As the United Kingdom continues to chart its post-Brexit path, British businesses are grappling with both challenges and opportunities in the realm of international trade. The decision to leave the European Union has reshaped the landscape for British exporters, prompting a reevaluation of their strategies and a quest for new markets.
Navigating the Post-Brexit Terrain
With the completion of the transition period, British companies have had to adjust to new trade regulations and customs procedures, leading to initial disruptions. However, industry experts are noting that these initial hurdles have given rise to innovative solutions and strategies.
Richard Johnson, CEO of UK-based electronics manufacturer ElectroTech, commented on the situation, saying, “Adapting to the new trade environment was a steep learning curve for us. But it also pushed us to explore emerging markets outside the EU. Now, we’re exporting our products to Asia, which was a previously untapped market.”
New Opportunities Emerge
While Brexit brought its fair share of complexities, it also unveiled a silver lining: opportunities for British businesses to diversify and expand their global reach. The Department for International Trade reports that many UK exporters are exploring new destinations, with markets in Asia, the Middle East, and North America becoming increasingly attractive.
Simon Williams, Senior Economist at UK Trade & Investment, emphasized, “This transition period has compelled British companies to become more competitive and adaptable. They’re realizing the untapped potential of emerging markets, which can drive sustained growth.”
Government Support and Initiatives
The UK government has not been idle in this transformation. It has launched various support initiatives and trade agreements to assist British exporters. Notably, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) has opened doors to 11 Pacific Rim countries.
International Trade Secretary Jane Davidson commented, “We are working tirelessly to ensure our exporters have the resources and support they need. The CPTPP, along with other trade agreements, offers British businesses access to more than half a billion consumers.”
The Road Ahead
As British businesses continue to adapt to the new post-Brexit landscape, they are simultaneously gearing up for the challenges and opportunities it presents. While the initial disruption was significant, it has catalyzed a shift towards more diversified, globalized trade strategies.
In conclusion, the impact of Brexit on British exporters has been multifaceted, challenging, and transformative. While navigating the complexities of the post-Brexit era, they have also discovered the potential for growth in new, untapped markets.
LONDON — Frost/Nixon it was not. But at least the golf course got a good plug.
Brexit firebrand Nigel Farage bagged a half an hour sit-down interview with Donald Trump on Wednesday as part of the former U.S. president’s trip to his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland.
The hardball questions just kept on coming as the two men got stuck into everything from how great Trump is to just how massively he’s going to win the next election.
POLITICO tuned in to the GB News session so you didn’t have to.
Trump could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours
Trump sees your complex, grinding, war in Ukraine and raises you the deal-making credentials he honed having precisely one meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
“If I were president, I will end that war in one day — it’ll take 24 hours,” the ex-POTUS declared. And he added: “That deal would be easy.”
Time for a probing follow-up from the host to tease out the precise details of Trump’s big plan? Over to you Nige! “I think we’d all love to see that war stop,” the hard-hitting host beamed.
Nicola Sturgeon bad, Sean Connery great
Safe to say Scotland’s former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon — who quit a few months back and whose ruling Scottish National Party now faces the biggest crisis of its time at the top — is not on Trump’s Christmas card list.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever met her,” Trump said. “I’m not sure that I ever met her.” But he knew one thing for certain. Sturgeon “didn’t love Scotland” and has no respect for people who come to the country and spend “a lot of money.” Whoever could he mean?
One Scot did get a thumbs-up though. Sean Connery, who backed Trump’s golf course and was therefore “great, a tough guy.”
Boris Johnson was a far-leftist
Boris Johnson’s big problem? Not the bevy of scandals that helped call time on the beleaguered Conservative British prime minister, that’s for sure.
Instead, Trump reckons it was Johnson’s latter-day conversion to hard-left politics, which went shamefully unreported on by every single British political media outlet at the time. “They really weren’t staying Conservative,” he said of Johnson’s government. “They were … literally going far left. It never made sense.”
Joe Biden isn’t coming to King Charles’ coronation because he’s asleep?
Paging the royals: Turns out Joe Biden — who is sending First Lady Jill Biden to King Charles’ coronation this weekend — won’t be there because he is … catching some Zs. “He’s not running the country. He’s now in Delaware, sleeping,” Trump said.
Don’t worry, though: Trump explained how Biden’s government is actually being run by “a very smart group of Marxists or communists, or whatever you want to call them.” Johnson should hang out with those guys!
Meghan Markle ain’t getting a Christmas card either
Trump found time to wade into Britain’s never-ending culture war over the royals, ably assisted by a totally-straight-bat question from Farage who said Britain would be “better off without” Prince Harry turning up to the weekend festival of flag-waving.
Harry’s wife Meghan Markle has, Trump said, been “very disrespectful to the queen, frankly,” and there was “just no reason to do that.” Harry, whose tell-all memoir recently rocked the royals, “said some terrible things” in a book that was “just horrible.”
But do you know one person who really, really respected the queen? Donald J. Trump, who “got to know her very well over the last couple of years” and revealed he once asked her who her favorite president was.
