Category Archives: Brexit

Meanwhile, Western officials have suggested that mass mobilisation is "about to happen" in Russia, although the Kremlin is "concerned" because this would effectively be an "admission of failure" in what was intended to be a quick, clean operation in Ukraine and has instead turned into a slow and grinding conflict.

Because Moscow also fears that country-wide mobilisation could stoke unrest in Russian cities, it is attempting to increase the pool of fighters by "doing very significant recruitment" in poor areas and raising the age limit for serving.

Officials also said there is "more chatter" about Putin's health and "more speculation" about who will replace him in Russia, although there is no "immediate threat" to his grip on power.

The Prime Minister's comments came after he made an unannounced trip to Kyiv for talks with Volodymyr Zelensky, when he told the Ukrainian president that Britain would be prepared to train tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops as they continue to fight back against the Russian offensive in the Donbas.

He said it was important to prevent the Russians "freezing" the conflict so they could consolidate their gains before mounting another attack.

See the article here:

Positive thing out of Brexit EU withdrawal allowed Britain to take the lead in Ukraine - Express

Opinion

Chief Political Commentator

June 22, 2022 3:19 pm(Updated 3:20 pm)

Boris Johnson is not known for his strategic patience, but this week he tried to take the long view as the nation grappled with strikes, soaring inflation and squeezed wages. I say this to the country as a whole, we need to get ready to stay the course, he told the Cabinet.

That bid to lift our eyes to the horizon is reflected in a string of policy areas, where the Government has set targets for delivery by 2030 (which the eagle-eyed among you may have spotted, is a deadline way after the next election).

On Brexit in particular, Downing Street stressed this week that it was too early to pass judgment on whether that historic shift in the UKs global role was having a negative impact on the economy.

That quote reminded me of the famous quote by the late Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, who when asked about the influence of the 1789 French Revolution replied: Too early to say. Except in No 10s case it felt not so much like cautious, historic wisdom but calculated political evasion.

Unfortunately for the Government, a new economic study out today suggests that Brexit isnt just having an impact on the short term but on the medium and long-term too.

The Resolution Foundations The Big Brexit report (a collaboration with the LSE, funded by Nuffield Foundation) provides the most detailed assessment to date of the ongoing impact of the UKs Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) with the EU.

The good news for the Government is that, contrary to some other studies, the report finds that the UK hasnt seen a large relative decline in its exports to the EU that many predicted (although UK imports from the EU have fallen more swiftly than those from the rest of the world).

The bad news, however, is that we have suffered a sharp decline in trade openness (total trade as a share of GDP) since 2019, with a fall of eight percentage points. Competitiveness has fallen too.

The result makes for some pretty grim forecasts for 2030, the Governments favourite timeline. The average worker in Britain was now on course to suffer more than 470 in lost pay each year by 2030 after rising living costs are taken into account, compared with the UK staying in the EU.

The key behind that statistic is that productivity will be reduced by 1.3 per cent by the end of the decade, due to the changes in trading rules alone. That is only a fraction of the five per cent in lost productivity forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) by 2030 (which takes into account migration and investment and other factors).

Crucially, the Resolution Foundation study also manages to disentangle the trade impacts from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which ministers righly cite when trying to suggest the big picture is a complex one.

The latest report has more bad news for the Governments Red Wall areas, as it predicts that the North East is expected to be hit hardest by Brexit as its firms are particularly reliant on exports to the EU. By contrast, the East of England, London, Northern Ireland and Scotland are expected to outperform the rest of the country. The output of the UK fishing industry is expected to decline by 30 per cent, and some workers will face painful adjustments.

Project Fear is beginning to look an awful lot like Project Fact.

But it is the hit to productivity that ought to worry ministers, not least because the Governments entire wages policy is based on the idea that higher wages can only be justified by improved productivity. The latest report seemed to confirm that Brexits impact is more like a slow puncture than a blowout.

As we approach the sixth anniversary of the 2016 EU referendum, no one wants to reheat the old debates or relitigate its outcome. Yet for many there has been a conspiracy of silence from both the Conservatives and Labour on the reality of the downsides of quitting the EU.

While the Brexit deal cant be reopened fully, there is a strong case for getting fresh agreements with the EU on things like veterinary and agrifood standards (at the heart of much of the Northern Ireland problem). This is one of the few areas in which Labour has dared to dip its toe. Mutual recognition of professional qualifications and ID cards are other ways of smoothing the relationship.

As UK in A Changing Europe think tank chief Anand Menon said today, there are some Brexit opportunities which can be grasped. He said that if new immigration rules mean there are more Indian nuclear scientists rather than Romanian fruit-pickers, its possible that productivity will increase as a result.

More importantly, Brexit (and the 2019 election) has also changed the narrative in that both the main political parties now at least talk about tackling regional and economic inequality. As Menon points out, theres nothing like a marginal seat to focus political attention.

