LONDON — The U.K. and the EU finally reached a deal after months of talks over contentious post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland.
Already, both sides are pitching it as a major reset in frayed relations — but U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak still has to sell it to skeptics in his own party and beyond.
The so-called “Windsor Framework” comes after a final day of talks between Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Windsor.
In key developments Monday:
— Sunak and von der Leyen talked up the deal as a “new chapter” in EU-U.K. ties at a Windsor press conference.
— The U.K. PM urged his MPs to get behind him in a Commons statement, as key Brexiteers gave supportive early comments.
— Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) vowed to study the text closely before deciding whether or not to back it.
— And Brexiteers in the U.K. hit out at No. 10 Downing Street over a meeting between King Charles III and von der Leyen on the same day a deal was struck.
‘New chapter’
Details of the new agreement are now being pored over by lawmakers on both sides of the English Channel, but the plan is aimed at easing customs red-tape, equalizing some tax rules across the United Kingdom, and giving Northern Ireland’s lawmakers more of a say over the future of the arrangement.
“The United Kingdom and European Union may have had our differences in the past, but we are allies, trading partners and friends, something that we’ve seen clearly in the past year as we joined with others to support Ukraine,” Sunak said at the joint press conference. “This is the beginning of a new chapter in our relationship.”
That line was echoed by von der Leyen, who said the plan would allow the two sides “to begin a new chapter,” and offer up “long-lasting solutions that both of us are confident will work for all people and businesses in Northern Ireland.”
Sunak — under pressure to hold a House of Commons vote on the agreement — told MPs Monday evening that the arrangement would end “burdensome customs bureaucracy” and “routine checks” on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, and claimed he had “delivered what the people of Northern Ireland asked for … We have removed the border in the Irish Sea.”
He now faces the sizable task of convicing Brexiteer lawmakers on his own Conservative benches, many of whom will be closely watching the verdict of Northern Ireland’s fiercely anti-protocol DUP, to get on board.
“Our judgment and our principled position in opposing the protocol in Parliament and at Stormont has been vindicated,” said DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson Monday night. “Undoubtedly it is now recognized that the protocol does not work. When others said there would be no renegotiation and no change, our determination has proved what can be achieved.”
Stormont brake
The protocol has been a long-running source of tension between the U.K. and the EU, and the two sides have been locked in months of talks to try to ease the way it works.
Under the arrangement, the EU requires checks on trade from Great Britain to Northern Ireland in order to preserve the integrity of its single market and avoid such checks taking place at the sensitive land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The DUP has been boycotting the region’s power-sharing government while it pushes for major changes to a set-up it sees as driving a wedge between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.
Speaking at the press conference, Sunak and von der Leyen talked up a host of changes to the protocol that they hope will be enough to restore power-sharing in Northern Ireland.
Under the revised plan, goods moving from Great Britain but destined only for Northern Ireland will travel through a new “green lane” with fewer checks, while a separate, more stringent, “red lane” for goods at risk of moving on to the Republic of Ireland — and thereby entering the EU’s single market — will now operate.
Sunak said food retailers would “no longer need hundreds of certificates for every lorry” entering Northern Ireland, while food made to U.K. standards will be able to be freely sent to and sold in Northern Ireland. He also vowed that the new pact would scrap customs paperwork for people sending parcels to family or friends or shopping online.
UK PM Rishi Sunak and EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen hope that the host of changes to the Brexit protocol announced today will be enough to restore power-sharing in Northern Ireland | Dan Kitwood/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
The two sides have also amended the text of the protocol, Sunak said, to allow U.K. VAT and excise changes to apply in Northern Ireland — while a “landmark” settlement on medicines will mean drugs approved for use by the U.K. medicines regulator will be “automatically available in every pharmacy and hospital in Northern Ireland.”
And London and Brussels are now jointly pitching a new “Stormont brake,” claiming this will allow the devolved assembly in Northern Ireland — currently on ice amid a DUP boycott over the protocl — to prevent changes to EU goods rules “that would have significant and lasting effects on everyday lives” from applying in the region.
“This gives the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland a powerful new safeguard based on cross-community consent,” Sunak promised.