Trump didn’t get an answer, he told Farage — but we’re sure he had one in mind.
Trump’s golf course really is just absolutely brilliant
Only got half an hour with the indicted former leader of the free world now leading the Republican pack for 2024? Better keep those questions tight!
Happily, Farage got the key stuff in, remarking on how “unbelievable” Trump’s Turnberry golf course is, and how it slots neatly into “the best portfolio of golf courses anyone has ever owned.”
“We come here from this golf course,” Farage helpfully told Trump, from the golf course. “You turned this golf course around. It’s now the No. 1 course in the whole of Britain and Europe. You’ve got this magnificent hotel. You must have missed this place?”
Trump, it turns out, certainly had missed the place. He is, after all, a man with “very powerful ideas on golf and where it should go.” A news ticker reminded us Turnberry is the No. 1 rated golf course in Europe.
Legal troubles? What legal troubles?
A couple of minutes still on the clock, Farage danced delicately around Trump’s recent courtroom drama, saying he had never seen the former president “looking so dejected” as when he sat before the Manhattan Criminal Court last month.
Trump predicted the drama would “go away immediately” if he wasn’t running for president. But he made clear there are still some burning issues keeping him going: Namely, taking on the “sick, horrible people” hounding him through the courts and relitigating the 2020 election result.
In an actual flash of tension, Farage delicately suggested Trump won in 2016 by tapping into voters’ concerns rather than reeling off his own grievances. “You brought this up,” the former president shot back.
At least they ended it on a positive note. Trump said a vote for him in 2024 would “get rid of crime — because our cities, Democrat-run, are crime-infested rat holes.” Unlike Trump Turnberry, which is the No. 1 rated golf course in Europe!
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Occupation Part-time history lecturer, part-time cleaner
Voting recordGrew up in Montana, a Democrat surrounded by conservatives
Amuse bouche As a teenager and inspired by Tolkien, Nick invented his own language called Hesperian
Peter, 60, Bristol
Occupation Computer science professor
Voting record A Labour party member until recently, Peter is no fan of Keir Starmer and sometimes votes Green
Amuse bouche Once lived in a squat in London. “The police burst in, but we didn’t have any drugs, so they left with their tails between their legs”
For starters
Nick He was a lovely man. I could tell he was very much in this for the conversation. He wasn’t quite as into the menu as I was – that was half my motivation. I had paneer tikka and a prawn curry.
Peter He was smart and thoughtful, able to hold his own but also listen. I could be his father – he’s younger than my daughters – but I can’t say it made any difference. The food was very good, too.
The big beef
Nick Peter seems to have this mindset that the young today – Gen Z and millennials – have it uniquely bad, and that this explains what people term the mental health crisis. I see it more as a self-fulfilling prophecy. I guess I see what were formerly just normal conditions of life – things people addressed through philosophy or religion – being medicalised.
Peter No generation has it easy. But if I was the same age as Nick, I’d be thinking: “I can’t buy a house, rent is really expensive” – and that would make me worry about the future. I’d be concerned about climate change, mass extinction events. That creates a lot of stress for people.
Nick I accept that a lot of problems like anxiety and depression probably have roots in brain chemistry. But for students worried about doing poorly on tests or not fitting in, it becomes: “I now have anxiety as part of my identity.” It is something they embrace and then don’t really try to overcome. Maybe I’m projecting a bit unfairly.
Peter It’s a spectrum – everyone is physically ill sometimes, and almost certainly slightly mentally ill sometimes as well. In the end, it’s that medics are better able to diagnose it.
Sharing plate
Peter We agreed that Brexit had been economically bad. But I think it might be good for the following reason: some people look back at the empire and think Britain is this fantastic leading country, but actually it isn’t. If Brexit teaches humility, that is a good thing, and Britain may then become a good European nation rather than being the bad boy in the room all the time.
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Nick I view the election of Trump in similar terms. I hate him – there was a legitimate risk he could have subverted democracy. But at the same time it has forced America to reckon with its place in the world. When I was growing up, we were literally told we were so lucky to be born in the most free, wonderful country that God ever created. I don’t think it’s the same here, but imperial nostalgia is confronting reality now.
For afters
Nick One of the reasons Peter had for voting against Brexit was that it would unleash a rightwing coup.
Peter The EU is a neoliberal club, but it is blunted, and that EU club has blunted the neoliberals here. They want to be released from those restraints. I feared a rightwing coup, and that seems to have happened – Johnson coming into power, the Tufton Street cabal, Kwarteng, Truss and so on.
Nick I think Britain is a more socially democratic country than before, though whether that is because of Covid is another question. I don’t agree with Peter’s overblown fears about what Brexit would unleash. That is partly shaped by his experience of the 80s – he seems like a school of Tony Benn type.
Takeaways
Nick So much of the resentment I have towards my own generation is because it’s impossible to have these kinds of broad discussions. It was nice to talk about how societies can be overhauled rather than getting bogged down in identity politics. At the same time, it was a reminder that I’m a bit cloistered in my own attitudes.
