Tag: Great Britain

The UK will be unable to have frictionless, tariff-free trade under World Trade Organization rules for up to seven years in the event of a no-deal Brexit, according to two leading European Union law specialists. The ensuing chaos could double food prices and plunge Britain into a recession that could last up to 30 years, claim the lawyers who acted for Gina Miller in the historic case that forced the government to seek parliament’s approval to leave the EU. It has been claimed that the UK could simply move to WTO terms if there is no deal with the EU. It is impossible to say how long it would go on for. There are two apparently insurmountable hurdles to the UK trading on current WTO tariffs in the event of Britain crashing out in March, said Howard. Firstly, the UK must produce its own schedule covering both services and each of the 5,000-plus product lines covered in the WTO agreement and get it agreed by all the 163 WTO states in the 32 remaining parliamentary sitting days until 29 March 2019. To make it more complicated, there are no “default terms” Britain can crash out on, Howard said, while at the same time, the UK has been blocked by WTO members from simply relying on the EU’s “schedule” – its existing tariffs and tariff-free trade quotas. The government cannot simply cut and paste the 120,000 EU statutes into UK law and then make changes to them gradually, Howard said. “Negotiating and ratifying the international free trade deals with the rest of the world alone could take over seven years,” she said. “The UK will have to start negotiating over 50 free trade agreements from scratch once we leave the EU.

It’s a slow sunrise over the Clyde Marina in Ardrossan, on Scotland’s west coast, where Alistair Roberts is fitting the wheelhouse in his new fishing boat, Guide Them. “It’s the first boat to be built on the Clyde for 14 years,” he says, proudly. Why did the fishing industry vote for Brexit? “The transport has to be very quick,” says Ronald Scordia, the managing director at Angelbond, which processes Roberts’ prawn catch. But we don’t know what the new customs paperwork will be, especially for live produce. Indeed, accompanying the debate around Brexit have been calls for the Scottish government to seize the initiative in reforming domestic quota allocation, and consider options such as Norwegian-style community quotas or regional management. Whyte is blunt about one of the looming threats for her members: protests by French fishermen if the UK crashes out with no deal, resulting in an immediate cessation of EU access to British waters. “Most countries are not in the EU and doing perfectly well.” He urges perspective on tariffs, quotas and even direct action. Given the urgency of transporting live catch, Whyte has discussed contingency planning with colleagues. Fishing in numbers 462,000 tonnes: total weight of fish landed by vessels registered in Scotland in 2017 £561m: total fishing income by vessels registered in Scotland in 2017, representing 58% of UK fishing income £1.32bn: total fish exports from UK to EU in 2017 Zero: there are currently no plans to charge for the checking and validation of a UK export catch certificate

Britain could triple state aid spending to industry without breaching EU rules, according to a study that compares government subsidies to promote economic growth across Europe. EU state aid rules “do not prevent an active industrial policy”, the report found, giving the green light to the UK government for an increase in its £7bn of state aid to nearer £21bn. The report by the left-leaning IPPR thinktank found that the EU’s state aid rules would apply to the UK once it had left the union because officials in Brussels would enforce the measures through a trade deal. That would give it huge scope to support key areas of the economy, whether we remain in the EU or leave it.” The IPPR has not taken a view on Brexit, but its intervention in the debate over state aid will be keenly examined by Labour party supporters who voted to leave the EU. It is normally prohibited to prevent trade and competition between firms from being distorted, discouraging investment and increasing costs to consumers. However, the EU has allowed hundreds of public investment programmes to go ahead that support businesses under a regime that the IPPR said was more flexible than it might appear. The report said: “It restricts state aid where it wastes public money and exacerbates pan-European inequalities. Britain only invests £825m a year in its rail system, according to EU, compared with Germany’s £10.3bn and France’s £10.7bn. Marley Morris, an IPPR senior research fellow and lead author of the report, said: “Successive UK governments have said their hands are tied in developing more proactive industrial policy by European Union rules. But it appears that this is not, in fact, true.”