The PM himself has in the past talked about bumps in the road on the way to his promised land. Yet he and other ministers need to be much more open about the trade-offs involved in Brexit. Admitting the downsides as well as the potential upsides would surely help Johnson tackle his twin problems of trust and honesty with some voters. Just as with the looming recession, identifying the problems is a prerequisite to trying to mitigate them.

It would also fit with the new note of downbeat realism that the PM himself tried to strike this week. Michael Gove has been among the few ministers to try to prepare the nation for what looks like recession, warning that there are inevitably tough times ahead for the UK and the global economy. That was a far cry from Johnsons previous attacks on the doomsters and the gloomsters.

And unless ministers are honest about the short and medium term, their pleas for patience may fall on deaf ears. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Minister for Brexit Opportunities, today unveiled plans to liberate the UK from retained EU law. But he has also tried to say it could be 50 years before the full economic consequences of quitting the EU are known.

No 10 took a similar line earlier this week when the PMs spokesman said: The opportunities Brexit provides will be a boon to the UK economy in the long run. But as the economist John Maynard Keynes pointed out: In the long run, were all dead.

For Johnson, levelling with the public about the downsides to Brexit may be a key step in his plan for levelling up the country.

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Boris Johnson needs to level with the public that Brexit is making the cost of living worse - iNews

The result of the referendum on Scottish independence, as the will of the sovereign people of Scotland, will be binding on the majority of MSPs elected to the Holyrood parliament on a manifesto commitment to hold such a referendum.

The position in England is different, where the UK Government decided in the case of the consultative Brexit referendum that it would acquiesce to the will of the people in England and put the required legislation through parliament.

READ MORE:Nicola Sturgeon sets the date for the 'route map' to indyref2

Theresa Mays letter to the EU president and statement to parliament on Brexit on March 29 2017, and her letter to the nation of November 24 2018, were all based on her intention of honouring the will of the people there is not even a hint that the referendum is legally binding on parliament.

In fact, in her letter to Donald Tusk notifying the European Council of the United Kingdoms intention to withdraw from the European Union she makes it clear that she is invoking Article 50 as the United Kingdom Parliament confirmed the result of the referendum by voting with clear and convincing majorities in both of its Houses for the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill.

The present debate on binding or consultative referendums is being conducted on the basis of the relationship between people and parliament in England. There are no grounds for such a debate in Scotland, where the relationship is quite clear: the people are sovereign.

John JamiesonSouth Queensferry

I HAVE always believed that people are entitled to their opinion, though blatant lies and deliberate distortions always angered me. On reading Kevin McKennas article (Launch event was lacking optimism of 2012 despite better starting spot, Jun 15), here are my opinions.

I have enjoyed a lot of Kevins pieces, although some that he has written in a humorous vein were not quite my cup of tea (everyone to their own taste).

Kevin recently wrote that he would not lose any sleep over Yes being defeated in the next referendum. The criticism he expresses is a revival of what he has written before, and gives me the impression that he is anticipating a future undisturbed sleep.

READ MORE:BBC Scotland says Glenn Campbell's indyref2 legality tweet 'did not break rules'

New to me in his criticisms is his comment about trade unions and his specific remark about the leader of Glasgow City Council. He seems to have forgotten that it was under her leadership that council women workers won their historic pay demands.

The source of denial of those justified pay demands was the collusion between a certain trade union and the previous Labour council.

As for the remarks about the vital campaigning for Yes in 2014 (I assume his is referring to the trade unions and their leaderships), if there was campaigning it was surely from the rank and file, because their leaderships were for a No vote.

There were, to the best of my knowledge, two exceptions. One was my own union Unite, and I think the other was the Fire Brigades Union both adopted a neutral position.

Bobby BrennanGlasgow

FOR months folks have been gnashing their teeth with discontent at there being no news of a referendum. We get the launch, and in The National Common Weal, Red Kevin the Labour mouthpiece/occasional Yesser and Lesley Riddoch all presented such a gloomy response in their articles. Kevins was an outright assault on all things SNP.

Come on, people, the question is do we want our independence? If Yes, then lets get behind the vehicle that will get us there. The opposition will throw plenty of grenades so we dont need to do the same.

Jan FerrieAyrshire

I HAVE been loath in present times to answer some of the rants in the letters page on the grounds that (a) answering them gives them undeserved daylight and (b) in many cases they are the work of plants. One wonders why some of them arent to be seen in the letters pages of our Unionist press. One feature in virtually all of it is that there is absolutely no sensible or productive alternative to the political positions that is under attack.