Peter I do like being challenged. It was a very positive experience. We exchanged numbers, so who knows – maybe I’ll invite him and his partner round for dinner. I’m not so good, but my wife is very good at cooking.
Additional reporting: Kitty Drake
Nick and Peter ate at Nutmeg in Bristol.
Want to meet someone from across the divide? Find out how to take part
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
LONDON — A new system of border checks on goods arriving from Europe is expected to force rocketing U.K. food prices even higher as businesses grapple with hundreds of millions of pounds in extra fees.
British business groups last week got sight of the U.K. government’s long-awaited post-Brexit border plans, via a series of consultations. One person in attendance said the proposals will “substantially increase food costs” for consumers from January.
That could spell trouble in a country which imports nearly 30 percent of all its food from the EU, according to 2020 figures from the British Retail Consortium, and where the annual rate of food and drink inflation just hit 19.2 percent — its highest level in 45 years.
Government officials told business reps at one consultation that firms will be hit with £400 million in extra costs as a result of long-deferred new checks at the U.K. border for goods entering from the EU.
Ministers have argued that the full implementation of the new post-Brexit procedures — which will eventually include full digitization of paperwork and a “trusted trader scheme” for major importers in order to reduce border checks — will more than offset these costs in the long-run as they will also be rolled out for imports coming from non-EU countries as well.
Supply-chain disruption caused by the Ukraine war, poor weather and new trade barriers due to Brexit have all been blamed for the U.K.’s surge in food prices.
A member of a major British business group, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that incoming post-Brexit red tape will mean “some producers on the EU side will find it is no longer possible to trade with the U.K.” and that “some small businesses will find themselves shut out.”
“It will add to the costs, and probably inflation, but I think we need to go through this so we can work with the EU to find advantageous improvements,” they said.
“We can’t keep running away from the fact we need to implement our own border checks.”
‘Not business as usual’
Britain has delayed the implementation of full post-Brexit border checks multiple times, while the EU began its own more than two years ago.
The government’s new “target operating model,” published last month, will see the phased implementation of new border and customs checks for EU imports from October.
This will include a new fee that must be paid from January for all goods that are eligible for border checks, including items like chilled meat, dairy products and vegetables.
A new fee will be applied from January for all goods that are eligible for border checks, including items like chilled meat, dairy products and vegetables | Paul Faith/AFP via Getty Images
Each batch of goods that could be subject to checks, even if they are ultimately not chosen by border staff for inspection, will be hit with a fee of between £23 to £43 at inland ports.
The first business figure quoted above said the scale of the new fees came as a surprise, after firms had been previously assured by the government that these costs would be dependent on whether goods had actually been checked.
“[Former minister] Jacob Rees-Mogg said there would be minimal costs. Initially we thought it was business as usual, but it’s not,” they said.
“There were people at this [consultation] saying that this is not a massive increase, but it will substantially increase food costs.”
William Bain, trade expert at the British Chambers of Commerce, said there is a “strong prospect” of higher inflation due to the new Brexit checks.
“EU suppliers may be less willing to trade with British based companies, because of increased costs and paperwork. The costs of imported goods would almost certainly increase,” he said.
But he added: “We knew this day was coming and that inbound controls on goods would be applied. It’s a part of having a functional border and complying with the U.K.’s international commitments.”
Reality check
The U.K. has seen trade flows with the EU disrupted since leaving the bloc’s single market and customs union.
Recent analysis by the Financial Times found that Britain’s goods exports are dropping at a faster rate than in any other G7 country.
Recent figures from the Office for National Statistics meanwhile show that U.K. trade in goods with EU countries fell at a much faster rate than from non-EU countries in January.
Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood told POLITICO that he fears his party will pay a price at the next general election, due to be held by January 2025, if the government does not seek better trading arrangements with the EU.
“There’s certainly a revision across the nation when it comes to Brexit — people are realising that what we have today isn’t what they imagined, whether you voted for Remain or for Brexit,” he said.
“The reality check is that it has become tougher economically to do business with the Continent and quite rightly there’s an expectation that we fix this.”
A government spokesperson said: “The target operating model implements important border controls which will help protect consumers and our environment and assure our trade partners about the quality of our exports.
“It implements these important controls in a way which minimises costs for businesses and prevents delays at the border.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
LONDON — Joe Biden is not someone known for his subtlety.
His gaffe-prone nature — which saw him last week confuse the New Zealand rugby team with British forces from the Irish War of Independence — leaves little in the way of nuance.
But he is also a sentimental man from a long gone era of Washington, who specializes in a type of homespun, aw-shucks affability that would be seen as naff in a younger president.
His lack of subtlety was on show in Belfast last week as he issued a thinly veiled ultimatum to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) — return to Northern Ireland’s power sharing arrangements or risk losing billions of dollars in U.S. business investment.
The DUP — a unionist party that does not take kindly to lectures from American presidents — is refusing to sit in Stormont, the Northern Ireland Assembly, due to its anger with the post-Brexit Northern Ireland protocol, which has created trade friction between the region and the rest of the U.K.