DUP’s next move
As he departed for London, DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said he and senior party colleagues would “take time to look at the deal” – a process likely to run at least through the weekend and to involve specially-commissioned analysis by constitutional lawyers. Early word from some Conservative Brexiteers was positive, with David Davis — who quit Theresa May’s government over her own EU deal-making — hailed it as a “a formidable negotiating success.”
Before flying out of Belfast, Donaldson briefed his party’s 25 members of the Northern Ireland Assembly about the expected key points. The DUP lawmakers met at Stormont, the seat of the power-sharing legislature that the DUP has blocked since May.
Donaldson said the DUP’s legal counsel would produce a detailed analysis for consideration by the party’s executive officers.
“It is vital that Northern Ireland’s place within the U.K. and its internal market is restored. We will have lawyers assess the legal text to ensure that this [is] in fact the case,” Donaldson told the Belfast News Letter, the main unionist newspaper in Northern Ireland.
Later, Donaldson told the BBC he was “neither positive nor negative” when assessing whether the DUP should accept the compromise package on offer.
“We need to take time to look at the deal, what’s available, and how does that match our seven tests,” he said, referring to the DUP’s July 2021 list of demands for “replacing” the protocol.
Other DUP officials said the party’s senior leadership would convene at party headquarters in Belfast, possibly on Saturday, to review the party’s legal verdict on the deal – and whether concessions won by the U.K. government were sufficient to end the DUP’s obstruction of power-sharing at Stormont.
Donaldson will seek maximum support at that meeting before committing to any policy pivot on the protocol. Other senior officials, including former deputy leader Lord Dodds, have explicitly rejected the idea of reviving Stormont if the revised protocol agreement retains any oversight role for the CJEU. Both Donaldson and the DUP’s “seven tests” have stopped short of drawing this red line.
Ever since narrowly losing May’s assembly elections to the Irish republicans of Sinn Féin, the DUP has refused not only to form a new cross-community government – the assembly’s central function under terms of Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord – but also has blocked the election of a neutral speaker for the assembly, preventing it from sitting.
This developing story is being updated. Annabelle Dickson and Noah Keate contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
LONDON — It was clear when Boris Johnson was forced from Downing Street that British politics had changed forever.
But few could have predicted that less than six months later, all angry talk of a cross-Channel trade war would be a distant memory, with Britain and the EU striking a remarkable compromise deal over post-Brexit trade rules in Northern Ireland.
Private conversations with more than a dozen U.K. and EU officials, politicians and diplomats reveal how the Brexit world changed completely after Johnson’s departure — and how an “unholy trinity” of little-known civil servants, ensconced in a gloomy basement in Brussels, would mastermind a seismic shift in Britain’s relationship with the Continent.
They were aided by an unlikely sequence of political events in Westminster — not least an improbable change of mood under the combative Liz Truss; and then the jaw-dropping rise to power of the ultra-pragmatic Rishi Sunak. Even the amiable figure of U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly would play his part, glad-handing his way around Europe and smoothing over cracks that had grown ever-wider since 2016.
As Sunak’s Conservative MPs pore over the detail of his historic agreement with Brussels — and await the all-important verdict of the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland — POLITICO has reconstructed the dramatic six-month shift in Britain’s approach that brought us to the brink of the Brexit deal we see today.
Bye-bye Boris
Johnson’s departure from Downing Street, on September 6, triggered an immediate mood shift in London toward the EU — and some much-needed optimism within the bloc about future cross-Channel relations.
For key figures in EU capitals, Johnson would always be the untrustworthy figure who signed the protocol agreement only to disown it months afterward.
In Paris, relations were especially poisonous, amid reports of Johnson calling the French “turds”; endless spats with the Elysée over post-Brexit fishing rights, sausages and cross-Channel migrants; and Britain’s role in the AUKUS security partnership, which meant the loss of a multi-billion submarine contract for France. Paris’ willingness to engage with Johnson was limited in the extreme.