READ MORE:Referendum route to independence is full of legal potholes

I was energised by the declaration that we are having a referendum whether Westminster agrees or not. Im sure most of us feel exactly the same. That is exactly the right position right and now increases the pressure is on the Unionist coalition to come up with any democratic reason why we should not be allowed a referendum. In particular, the sad cartel that is the Scottish Labour party cannot cope with this declaration of our democratic right.

The Scottish Claim of Right, the Smith Commission and, more significantly, the UN Charter all make it absolutely clear that we have the right to choose our own future and any notion that we should doff our caps and crawl back into our wee boxes when the UK suggests it can stop us is pathetic.

Dave McEwan HillSandbank, Argyll

I SEE that in their desperation that the English Tory government has, with no sense of irony, returned to the 1970s by referring to trades union leaders as union barons. Deeply ironic from a party which has packed the House of Lords with donor barons and robber barons to sit alongside the silver spoon barons who are only there because their 15x great-grandad raped, pillaged and murdered to get there.

Cal WatersonLennoxtown

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This is why indyref2 will be binding while the Brexit vote was not - The National

The Subways guitarist Billy Lunn has opened up about the struggles that UK musicians touring Europe are facing in the aftermath of Brexit.

In an op-ed piece in The Independent, Lunn has shared his thoughts about the little-reported difficulties that touring bands suffering since the UK left the European Union, something that hes keenly aware of given that The Subways are more popular on the continent than they are back home.

As I write, I sit in a venue called Hansa 39 in Munich, readying myself for sound check. Im apprehensive, because my main amplifier spluttered and eventually refused to work two days into the tour, and Im now praying my spare amplifier doesnt go the same way, Lunn declares.

He goes on to explain that in pre-Brexit times, a quick phonecall to the amp brands local A&R representative would have seen a new amp turn up that he could use for the tour and return home to the UK with while he was waiting for his broken amp to be fixed.

Brexit and the end of free movement of people and goods between the UK and the EU has put paid to such convenience the carnet system now means that bands are obligated to return with the exact gear they left with, right down to the serial numbers.

The faulty amplifier, like every single item we bring with us, is listed on the carnet, with its weight, type, model number and serial number provided, and must simply come along for the ride, Lunn explains.

The carnet expires in 12 months, and it cant be altered until its expiration date. That means we must make extra sure to list and bring with us spares of everything we use, whilst also making sure that they wont drastically increase insurance costs.

That goes for every single item, right down to power adapters, power units, power leads, extension cables, XLR and quarter inch cables, patch cables, guitars, guitar cases, guitar pedals, pedalboards, guitar stands, drums, drum stands, drum cases, cymbals, cymbal stands, cymbal cases, microphones, wireless transmitters and receivers, in-ear monitors (plus their respective cases), and the rest!

In addition to the stress of not being able to replace faulty gear on the road, and the expense of having to pay to ship backups for every essential item on the tour regardless of how small or commonplace, the hassle for touring artists starts before they even go on tour every item that comes on tour has to be catalogued, weighed and the serial number noted for the carnet.

Image: Shirlaine Forrest/WireImage

This is a huge logistical pain for guitar players especially, as Lunn notes, it meant stripping apart pedalboards that had taken us 15 years to assemble, just to get at the serial numbers of every guitar pedal before weighing them separately.

With the addition of huge delays leaving and returning to Britain, and unprecedented expense and strain put on support bands who do not have the logistical support of an established band, Lunn concludes with a sombre message for the future of UK artists wanting to work in the EU

Where before there was a sense of freedom, now theres limitation, he writes. Its ironic, really, given Vote Leaves campaign messaging. Culturally and economically, however, the arts industrys suffering is really only just beginning.

The article is part of a wider series called Brexit, 6 years on, created by The Independent to mark the sixth anniversary of the referendum on Britains membership of the EU, and share the impact of the vote to leave.

This is not the first time we have heard about the strain that British musicians are feeling post-Brexit, as a study released 18 months ago revealed that over three-quarters of UK musicians dont see themselves touring in the EU following the news that visas and customs declarations for equipment will be required.

The study, conducted by musician booking site Encore included 452 musicians, and also revealed that 40 percent of those asked said they already had to cancel gigs specifically because of Brexit.

More here:

The suffering is only just beginning Subways guitarist reveals the harsh reality of Brexit for UK bands touring Europe - Guitar.com

Residents in Barking have voiced their concerns over the soaring cost of living and the burden inflation is placing on working families, the worsening financial outlook of the country even has some in the East London borough questioning whether Brexit may have come at the wrong time. Barking backed Brexit by 62.4 per cent to Remain 37.6 per cent, one of the few areas of London to back leaving the EU.

During a recent walkabout in Barking, Express.co.uk spoke with a number of residents who expressed concern over the impact of rising prices and bills.

"Talking about Brexit, it is a good thing to do but depends on the right timing," one man stops to tell us.