The DUP is also refusing to support the U.K.-EU Windsor Framework, which aims to fix the economic problems created by the protocol, despite hopes it would see the party reconvene the Northern Irish Assembly.
The president on Wednesday urged Northern Irish leaders to “unleash this incredible economic opportunity, which is just beginning.”
However, American business groups paint a far more complex and nuanced view of future foreign investment into Northern Ireland than offered up by Biden.
Biden told a Belfast crowd on Wednesday there were “scores of major American corporations wanting to come here” to invest, but that a suspended Stormont was acting as a block on that activity.
One U.S. business figure, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Biden’s flighty rhetoric was “exaggerated” and that many businesses would be looking beyond the state of the regional assembly to make their investment decisions.
The president spoke as if Ulster would be rewarded with floods of American greenbacks if the DUP reverses its intransigence, predicting that Northern Ireland’s gross domestic product (GDP) would soon be triple its 1998 level. Its GDP is currently around double the size of when the Good Friday Agreement was struck in 1998.
Emanuel Adam, executive director of BritishAmerican Business, said this sounded like a “magic figure” unless Biden “knows something we don’t know about.”
DUP MP Ian Paisley Jr. told POLITICO that U.S. politicians for “too long” have “promised some economic El Dorado or bonanza if you only do what we say politically … but that bonanza has never arrived and people are not naive enough here to believe it ever will.”
“A presidential visit is always welcome, but the glitter on top is not an economic driver,” he said.
Joe Biden addresses a crowd of thousands on April 14, 2023 in Ballina, Ireland | Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
Facing both ways
The British government is hoping the Windsor Framework will ease economic tensions in Northern Ireland and create politically stable conditions for inward foreign direct investment.
The framework removes many checks on goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland and has begun to slowly create a more collaborative relationship between London and Brussels on a number of fronts — two elements which have been warmly welcomed across the Atlantic.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said Northern Ireland is in a “special” position of having access to the EU’s single market, to avoid a hard border with the Republic of Ireland, and the U.K.’s internal market.
“That’s like the world’s most exciting economic zone,” Sunak said in February.
Jake Colvin, head of Washington’s National Foreign Trade Council business group, said U.S. firms wanted to see “confidence that the frictions over the protocol have indeed been resolved.”
“Businesses will look to mechanisms like the Windsor Framework to provide stability,” he said.
Marjorie Chorlins, senior vice president for Europe at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the Windsor Framework was “very important” for U.S. businesses and that “certainty about the relationship between the U.K. and the EU is critical.”
She said a reconvened Stormont would mean more legislative stability on issues like skills and healthcare, but added that there were a whole range of other broader U.K. wide economic factors that will play a major part in investment decisions.
This is particularly salient in a week where official figures showed the U.K.’s GDP flatlining and predictions that Britain will be the worst economic performer in the G20 this year.
“We want to see a return to robust growth and prosperity for the U.K. broadly and are eager to work with government at all levels,” Chorlins said.
“Political and economic instability in the U.K. has been a challenge for businesses of all sizes.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said Northern Ireland is in a “special” position of having access to the EU’s single market | Pool photo by Paul Faith/Getty Images
Her words underline just how much global reputational damage last year’s carousel of prime ministers caused for the U.K., with Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey recently warning of a “hangover effect” from Liz Truss’ premiership and the broader Westminster psychodrama of 2022.
America’s Northern Ireland envoy Joe Kennedy, grandson of Robert Kennedy, accompanied the president last week and has been charged with drumming up U.S. corporate interest in Northern Ireland.
Kennedy said Northern Ireland is already “the number-one foreign investment location for proximity and market access.”
Northern Ireland has been home to £1.5 billion of American investment in the past decade and had the second-most FDI projects per capita out of all U.K. regions in 2021.
Claire Hanna, Westminster MP for the nationalist SDLP, believes reconvening Stormont would “signal a seriousness that there isn’t going to be anymore mucking around.”
“It’s also about the signal that the restoration of Stormont sends — that these are the accepted trading arrangements,” she said.
Hanna says the DUP’s willingness to “demonize the two biggest trading blocs in the world — the U.S. and EU” — was damaging to the country’s future economic prospects.
‘The money goes south’
At a more practical level, Biden’s ultimatum appears to carry zero weight with DUP representatives.
DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson made it clear last week that he was unmoved by Biden’s economic proclamations and gave no guarantee his party would sit in the regional assembly in the foreseeable future.
“President Biden is offering the hope of further American investment, which we always welcome,” Donaldson told POLITICO.
“But fundamental to the success of our economy is our ability to trade within our biggest market, which is of course the United Kingdom.”
A DUP official said U.S. governments had been promising extra American billions in exchange “for selling out to Sinn Féin and Dublin” since the 1990s and “when America talks about corporate investment, we get the crumbs and that investment really all ends up in the Republic [of Ireland].”
“President Biden is offering the hope of further American investment, which we always welcome,” Donaldson said | Behal/Irish Government via Getty Images
“The Americans talk big, but the money goes south,” the DUP official said.