It is the deep unseriousness with which this historically serious issue is being treated by many of the protagonists that illuminates most the irresponsibility of it all. Three years later much of the British political class still seems to have no idea. The wreckers in the Conservative Party are willing to destroy everything in their path – British institutions, diplomacy, their country’s international reputation, the compact between generations – in pursuit of an ideological project with an uncertain outcome. His latest wheeze – refusing to talk to Theresa May until she rules out a no-deal Brexit – ignores the fact that she needs help to achieve that. With Corbyn it didn’t have to test very hard. We need to pay attention to the state of our politics and public debate. Our political and media debate needs to hear all points of view (as Peadar Toibin exhorted in an Irish Times podcast). We need to debate and discuss our national interest – something both Paschal Donohoe and Micheál Martin did in impressive speeches this week. How can we help the British? Ireland should be a persuader for EU concessions that do not damage our national interest.

I’m seriously confused (Danni, US) Brexit is the process of the UK leaving the EU, which it narrowly voted in favour of in a referendum in June 2016. The process is governed by article 50 of the EU’s Treaty of Lisbon and is happening in two stages: first, the two sides negotiate their divorce deal (the “withdrawal agreement”), and after this they will sort out their future trading relationship. In theory, the post-Brexit trading arrangements between the EU and the UK will avoid a “hard” border, but they could take years to negotiate so the EU has insisted on a “backstop” guaranteeing the absence of a hard border until those arrangements are in place. The backstop leaves the whole of the UK in a customs union with the EU “unless and until” the EU agrees it can leave. Brexiters do not like this at all. This now looks quite likely, but it may only last for a few months because a new European parliament is sworn in in July and EU rules require all member states to be represented – a problem if the UK is still a member. Why does Jeremy Corbyn think he can negotiate a different or better deal with the EU than Theresa May? Other than that, hardly any of the 68 trade deals from which the UK benefits as an EU member, and which it said it would have replicated by the time of departure, are near, and none will be ready by 29 March, according to the FT. Brexiters talk about “trading on WTO terms” as if it is what the world does, but it does not: it may trade under WTO rules, but all 164 members of the WTO have also agreed bilateral or regional trade deals that allow them to trade on much better terms than the WTO baselines. No sensible nation would leave the world’s largest single market, the EU, to trade with it on WTO terms, as would happen in the event of no deal. (Remo Casale, New Zealand; Georg Beck, Germany) In order: By the British government softening its red lines to allow it to arrive at a form of Brexit that is acceptable to both the EU27 and the UK parliament – something it should have done a long time ago – or, possibly, by holding a second referendum.

Brussels is the seat of the European Union. And so to find out how politicians there are reacting, we've reached Jeremy Cliffe, Brussels bureau chief for The Economist. SHAPIRO: When British parliament overwhelmingly voted down this deal that Theresa May had worked out with the EU, how did EU leaders react? The two-year period in which Britain is supposed to be negotiating its exit from the EU is almost up. SHAPIRO: Another - a number of British lawmakers said, we can get a better deal from the EU. CLIFFE: It's not realistic within the U.K.'s existing red lines. There's a real gap between, I think, what many people in London think they can get and what the Europeans are willing to give. And many people here don't want Britain to stay in beyond the start of the new parliament session, which is in July, simply because then you'd have the question of what do you do with - do you give British politicians seats in that new parliament, or does Britain somehow sit in the EU without having representation in its legislature? It's not completely inconceivable that Britain could extend its membership and extend the negotiating period beyond the start of the new parliament, which might mean having British members of that European parliament sitting for the remaining period of the negotiation. SHAPIRO: Jeremy Cliffe, thanks so much for joining us.