"When you consider the state of the economy at the moment, considering the standard of living that Britain's had in the last month, the party is not so good at the moment.

"It would be better if we get into Brexit at the right timing with good planning on the ground."

He continued: "I think that would be the best option and right now the prices of things have risen up.

"The salaries have not increased and goods, rents, everything is all up at the moment, and those things thatare from the other European countries, if you look at the prices at the moment in the market compared to the standard of living, the party is very, very negative.

"So I would suggest if there is anything we can do to relieve this hardship on people, that would be good."

Elsewhere, a womana single mum of three shares a similar concern over rising bills.

The BankofEngland last week forecast inflation was set to hit 11 percent in the autumn as it hiked interest rates to 1.25 percent - the fifth successive rise.

According to a new study,Brexithas damaged Britain's economic competitiveness, reducing productivity and workers' real wages in the years ahead.

The Resolution Foundation said leaving the EU has reduced how open and competitive Britain's economy is.

The report, in collaboration with the LSE, said the immediate impact of the referendum result has been clear, with a "depreciation-driven inflation spike" increasing the cost of living for households, and seeing business investment falling.

View original post here:

Leave-backing Londoners voice concern over cost of living 'Brexit BUT at the right time!' - Express

With the Tories staring at defeat in this Thursdays crucial by-election in a Red Wall seat MPs have told Express.co.uk that they have refused to help campaign because the party selected a candidate who has publicly attacked Brexitaccording to comments printed in the Independent. Nadeem Ahmed has proven to be controversial after also having to apologise for referring to serial killer GP Harold Shipman in an analogy about trusting the Tory party. The results are seen as a key indicator over the security of the Prime Minister's hold on the Tory leadership after survivng a vote of confidence from his MPs earlier this month.

Mr Ahmed's comments come despite Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, who is coordinating the campaign, wanting to run the by-election as a "save Brexit" message against the Labour and Lib Dem rejoiner alliance.

The row has again raised questions over the candidates department of Conservative Central Office (CCHQ) with long running concerns over the way they select Tory candidates in crucial elections and for winnable seats.

One senior Red Wall Conservative MP said: I was going to go to Wakefield to help out even though it is an uphill task but then I saw our candidates Brexit comments.

I think it is very upsetting and I told my whip that I would not be going as a result.

A former minister said: I didnt see any point in going to the by-elections. It's a waste of time and effort because we are going to lose anyway.

When you have candidates attacking core areas like Brexit you make things even worse.

Another veteran MP said: They begged me to go to Wakefield. I didnt even bother to answer.

The by-election was called because the previous Conservative MP Imran Ahmad Khan, who became the first Tory to win Wakefield since 1931 when he won in 2019, stepped down after being found guilty of sexual assault of a 15 year old.

He was jailed for 18 months.

One senior MP said that both selections for Wakefield showed that the candidates department for the Conservatives is not doing its job.

The MP said: Our candidates department is an absolute mess. They are more concerned with quotas than finding good actual conservative candidates who support the things Conservatives are supposed to support.

They did not do a proper background check on Khan before he was parachuted into Wakefield and now we have a candidate who makes a gaffe every time he opens his mouth and says Brexit was built on lies.

If this was an isolated problem it would be unfortunate but we keep seeing these horrendous selections all over the country.

READ MORE:Imperial legacy is a major asset for Brexit Britain - NEW report

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Boris reeling as Tory MPs boycott Wakefield by-election over 'anti-Brexit' candidate - Express

With Brex out, how do its competitors plan to serve SMBs?

Brex took over the headlines these past few days after its announcement that it will stop serving traditional small businesses, focusing only on tech startups with capital backing.

This news triggered many conversations and opinions in the industry, giving us all a break from talking about crypto and layoffs the spotlight is now on corporate expense fintechs, which were industry darlings not too long ago.

Long story short the fintech realized SMBs were more complicated than anticipated. It was spreading itself too thin, according to founder and co-CEO Pedro Franceschi, and it couldnt serve either small businesses or startups well.

Over time, we realized that our startup customers the very customers we started with were growing very fast, and needed Brex to scale with them. Scale AI went from 5 people when we started serving them, to almost 1,000. Brex didnt work as well for larger companies, the executive explained in a Twitter thread.

Brex started out around five years ago as an expense management solution for startups and SMBs, expanding in the latter segment in 2020. Revenues mostly came from interchange fees, as the main product was corporate cards.

Meanwhile, competitor Ramp also started with offering free services and corporate cards, but its approach is now centered around building software designed to help SMBs save money. Most corporate card companies were incentivizing spending, offering lots of rewards schemes, as this fuels interchange revenues. But small businesses actually want savings, according to Colin Kennedy, chief business officer at Ramp.