This underscores the stark reality that challenges Northern Ireland any time it pitches for U.S. investment — the competing proposition offered by its southern neighbor with its internationally low 12.5 percent rate on corporate profits.
Emanuel Adam with BritishAmerican Business said there was a noticeable feeling in Washington that firms want to do business in Dublin.
“When [Irish Prime Minister] Leo Varadkar and his team were here recently, I could tell how confident the Irish are these days,” he said. “There are not as many questions for them as there are around the U.K.”
Biden’s economic ultimatum looks toothless from the DUP’s perspective and its resonance may be as short-lived as his trip to Belfast itself.
This story has been updatedto correct an historical reference.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
DUBLIN — U.S. President Joe Biden will pay a five-day visit to both parts of Ireland next month to mark the 25th anniversary of the U.S.-brokered Good Friday peace accord, according to a provisional Irish government itinerary seen by POLITICO.
The plans, still being finalized with the White House, have the president arriving in Northern Ireland on April 11. That’s one day after the official quarter-century mark for the Good Friday Agreement, the peace deal designed to end decades of conflict that claimed more than 3,600 lives.
With Irish roots on both sides of his family tree, Biden has long taken an interest in brokering and maintaining peace in Northern Ireland. He has welcomed the recent U.K.-EU agreement on making post-Brexit trade rules work in the region — a breakthrough that has yet to revive local power-sharing at the heart of the 1998 accord.
According to two Irish government officials involved in planning the Biden visit itinerary, the president will start his stay overnight at Hillsborough Castle, southwest of Belfast, the official residence for visiting British royalty, as a guest of the U.K.’s Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris.
Then he’s scheduled to visit Stormont, the parliamentary complex overlooking Belfast, at the invitation of its caretaker speaker, Alex Maskey of the Irish republican Sinn Féin party.
That could prove controversial given that, barring a diplomatic miracle, the Northern Ireland Assembly and its cross-community government — a core achievement of the 1998 agreement — won’t be functioning due to a long-running boycott by the Democratic Unionists. That party has not yet accepted the U.K.-EU compromise deal on offer because it keeps Northern Ireland, unlike the rest of the U.K., subject to EU goods rules and able to trade more easily with the rest of Ireland than with Britain. Nonetheless, assembly members from all parties including the DUP will be invited to meet Biden there.
The president is booked to officiate the official ribbon-cutting of the new downtown Belfast campus of Ulster University. During his stay in Northern Ireland he also is expected to pay a visit to Queen’s University Belfast, where former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton serves as chancellor.
Next, the Irish government expects the presidential entourage to cross the border into the Republic of Ireland, potentially by motorcade, the approach last adopted by Bill Clinton during his third and final visit to Ireland as president in 2000.
This would allow Biden to pay a visit to one side of his Irish family tree, the Finnegans, in County Louth. Louth is midway between Belfast and Dublin. Biden previously toured the area in 2016 as vice president, when he met distant relatives for the first time and visited the local graveyard.
In Dublin, it is not yet confirmed whether Biden will deliver a speech at College Green outside the entrance of Trinity College. That’s the spot where Barack Obama delivered his own main speech during a one-day visit as president in 2011.
A White House advance team is expected in Dublin this weekend to scout that and other potential locations for a speech and walkabout. He isn’t expected to hold any functions at the Irish parliament, which begins a two-week Easter recess Friday.
Members of Ireland’s national police force, An Garda Síochána, have been told by commanders they cannot go on leave during the week of April 10-16 in anticipation of Biden’s arrival. The Irish expect U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to accompany the president and take part in more detailed talks with Northern Ireland’s leaders.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar plans to host the president and Blinken at Farmleigh House, a state-owned mansion previously owned by the Guinness brewing dynasty, inside Dublin’s vast Phoenix Park.
The final two days of Biden’s visit will focus on the other side of his Irish roots, the Blewitts of County Mayo, on Ireland’s west coast, which he also visited in 2016. Distant cousins he first met on that trip have since been repeated guests of the White House, most recently on St. Patrick’s Day.
White House officials declined to discuss specific dates or any events planned, but did confirm that Biden would travel to Ireland “right after Easter.” This suggests an April 11 arrival in line with the Irish itinerary. Easter Sunday falls this year on April 9 and, in both parts of Ireland, the Christian holiday is a two-day affair ending in Easter Monday.
Jonathan Lemire contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Boris Johnson’s political career ended on Wednesday, with stuttering and fake politesse.
Seated before a U.K. House of Commons committee poised to rule on whether he lied to parliament about Partygate, Johnson was far from his element. Beneath the ghost of his famous bonhomie and the half-conceived rhetoric, I saw anger segueing to bafflement: A man who has been forgiven all his life, now unforgiven. He should rewatch the original “House of Cards:” nothing lasts forever.
If Johnson once coasted on the times, now he is cursed by them. Britain has a new seriousness and a new PM: In politics, a bookie is followed by a bishop, to borrow the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge’s famous phrase. (I’m not including Liz Truss, who is owed a special category of her own.)
