yet they happily worked for propaganda sites that targeted her family. Because she is married to a political opponent of Law and Justice, and because she writes critical pieces in the international press, Applebaum, who had faced no racism in Poland until Law and Justice came to power, was turned by the regimes creatures into the clandestine Jewish coordinator of anti-Polish activity.

I once believed you should never let politics destroy a friendship. But that maxim depends on politics not turning into a danger to you and those you love. Applebaum could not stay friends with women who would not protest as the state they supported went for her and husband.

The Anglo-Saxon world is not so different from Poland and Hungary. Britain has handled Covid-19 so disastrously because only servile nobodies, willing to pretend that a no-deal Brexit would not harm the country, could gain admittance to Boris Johnsons cabinet. As Johnson politicises the public sector, showing fear of the liar looks like becoming the best way to secure a job in the higher ranks of the civil service as well. American Republicans have had to go along with every lie Trump has told since his birther slur on Barack Obama. As for breaking friendships, British Jews broke theirs when they watched friends in Labour cheer on Jeremy Corbyn and thought: If they ever came for me and my family, you would stand by, wouldnt you?

Careerism is too glib an explanation for selling out, and Applebaum is too good a historian to offer it. Likewise, bigotry and racial prejudice were never enough on their own to move her friends away from liberal democracy. Among Applebaums acquaintances is one of Orbns greatest cheerleaders. She has a gay son, but that has not stopped her espousing the cause of a homophobic regime. Laura Ingraham, a Fox News presenter, became one of the earliest supporters of Trump, despite the fact that she has adopted three immigrant children.

Rather than grab at standard explanations, Applebaum understands that a society based on merit may sound fine if you want to live in a country run by talented people. But what if you are not yourself talented? Since the 1950s, criticisms of meritocracy have become so commonplace they have passed into cliche. Not one I have read or indeed written stops to consider how one-party states represent the anti-meritocratic society in its purest form. Among her friends who became the servants of authoritarian movements, Applebaum sees the consequences of the lust for status among resentful men and women, who believe the old world never gave them their due.

They were privileged by normal standards but nowhere near as privileged as they expected to be. Talking to Applebaum, I imagined a British government abolishing press freedom and the independence of the judiciary and the civil service. I didnt doubt for a moment that there would be thousands of mediocre journalists, broadcasters, lawyers and administrators who would happily work for the new regime if it pandered to their vanity by giving them the jobs they could never have taken on merit. Hannah Arendt wrote of the communists and fascists that they replaced first-rate talents with crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity was the best guarantee of their loyalty. She might have been talking about contemporary Poland, Britain and America.

Given the right conditions any society can turn against democracy, Applebaum says, and explains why better than any modern writer I know. To the political consequences of offended vanity Why am I not more important? Why does the BBC never call? a sense of despair is vital. If you believe, like the American right, that godless enemies want to destroy your Christian country, and prove their malice by not giving you the rewards you deserve, or think, like Scruton and the Telegraph crowd of the 1990s, that English culture and history is being thrown in the bin, and you are being chucked away with it, or agree with the supporters of the new tyrants of eastern Europe that a liberal elite is plotting to extinguish your culture by importing Muslim immigrants, and proving its contempt for all that is decent by laughing at you, then any swine will do as long as the swine can stop it. You will pay any price and abandon any principle in the struggle against a demonic enemy.

Shouldnt she have seen it coming, I ask her. Shouldnt she have realised that the world she inhabited included authoritarians, who would turn on her and everything she believed in. Typically, instead of huffing, puffing, and trying to pretend she has never been in the wrong, she laughs and admits that she probably should have asked harder questions sooner of her former friends.

Readers should be glad she bided her time. Applebaum can bring a candle into the darkness of the populist right precisely because she stayed on the right for so long. She does not know whether it can be beaten. Shes a journalist not a soothsayer. But I know that if you want to fight it, her writing is an arsenal that stores the sharpest weapons to hand.

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Anne Applebaum: how my old friends paved the way for Trump and Brexit - The Guardian

The Scottish Governments latest economic report reveals a no deal Brexit would have significant impact on economic activity in Scotland.The fears are now being raised less than six months before the end of the Brexit transition period when the UK will no longer have to follow EU rules.

The Scottish Government has repeatedly called for the transition period to be extended with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon writing to Boris Johnson warning that "fundamental issues" still remained between the UK and EU negotiators.

Scottish Government sources told Express.co.uk that the economy north of the border was in jeopardy stressing it was a delicate time especially after a deadlock in recent negotiations.

They added there was severe concern especially at the six month mark adding the coronavirus pandemic had already left businesses in a vulnerable state stressing that no deal and no extension to the transition period would make things significantly worse.

The monthly economic report added: As we also move towards formally exiting the EU transition period (31 December 2020) uncertainty regarding future trade arrangements with key markets has the potential to impact already weakened business sectors and have a significant impact on economic activity, particularly if there is no deal.

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Dr Liz Cameron, chief executive of the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, told Express.co.uk that many businesses still lack clarity as to what the future holds.

Dr Cameron stressed that Scottish businesses required detailed answers on a wide number of issues if they are able to plan properly for the changes that will come when the transition period comes to an end.

She concluded: Our Scottish Chamber Network continues to call upon the UK Government to prioritise flow across the border, not adding costs or bureaucracy to businesses who are already dealing with major trading challenges due to the coronavirus crisis.

Whatever deal is done, Scottish businesses must be able to compete effectively.

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The Scottish Chamber of Commerce is actively involved in talks involving trade with new markets.

The report also revealed Scotlands GDP fell by 2.5 percent in the first quarter of 2020 which was mainly driven by a 5.0 percent fall in output in March as the spread of coronavirus and introduction of lockdowns slowed economic activity.

It continued: COVID-19 has resulted in an economic crisis in Scotland, through the direct impact on the economy but also the secondary impacts on health and society from a weaker economy.

The impact of COVID-19 is not constant, and will be changing over time, depending on the prevalence of the virus and the severity of the restrictions required to protect against it.

Scotland has already felt the impact of the pandemic after figures showed GDP fell 18.9 percent in April, the first full month of lockdown, and around 23 percent over March and April combined.

However, figures for the month of May are due to be published by the Scottish Government next week.

Scottish Finance Secretary Kate Forbes has already spurred into action and asked the Treasury to give Holyrood extra tax powers or 500m in further funding.

She warned there was a 500million hole between the extra cost of the COVID-19 pandemic and the funding given to Scotland from Westminster.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak gave 800m to Scotland through his Summer Mini-Budget however but the MSP dismissed this stressing it didnt meet Scotlands needs specifically.

Ms Sturgeon wrote in her letter to Boris Johnson: "No-one could reproach the UK Government for changing its position in the light of the wholly unforeseeable Covid-19 crisis, particularly as the EU has made it clear it is open to an extension request.

"We therefore call on you to take the final opportunity the next few weeks provide to ask for an extension to the transition period in order to provide a breathing space to complete the negotiations, to implement the outcome, and the opportunity for our businesses to find their feet after the enormous disruption of recent months.

"At the time the Withdrawal Agreement was signed, no-one could have imagined the enormous economic dislocation which the Covid 19 pandemic has caused - in Wales, Scotland, the whole of the UK, in the EU and across the world."

The letter claimed that, at best, there would only be a "bare bones" trade deal in place by December, or a move to a no-deal exit from the EU.

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Scotland TERRIFIED: Fears of Brexit economic chaos as EU talks reach deadlock - Express.co.uk