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Lending Briefing: The SMB Brexit, and digital lending VC funding Tearsheet - Tearsheet

A truck arrives at Larne port in County Antrim, where a customs post has been established as part of the Northern Ireland Protocol, on November 29, 2021. Paul Faith/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A truck arrives at Larne port in County Antrim, where a customs post has been established as part of the Northern Ireland Protocol, on November 29, 2021.

When the United Kingdom officially left the European Union, Northern Ireland stayed behind in one significant way.

The country effectively remained part of the EU's single market for goods, a concept that allows goods to move freely among the member states. That condition was called the Northern Ireland Protocol.

This week, the U.K. government announced a proposal to rework part of the agreement it made with the EU during Brexit in a move one European official called "illegal."

It's set off an international trade dispute between the U.K. and the EU, and threatened to disrupt the relative peace in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement was reached in 1998.

"When we look at people's concerns around the protocol, above all else, no matter what background people are from, their concern is for political stability in Northern Ireland," Katy Hayward, a professor of political sociology at Queen's University Belfast, told NPR.

"I think this is why a majority of people are very keen for the UK and the EU to find their way back to the negotiating table fairly quickly."

When Brexit took effect, it meant that the Republic of Ireland remained in the EU while Northern Ireland left the bloc.

In lieu of creating a land border on the island of Ireland, officials agreed to allow Northern Ireland to effectively stay in the EU's single market, a deal that was known as the Northern Ireland Protocol.

That meant that goods coming into Northern Ireland from England, Scotland and Wales had to meet EU standards and were subject to other rules governing the single market.

Britain has delayed implementing post-Brexit import controls several times, Reuters reported.

The government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who narrowly survived a recent no-confidence vote, is now the driving force behind a new bill that would undo parts of the protocol.

The proposal by Johnson's government would allow goods to flow into Northern Ireland under either UK or EU rules. It aims to lessen costs and paperwork for businesses in the UK.

Finally, disputes that are currently resolved by the European Court of Justice would instead go to independent arbitration under the proposal.

"This is a reasonable, practical solution to the problems facing Northern Ireland," Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement.

"Let's call a spade a spade: this is illegal," Maro efovi, the European Union's vice president for interinstitutional relations and foresight, said on Wednesday.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had spoken with Truss and discussed the "need to continue negotiations with the EU to find solutions" regarding the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The UK proposal also renewed fears of a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, a possibility that the protocol explicitly aimed to avoid to maintain the relative peace between the two countries.

Decades of violence between nationalists and unionists known as the Troubles largely ended with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

But Hayward said she heard concerns about the return of a hard border while doing research in the region during the Brexit withdrawal negotiations from 2017 onward.

"It wasn't so much the question of customs checks and controls that people were concerned about," she said. "It immediately evoked those memories that people had of the Troubles and of blocked roads and of army checks."

In response to the recent proposal, the European Commission announced on Wednesday that it was launching infringement proceedings against the U.K. for violating the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The complaints include accusations that the UK is understaffed at border control posts in Northern Ireland and isn't carrying out the required controls. Additionally, the commission said the UK has failed to provide certain trade data related to Northern Ireland.

The commission also relaunched another infringement proceeding it first filed in 2021 "notably regarding the certification requirements for the movement of agri-food."

A spokesperson for Johnson said the government was "disappointed" by the commission's legal action.

Read more here:

A trade dispute between the U.K. and the EU erupts over post-Brexit deal - NPR

Britain today is a poor and divided country. Parts of London and the southeast of England might be among the wealthiest places on the planet, but swaths of northern England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland are among Western Europes poorest. Barely a decade ago, the average Brit was as wealthy as the average German. Now they are about 15 percent poorerand 30 percent worse off than the typical American.

The great project of Boris Johnsons government is to unite and level up the country, bringing the rest of Britain into line with the southeast. This is a mission explicitly tied to Brexit and the threat of Scottish secession, the two great revolutionary challenges facing the British state.

Johnson is not alone in believing that the division between the south and the rest is so big that it threatens the very integrity of the United Kingdom. Yet for him, Brexit was both an expression of Britains great dividea vote against the status quoand an opportunity to fix it, by giving the government new freedoms that it did not have within the European Union.

In the 2016 Brexit referendum and then in the 2019 general election, Johnson offered voters the chance to take back control of their destiny, to rebalance the country and to pull it together again. On both occasions, he won.

Six years on, however, we can safely say his project is failing. His government is busy trying to wrest back more control rather than exercising what it has regained. It has not united the country. It has not even begun to level it up.

The truth is, this government wont accomplish any of that. Until Britain stops trying to restore a vanished pastwhether the one imagined by its pro-Brexit Leavers or its anti-Brexit Remainersand begins to construct a viable future, the country as a whole never will.