Johnson may be suspended from parliament if the committee finds against him, and he may then lose his seat. The classicist in him will understand: He is most in danger from his friends. The committee’s Tory questioners were more savage, but they have been more deeply betrayed. He is an embarrassment now. They will throw him overboard for a percentage point. When the committee paused for a vote, he led a rebellion against the government on the Windsor Framework, Rishi Sunak’s solution to Johnson’s own Brexit deal. Only 22 out of 354 Tory MPs followed him. This is how he departs.
The hearing took place in a dull room with expensive furniture that looked cheap and a mad mural of leaves in his eye line. Johnson isn’t in politics for dull rooms: He’s in it to ride his motorbike around Chequers.
Harriet Harman, the Labour MP and Mother of the House, was in the chair wearing black, as precise as Johnson is chaotic, with a necklace that looked like a chain. Was it metaphor? Harman has spent her career supporting female parliamentarians. Then a man who said voting Tory would give wives bigger breasts won an 80-seat majority in 2019. But that was a whole pandemic ago.
Johnson was there to defend himself against the charge that he repeatedly lied to parliament when he said guidance was followed in No. 10. His strategy was distraction: obscuration, and repetition, and sentences that tripped along ring roads, going nowhere.
He has never been so boring: No one listening ever wants to hear the word “guidance” again. If the ability to inflict boredom was his defense, it was also his destruction. Johnson is supposed to be a seducer with a fascinating narrative arc ― one of his campaign videos aped the film “Love Actually” ― not a bore. But needs must. The fascination was thrown overboard.
He swore to tell the truth on a fawn-colored Bible, but he did not look at it. He rocked on his heels. He has had a haircut: As ever, his hair emotes for him. The mop, so redolent of Samson ― he would muss it before big speeches, to disguise that he cared ― is a sullen bowl now. He looked haunted. Lord Pannick, his lawyer, smiled behind him. His resting face is a smile, and he needed it.
Johnson told Harman there would soon be a Commons vote, as if she, Mother of the House, didn’t know. She said she would suspend proceedings for the vote, and he talked over her with a flurry of thanks. He thanked her four times. He didn’t mean it.
He read a statement: “I’m here to say to you, hand on heart, that I did not lie to the House.” He made a fist, and placed his hand on his chest where his heart isn’t: on the right-hand side. He said there was a near-universal belief in No. 10 that the guidance was followed, and that is why he said so to the House.
He shuffled his papers, as handsome Bernard Jenkin, a Tory, began the questioning with exaggerated gravity, to indicate that the Tories are through with levity. He reminded Johnson that he had regularly said “hands, face, space” while standing behind podiums that also said, “hands, face, space,” which indicated he understand the guidance.
People sit in the Red Lion pub in London as former Prime Minister Boris Johnson giving evidence on Partygate is shown on the TV | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
They discussed the leaving party of Lee Cain, Johnson’s former director of communications. There were 15-20 people there, Jenkin reminded him, you gave a speech. Johnson said guidance was followed, at least while he was there. Jenkin pressed him. “I don’t accept that people weren’t making an effort to distance themselves socially from each other,” Johnson said, while we gazed at a photograph of people standing next to each other. And this was how it was for 300 minutes: We were invited to ignore the evidence of our own eyes, even asthey chilled with boredom.
Johnson insisted: “It was necessary because two senior members of staff were about to leave the building in pretty acrimonious circumstances. It was important for me to be there and to give reassurance.” This fits the Johnson myth. He was there for morale, while others governed, because that’s boring. I am not sure that the leaving party of a press aide is a matter of state, but Johnson always lived for headlines. Even so, he pleaded: We had sanitizers, we kept windows open, we had Zoom meetings, we had Perspex screens between desks, we had regular testing ― way beyond what the guidance advised!
“If you had said all that at the time to the House of Commons, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here,” said Jenkin mildly, even sympathetically, and that’s when I knew it was over. Tories are awfully like characters from “The Godfather” sometimes: murderers come with smiles. “But you didn’t.”
Jenkin read the guidance to him: “You must maintain social distancing in the workplace wherever possible.” “The business of the government had to be carried on!” Johnson cried. “That is what I had to do!” No one replied: “It was Lee Cain’s leaving do, you maniac.”
On it went, trench warfare. Johnson didn’t seem to understand that he wasn’t describing an absence of law-breaking, but a culture of it. In his wine-filled wood, he couldn’t see a tree. Committee members suggested he breached the guidance. He said he didn’t ― and if it should have been obvious to him that he was breaching it, it should have been obvious to Rishi Sunak too. They asked him why he didn’t take proper advice when talking to the House. (Because he trusted the press office. His people. Lawyers aren’t his people.)
Bernard Jenkin said: “I put it to you, Mr. Johnson, that you did not take proper advice.” Johnson’s thumb stroked his other thumb. He exploded with tangents, and eventually half-shouted: “This is nonsense, I mean complete nonsense!” Lord Pannick’s smile slid down his face. He blinked.