Japan’s prime minister has implored the UK not to leave the EU without an exit deal, saying it was “the wish of the whole world” to see Britain secure an agreement. The remarks from Shinz? Abe on a visit to London came as two cabinet ministers, Greg Clark and Gavin Williamson, traded blows over the viability of a no-deal. “That is why we truly hope that a no-deal Brexit will be avoided, and in fact that is the wish of the whole world.” Abe, a world leader who has developed one of the closest relationships with May, praised the “strong will and hard work” of the prime minister leading up to next week’s parliamentary vote on the deal. A draft plan to sell the Brexit deal that was leaked in November even suggested that Abe might be persuaded to tweet to support May’s deal, although in person in London the Japanese prime minister went further. “Japan is in total support of the draft withdrawal agreement worked out between the EU and Prime Minister May, which provides for transition to ensure legal stability for businesses that have invested into this country,” Abe said. The comments from the Japanese leader came after an impassioned intervention from Clark, the business secretary, who broke ranks with his cabinet colleagues and urged MPs to work together to block a no-deal Brexit. The business secretary has argued for a series of “indicative votes” on options including a second referendum or a Norway-style deal, in order to establish which choice could command the backing of the most MPs. Clark warned there was a danger the country could “fall into” a no deal unless MPs voted for an alternative. “What parliament needs to do is recognise that we need to put differences aside and establish agreement on a deal. It is something that has to involve the whole of parliament.

Britain will install a border gate after Brexit to protect the nation’s borders. It’s hoped the gate will either deter illegal immigration or stop people leaving the country on mass, depending on just how badly Brexit goes. The proposed border gate will consist of exactly one gate without any surrounding fence or wall to cut down costs. ‘Frankly, we’re taking a big loss of Brexit. A single gate is all we can muster from our budget,’ said one government chief. ‘If you don’t want to get tutted at, don’t sneak in. Or out,’ said the project head. Chris Grayling has already awarded the £20 million contract to build the gate to a nice chap he used to go to school with. ‘He already owns a hammer. I’ve done my research on this one,’ promised Grayling.

political stories of 2018. Here’s a countdown of the biggest stories of the year: The intrigue around James and Lenz — the top two appointed officials in the legislature — left British Columbians mystified at year’s end. The two men held a news conference to insist they had done nothing wrong. Like many of the biggest stories of 2018, this one will continue into 2019. Eby released a bombshell report called “Dirty Money” and released a series of surveillance videos taken at the River Rock Casino in Richmond. “We will move as quickly as possible to slam the door shut on dirty money in B.C. casinos and cut off funding for organized crime in our province,” Eby vowed. “Government can’t shift money over from the budget to bail out ICBC every year,” Eby said. We have to address the system itself.” That didn’t stop ICBC from inflicting a 6.4-per-cent rate hike on drivers in the spring, while requesting an additional 6.3 per cent increase in December. Next door in Surrey, 73-year-old Doug McCallum completed an amazing political comeback, winning a mayor’s chair he vacated 13 years earlier.

The owner of a Bristol online retailer that employs 85 people has said that unless there is a Christmas Brexit miracle he will move part of his business to Germany in January because of impending tariffs on exports to the EU. In anticipation of no deal, he has opened an office in Bucharest with seven staff and he is poised to sign the final paperwork on a new warehouse in Nuremberg to allow him to continue importing and exporting to the continent tariff-free. “Brexit is not a business disrupter, it’s a business bankrupter,” Loughlin said. He believes thousands of businesses are in a similar position but the politicians “are not listening, are not interested in us”. The Institute of Directors said last week that businesses were “tearing their hair out” over the lack of clarity on Brexit, while the Confederation of British Industry said hundreds of millions of pounds were already being diverted away from Britain because of business “despair”. “We’ve done some media locally and we’ve had people calling customer service with abusive messages saying this is all our fault, we’ve had abusive comments on social media that we have had to block and delete,” he said. This is a business that does not work if the UK is not in the single market,” Loughlin said. 'Despairing' businesses triggering no-deal Brexit plans, says CBI Read more He was invited to Westminster to give a talk in Portcullis House about the challenges Brexit was posing to businesses in the west country. “Not a single Tory MP showed up,” he said. There is a massive disconnect,” Loughlin said.