So now, tell me how was Yorkshire? Cardinal Wolsey asks Thomas Cromwell in the opening pages of Hilary Mantels Wolf Hall, her fictionalized biography of Cromwell. Filthy, Cromwell replies. Weather. People. Manners. Morals Oh, and the food. Five miles inland, and no fresh fish. Appalled, Wolsey asks what they do eat up there. Londoners, Cromwell says. You have never seen such heathens.

In much of the self-excoriating public debate since the referendum, the image of the heathen northerner has once again risen in the national consciousness, blamed by liberal Remainers for dragging the country out of the EU. Todays northerners might be able to find fresh fish, but they dwell in left behind towns, apparently voting for revolution out of desperation because they have so little to lose. Never mind that the bulk of Brexit supporters were comfortable older people, many of them in the prosperous south; the image of the poor Brexit-backing northerner, said to have been conned by clever salesmen like Johnson, is the one that has stuck. The implication is that the 48 percent who voted to remain were smart enough to see through Johnsons lies and promises.

In some important senses, however, the pledges made by the Vote Leave campaignthe official movement calling for Britains withdrawalhave been delivered. In its pitch to the country, Vote Leave claimed that Brexit would achieve five key things: It would save Britain 350 million a week that it could spend on its own priorities; reclaim control of the countrys borders, as well as its immigration system; and leave it free to strike trade deals independently of the EU, and to make its own laws. Of these, only the 350 million figure remains contentious as an outright lie. (The real amount Britain contributed to the EU was lower, once various deductions were taken into account.) The other pledges, however, have been largely fulfilled: Liberated from the EUs freedom of movement principle, Britain now operates its own border outside the EU and its own immigration system; no longer part of the EUs trading bloc, it operates its own trade policy and manages its own internal market, governed by its own laws; and, of course, it no longer contributes to the EU budget. For good or bad, Britain has taken back control. Well, up to a point.

On laws, Britain can be said to have only partially taken back control, given that EU law still applies in one part of its territory, Northern Ireland. (Since Brexit, both Britain and the EU have sought to ensure that no border is erected between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland, a separate sovereign state. The result has been a de facto border between Northern Ireland and the rest of Britain, with EU rules and regulations still applicable on one side but not the other.) This means that every time London wishes to scrap an EU law that would continue to apply in Northern Ireland, it risks dividing its own country. Partly for this reasonbut more likely because a lot of EU laws are either sensible or popularthe government has only sparingly used its control to diverge from the EU. Britain continues to run a distinctly European social and economic model, but without the benefits of being in the EUs single market.

On trade, Britain has essentially rebuilt the network of deals that it had as a member of the EU, but it now has a much worse relationship with its biggest trading partner, the EU. It has not pursued a radically different strategy with the goal of changing the nature of its economyusing protectionism, say, to build domestic capacity, or unilateral free trade that would sacrifice inefficient industry. Ironically, the one trade deal that might have made at least something of a difference to Britainwith the United Statesis now politically impossible, in large part because of Washingtons opposition to Britains efforts to take back some of the legal control that it has lost over Northern Ireland. And instead of trying to liberalize global services trade, which would have a huge impact on the British economy, it has prioritized symbolic trade deals with faraway countries such as New Zealand, which make almost no difference.

Then we come to borders. Britain has negotiated itself into the preposterous position of operating two borders, neither of which it wants. The first, as we have seen, sits within its own country; the second sits at Britains busiest trading route with the continent, but which only the EU enforces. Six years after the Brexit referendum, all goods moving from Britain to France are checked by the EU, yet hardly any are checked in return, partly because Britain has not built the capacity to do so. For European businesses, this couldnt be better: Their access to the British market is largely unchanged. For British businesses, the one-sided frontier is a disaster. London argues that the EU is punishing itself by making British goods more expensive to import. The EU simply shrugs, able to absorb this limited cost as the price of protecting its market. Either way, the resultagainis just a version of the status quo ante for Britain, only indisputably worse.

Of the ostensibly fulfilled promises, immigration is the most complex. Here, London has introduced a points-based system that, againon the face of itis different from what came before. Instead of there being free movement within the EU, offering priority to European citizens, Britain today operates a system open to anyone in the world, without a preference for Europeans. Yet it has used this newfound control to effectively maintain immigration levels, rather than reduce them. Supporters of this policy say the fact that Britain is directly in control of who comes into the country means people are more at ease with high levels of immigration. Some initial evidence indicates that this is true. Still, yet againand for good or badBritain has chosen to maintain the same kind of high-immigration economic model it had before Brexit, rather than substantially change it.

So far, Britain has chosen the hardest, most expensive version of Brexit available, one that leaves the country divided and its businesses disadvantaged, without having bothered to do anything that would actually alter the basic nature of the economy. Brexit, then, turned out to be both more radical than its supporters claimed, leaving the British economy indisputably worse off, and far less radical than its opponents warned.