I would like to say this is the last gasp for Johnson’s faux-aristocratic style, with its entitlement and its pseudo-intellectualism, but his danger was ever in his precedent. It is always pleasing when a narcissist is exposed, and by himself, but there will be another one along soon enough. I wonder if its hair will have its own cuttings file.
Amid his word salad, Johnson told Harman she had said things that were “plainly and wrongly prejudicial, or prejudge the very issue you are adjudicating.” She told him the assurances he used to inform parliament had been “flimsy.” Finally, he said he’d much enjoyed the day. (He lied.) The question, as ever with Johnson, is ― does he believe it himself? Truthfully, it doesn’t matter now.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
It’s a question worthy of a great TV detective: can streamers like Netflix still guarantee a certain proportion of European content if the goalposts are suddenly moved to exclude hits like Sherlock and Doctor Who?
They may soon have to, as the European Commission is considering removing the U.K. from the list of countries recognized as providing “European” content, according to a policy paper seen by POLITICO. That would put broadcasters and streaming platforms in a tight spot, as the U.K. is among the biggest contributors to their European catalogs.
“The need to re-define the concept of European works has been raised in the context of Brexit. It is arguable that, since the U.K. is no longer a member of the EU, works originating in the U.K. should no longer be considered as European,” said the paper. It also raised the idea of cutting Switzerland from the scope of European works.
Under the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, television and streaming must include a share of “European works” in their transmission schedules or on-demand catalogues. These are defined as programs originating in, and produced mainly by nationals of, EU countries or those that have ratified the Council of Europe’s European Convention on Transfrontier Television (ECTT), which includes neighbors such as the U.K., Turkey and Ukraine.
The Commission is now considering how to tighten these criteria.
In the approach laid out in the paper, dated December 2022, countries that have signed up to the ECTT should also have close ties with the EU and its internal market, singling out members of the European Economic Area, EU candidate countries, or potential candidates and sovereignties which signed agreements to use the euro like the Holy See and San Marino.
Move over, Fleabag
That would be bad news for broadcasters and streamers. The U.K. gobbled up about 28 percent of platforms’ European investments in 2021, compared to about 21 percent for German productions and 15 percent for French, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory.
“It is a wrong discussion, at a wrong time,” Sabine Verheyen, chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Culture and Education, told POLITICO in response to the Commission document. She warned against excluding such an “important partner, even if they are not a member of the Union anymore.”
As early as June 2021, the Association of Commercial Television in Europe (ACT) warned against any move to exclude U.K. productions. “Despite Brexit, the audiovisual community continues to work hand in hand across the channel,” it said. “We should focus on building bridges, not burning them.”
In a reaction to the Commission paper, a spokesperson for the U.K. Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport said: “the U.K. remains committed to European works. We continue to support its contribution to cultural enrichment across Europe and to provide audiences access to content they know and love.”
The Commission hasn’t yet indicated how it might roll out the changes, and it hasn’t made a definitive proposition to exclude U.K. content; any such move would no doubt trigger opposition from industry. The EU is due to evaluate the audiovisual directive by the end of 2026.
A Commission spokesperson said in a statement that the EU executive “is currently undertaking a fact-finding exercise” to make sure European works benefit from a “diverse, fair and balanced market.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
PARIS — Vegetarian sushi and rugby brought the leaders of Britain and France together after years of Brexit rows.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday held the two countries’ first bilateral summit in five years, amid warm words and wishes for closer post-Brexit cooperation.
“This is an exceptional summit, a moment of reunion and reconnection, that illustrates that we want to better speak to each other,” Macron told a joint press conference afterward. “We have the will to work together in a Europe that has new responsibilities.”
Most notably from London’s perspective, the pair agreed a new multi-annual financial framework to jointly tackle the arrival of undocumented migrants on small boats through the English Channel — in part funding a new detention center in France.
“The U.K. and France share a special bond and a special responsibility,” Sunak said. “When the security of our Continent is threatened, we will always be at the forefront of its defense.”
Macron congratulated Sunak for agreeing the Windsor Framework with the European Commission, putting an end to a long U.K.-EU row over post-Brexit trade rules in Northern Ireland, and stressing it marks a “new beginning of working more closely with the EU.”
“I feel very fortunate to be serving alongside you and incredibly excited about the future we can build together. Merci mon ami,” Sunak said.
It has been many years since the leaders of Britain and France were so publicly at ease with each other.
Sunak and Macron bonded over rugby, ahead of Saturday’s match between England and France, and exchanged T-shirts signed by their respective teams.
Later, they met alone at the Élysée Palace for more than an hour, only being joined by their chiefs of staff at the very end of the meeting, described as “warm and productive” by Sunak’s official spokesman. The pair, who spoke English, had planned to hold a shorter one-to-one session, but they decided to extend it, the spokesman said.
They later met with their respective ministers for a lunch comprising vegetarian sushi, turbot, artichokes and praline tart.
Macron congratulated Sunak for agreeing the Windsor Framework with the European Commission | Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images
Speaking on the Eurostar en route to Paris, Sunak told reporters this was the beginning of a “new chapter” in the Franco-British relationship.
“It’s been great to get to know Emmanuel over the last two months. There’s a shared desire to strengthen the relationship,” he said. “I really believe that the range of things that we can do together is quite significant.”
In a show of goodwill from the French, who pushed energetically for a hard line during Brexit talks, Macron said he wanted to “fix the consequences of Brexit” and opened the door to closer cooperation with the Brits in the future.
“It’s my wish and it’s in our interests to have closest possible alliance. It will depend on our commitment and willingness but I am sure we will do it,” he said alongside Sunak.
Tackling small boats
Under the terms of the new migration deal, Britain will pay €141 million to France in 2023-24, €191 million in 2024-25 and €209 million in 2025-26.
This money will come in installments and go toward funding a new detention center in France, a new Franco-British command centre, an extra 500 law enforcement officers on French beaches and better technology to patrol them, including more drones and surveillance aircraft.
The new detention center, located in the Dunkirk area, would be funded by the British and run by the French and help compensate for the lack of space in other detention centers in northern France, according to one of Macron’s aides.
According to U.K. and French officials, France is expected to contribute significantly more funding — up to five times the amount the British are contributing — toward the plan although the Elysée has refused to give exact figures.
A new, permanent French mobile policing unit will join the efforts to tackle small boats. This work will be overseen by a new zonal coordination center, where U.K. liaison officers will be permanently based working with French counterparts.
Sunak stressed U.K.-French cooperation on small boats since November has made a significant difference, and defended the decision to hand more British money to France to help patrol the French northern shores. Irregular migration, he stressed, is a “joint problem.”
Ukraine unity
Sunak and Macron also made a show of unity on the war in Ukraine, agreeing that their priority would be to continue to support the country in its war against Russian aggression.
The French president said the “ambition short-term is to help Ukraine to resist and to build counter-offensives.”
“The priority is military,” he said. “We want a lasting peace, when Ukraine wants it and in the conditions that it wants and our will is to put it in position to do so.”
The West’s top priority should remain helping Ukrainians achieve “a decisive battlefield advantage” that later allows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to sit down at the negotiating table with Russian President Vladimir Putin from a stronger position, Sunak said en route to the summit.
“That should be everyone’s focus,” he added. “Of course, this will end as all conflicts do, at the negotiating table. But that’s a decision for Ukraine to make. And what we need to do is put them in the best possible place to have those talks at an appropriate moment that makes sense for them.”
The two leaders also announced they would start joint training operations of Ukrainian marines.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
London: Britain’s former premier Boris Johnson on Thursday criticised Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s new Brexit deal with the European Union, saying he will find it “very difficult” to vote for it in Parliament.
Sunak has been riding high on a largely positive wave since the British Prime Minister declared a “decisive breakthrough” with the EU in the form of a Windsor Framework, which replaces his former boss’ controversial Northern Ireland Protocol.
The British Indian leader told the House of Commons that the new pact puts “beyond all doubt that we have now taken back control”.
However, Johnson now a disgruntled backbench Conservative Party MP told a Global Soft Power Summit in London on Thursday that he would find it “very difficult” to vote for the new deal in Parliament.
“I’m conscious I’m not going to be thanked for saying this, but I think it is my job to do so: we must be clear about what is really going on here,” said Johnson.
“This is not about the UK taking back control, and although there are easements this is really a version of the solution that was being offered last year to (former British prime minister) Liz Truss when she was foreign secretary. This is the EU graciously unbending to allow us to do what we want to do in our own country, not by our laws but by theirs,” he said.
“I’m going to find it very difficult to vote for something like this myself because I believe that we should have done something different. No matter how much plaster came off the ceiling in Brussels,” he added.
Johnson said he hopes the new deal works but if it doesn’t, the government should have “the guts” to re-table the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill he had drafted which would allow the UK to unilaterally change parts of the previous Brexit protocol without the EU’s permission. While the EU claims such a move breaches international law, Johnson believes it is the Bill that ultimately “brought the EU to negotiate seriously”.
Sunak had pulled the Bill from Parliament after he agreed a new deal with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Windsor on Monday, following months of intensive talks.
It is hoped the Windsor Framework would break the deadlock over the contentious and unworkable Northern Ireland Protocol, which was designed to prevent a post-Brexit hard border on the island of Ireland between UK territory Northern Ireland and EU member-state Ireland but which effectively created a trade divide.
Now, Sunak is waiting for the response of the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the clear backing of hard Brexiteers within his own Tory party for the new framework. Johnson’s intervention is expected to influence the latter to some extent but there is a general consensus that Sunak is unlikely to face any major rebellion in the ranks over the issue.
After what has been widely seen as a win for his leadership abilities, the Prime Minister has decided to treat his party colleagues to an “away day” in Windsor the site of the new Brexit framework.
According to The Times’ newspaper, Conservative Party MPs have been bussed from London to Windsor on Thursday morning for 24 hours of bonding, teambuilding and strategising.