In Wolf Hall, Cardinal Wolsey realizes he really should go to Yorkshire himself at some point, given that he is the archbishop of York and has never actually visited his see. His goal is not to help build that archdiocese, however, but to divert income from his northern monasteries to fund two new colleges in the south. How little things change.

Today, as in Wolseys time, almost all of Britains great institutions and national assets remain in the south, promoted and protected by those in charge in London: the City of Londons finance sector, Heathrow Airport, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the pharmaceutical and technology industries, all of the countrys world-class museums, its biggest media companies, its highest law courts. The U.K.s only core economic asset that remains outside the south is the oil and gas industry in Scotland, and even that is disappearing.

It hasnt always been this way. During the Victorian era, parts of northern England were genuinely wealthy. Thanks to the industrial revolution, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, and Belfast were centers of the world. Today, they are fine cities, but have once again fallen behind their European counterparts. Although we dont like to admit it, they are poor. As the economist Torsten Bell told me recently: Yes, this is what failure looks like.

In some senses, this is just a reversion to the historic mean. In The Shortest History of England, the historian and author James Hawes notes how the north-south divide was buried in the soil of the country, there when the Romans came. When Emperor Claudius looked at Britain, Hawes writes, he only cared about the tribes already advanced enough to be making and using coinsall of whom were in the south. By the time Cardinal Wolsey was running things 1,500 years later, the divide remained in place. We know this because the real Wolsey carried out surveys of England, which show that the areas most heavily Romanized at the turn of the millennium were still the richest in England in the 16th century. As Hawes puts it, despite the fall of the Roman Empire, the English invasions, the Vikings, the Conquest, the High Medieval boom, the Black Death and the Wars of the Roses, the North-South divide was almost exactly the same. And it is almost exactly the same today.

Ultimately, as manufacturing began to wilt after the Victorian boom and the Second World War, so too did the north. Every prime minister since Margaret Thatcher has tried to address the problem, and all have failed. Now it is Johnsons turn.

Yet leveling up, like taking back control, is radical in theory and conservative in practice. Johnson proposes to close a 2,000-year-old divide with a few more bus routes, some free ports, the relocation of parts of government departments out of London, and a leveling up fund of 4.8 billion, equivalent to 0.2 percent of Britains annual GDP.

Brexit seems, if anything, to be making this problem worse, as London, with its service-sector economy, recovers far more quickly than the rest of the country. This, in turn, naturally leaves the Treasury more reliant on the south for its revenue, while being able to spend less to change the reality of the north-south divide than it did before, thanks to a slowing economy. So the cycle continues, nothing changing, only degrading.

Johnson seems to grasp the historic nature of the challenge while also being singularly useless at being able to do anything about it. When I interviewed him last year, he admitted that governments struggled to change the deep-seated historical realities of a nation. Its very, very hard to change the fundamentals, he said. He had been reading about Shakespearean England and some of the challenges that existed then and now. He nevertheless insisted that it was possible to change things quickly. Less than 100 years ago, Liverpool was producing more tax than London, he told me. The regional imbalance can shift quite quickly with local leadership, infrastructure, and great skills.

But Johnson offers almost nothing of practical value when it comes to addressing this imbalance. He says he doesnt support jam spreading, taking from the south to give to the north. Instead, Johnson wants the north to level up to the south without anyone suffering any pain and without his government actually exercising much of the control it paid such a heavy price to take back. There is no strategy, no plan, no vision of what Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, or Sheffield need in order to become as wealthy as the south; no idea of what major interventions the government must make to balance the playing field, what is required for the north to reach the kind of prosperity enjoyed across much of Northern Europe. Instead, his government offers ad hoc, politically driven nonsense, pulled in different directions by its voters based in red wall towns that will not be the engines of any rebalancing on one side, and Labour-supporting northern cities that have the genuine capacity to grow on the other.

It is all so depressing, all so familiar. In the 19th century, just a few years after Britain and Ireland formed a United Kingdom, the Anglo-Irish politician William Cusack Smith concluded that England was just not interested enough in making the union work. Can a Unionist avoid blushing when he contrasts the performance with the promise? The same could be said of this government.

Britain today cannot even commit to completing the first new train line outside the south since Queen Victoria died. Instead it has canceled one leg of the project, known as HS2, that was meant to go to the northeast, Britains poorest region, and another spur in the northwest. No one now even talks of extending it to Scotland. In London, meanwhile, a giant new 18.9 billion underground line has just opened, connecting the east and west of the capital, cutting journey times to Heathrow. Outside London, only one other city has any real metro system of note, while Leeds remains the biggest city in Europe without an underground or a tram network. If you want to travel from Leeds to Manchesterthe two richest cities in northern Englandyou must board a train that still runs on diesel.

Even when the government is given the chance to create a regional hub away from London, it misses the mark. Leeds hosts an offshoot of the Bank of England, as well as a new state investment bank. Yet when the Treasury was weighing where to locate a new hub, it chose Darlington, a town selected in large part because it sits within the red wallconstituencies long held by Labour that Johnson won in 2019rather than because it made any economic sense. I happen to be from Darlington and am happy for my hometown, but the decision exposes the governments lack of seriousness about leveling up.

In all of this, we see the same story over and over again. Little bits of government get moved out of London, each to a different place, each welcomed by whichever town has won the race to attract the jobs, but each doing nothing in the grand scheme of things to rebalance the country, a task that requires commerce, industry, infrastructure, investment, and difficult choices that prioritize some places over others. Through it all, London remains utterly dominant; the economy, the political class, and the country plod on.

The truth is, its already too late for Johnsons leveling-up agenda. It may even be too late for the next government, because not a single potential Conservative leadership candidate nor the opposition Labour Party has developed any kind of strategy that might significantly shift the fundamentals of the British economy.

Brexit represents the single biggest upheaval for Britains economic model since the country joined the European Economic Community in 1972. Yet the government seems to be largely attempting to hold the line, only under significantly worse circumstances. Today, no political party seems to be genuinely considering changing the Bank of Englands mandate, or overhauling how the economy is run by the government; building a rival to Heathrow in the north; or even relocating a single national museum away from the south. No party says the great cities of the north should be connected with a transport network the size and scope of Londons or recommends completely different tax, planning, and investment ruleseither for the country as a whole, or just for the parts outside the southeast of England. Nothing radical is ever put forward to prioritize northern growth, pursue a different economic strategy, overhaul the regulatory environment or tax system, or actually do something transformative. Instead, parties propose the most minor, insubstantial tweaks to a basic settlement that already exists, has always existed, and has been failing for much of the country, leading to two successive votes against the status quo.

Perhaps the brutal reality is that the north-south divide cannot be fixed. It existsa part of British life and history to be managed, reflected upon, and even at times celebrated (not everywhere wants to be as expensive and crammed as the southeast of England). And perhaps the British economy cannot be fundamentally altered, though surely it can be a lot wealthier than it is today.

The truth that fewwhether they are Leavers or Remainerswish to face up to is that of Britains economic failure. For Leavers, it is difficult to acknowledge that Brexit has amounted to a bad deal, negotiated from a position of extraordinary weakness, that has left Britain in an obviously worse position than it was before and with no clear strategy to build something better. For Remainers, meanwhile, this means accepting that the British economy, with its high levels of inequality and poverty masked by a wealthy capital, wasnt doing very well inside the EU; its also difficult to acknowledge that though Brexit has been an upheaval, it hasnt changed the basic structure of the British economy or its biggest dilemma, which is how to make the north much wealthier than it is today without undermining its only globally productive region, the south.

Brexit means an up-front hit to the economy, although not necessarily a disastrous one, Duncan Weldon, the author of Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through, an economic history of Britain, told me. With the right policy choices and some sort of coherent plan, the country could still thrive. But we arent seeing much coherence; instead we have a scattergun of short-term, mostly reactive measures.

Britains choice, as Bell, the economist, put it to me, is the same as it was inside the EU: to double down on what its good ator to get poorer. Brexit will not bring back manufacturing, as some hoped, or magically turn the country into a laissez-faire trading hub like Singapore. Britain is a service-sector economy that can do well inside or outside the EUif it governs itself properly.

But ultimately, what Britain has been doing hasnt been working. Voters said so in 2016, and again in 2019. The country needs to start doing something different. And yet it wont, because that would be too difficult. That would mean not simply taking control, but exercising it.

Read this article:

What Brexit Promised, and Boris Johnson Failed to Deliver - The Atlantic

Remainer George Osborne has predicted that the UK will be back in the European Union in 20 years' time.

The former Conservative Chancellor claimed Brexit has "caused a lot of damage to Britain's economy".

Speaking to LBC, Mr Osborne said: "Politics can't defy reality it's not unimaginable in 20 years time, to have a set of economic arrangements with the EU which aren't too distant from the economic arrangements we had when we were in the EU.

"In many ways, the people I respect most are the Brexiteers who say there's an economic cost to Brexit, but there are other benefits, such as parliamentary control, and sovereignty over our borders.

"What was nonsense and remains nonsense are the people who say Brexit was a great economic move to benefit the British economy, or a great act of free trade.

"It was the biggest act of protectionism in British history, and that is only now really, now it's fully implemented, becoming clear, and that's why free trade with Europe has got to be a priority for whoever the government in the next few years."

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Brexit LIVE: 'Real threat' EU mask slips as bitter plot to punish Britain backfires - Express