Truss, despite her own verbal spats with French President Emmanuel Macron — and her famously direct approach to diplomacy — was viewed in a different light. Her success at building close rapport with negotiating partners had worked for her as trade secretary, and once she became prime minister, she wanted to move beyond bilateral squabbles and focus on global challenges, including migration, energy and the war in Ukraine.
“Boris had become ‘Mr. Brexit,’” one former U.K. government adviser said. “He was the one the EU associated with the protocol, and obviously [Truss] didn’t come with the same baggage. She had covered the brief, but she didn’t have the same history. As prime minister, Liz wanted to use her personal relationships to move things on — but that wasn’t the same as a shift in the underlying substance.”
Indeed, Truss was still clear on the need to pass the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which would have given U.K. ministers powers to overrule part of the protocol unilaterally, in order to ensure leverage in the talks with the European Commission.
Truss also triggered formal dispute proceedings against Brussels for blocking Britain’s access to the EU’s Horizon Europe research program. And her government maintained Johnson’s refusal to implement checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, causing deep irritation in Brussels.
But despite the noisy backdrop, tentative contact with Brussels quietly resumed in September, with officials on both sides trying to rebuild trust. Truss, however, soon became “very disillusioned by the lack of pragmatism from the EU,” one of her former aides said.
“The negotiations were always about political will, not technical substance — and for whatever reason, the political will to compromise from the Commission was never there when Liz, [ex-negotiator David] Frost, Boris were leading things,” they said.
Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss announces her resignation outside 10 Downing Street in central London on October 20, 2022 | Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images
Truss, of course, would not be leading things for long. An extraordinary meltdown of the financial markets precipitated her own resignation in late October, after just six weeks in office. Political instability in Westminster once again threatened to derail progress.
But Sunak’s arrival in No. 10 Downing Street — amid warnings of a looming U.K. recession — gave new impetus to the talks. An EU official said the mood music improved further, and that discussions with London became “much more constructive” as a result.
David Lidington, a former deputy to ex-PM Theresa May who played a key role in previous Brexit negotiations, describes Sunak as a “globalist” rather than an “ultra-nationalist,” who believes Britain ought to have “a sensible, friendly and grown-up relationship” with Brussels outside the EU.
During his time as chancellor, Sunak was seen as a moderating influence on his fellow Brexiteer Cabinet colleagues, several of whom seemed happy to rush gung-ho toward a trade war with the EU.
“Rishi has always thought of the protocol row as a nuisance, an issue he wanted to get dealt with,” the former government adviser first quoted said.
One British officialsuggested the new prime minister’s reputation for pragmatism gave the U.K. negotiating team “an opportunity to start again.”
Sunak’s slow decision-making and painstaking attention to detail — the subject of much criticism in Whitehall — proved useful in calming EU jitters about the new regime, they added.
“When he came in, it wasn’t just the calming down of the markets. It was everyone across Europe and in the U.S. thinking ‘OK, they’re done going through their crazy stage,’” the same officialsaid. “It’s the time he takes with everything, the general steadiness.”
EU leaders “have watched him closely, they listened to what he said, and they have been prepared to trust him and see how things go,” Lidington noted.
Global backdrop
As months of chaos gave way to calm in London, the West was undergoing a seismic reorganization.
Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered a flurry of coordinated work for EU and U.K. diplomats — including sanctions, military aid, reconstruction talks and anti-inflation packages. A sense began to emerge that it was in both sides’ common interest to get the Northern Ireland protocol row out of the way.
“The war in Ukraine has completely changed the context over the last year,” an EU diplomat said.
A second U.K. official agreed. “Suddenly we realized that the 2 percent of the EU border we’d been arguing about was nothing compared to the massive border on the other side of the EU, which Putin was threatening,” they said. “And suddenly there wasn’t any electoral benefit to keeping this row over Brexit going — either for us or for governments across the EU.”
A quick glance at the electoral calendar made it clear 2023 offered the last opportunity to reach a deal in the near future, with elections looming for both the U.K. and EU parliaments the following year — effectively putting any talks on ice.
“Rishi Sunak would have certainly been advised by his officials that come 2024, the EU is not going to be wanting to take any new significant initiatives,” Lidington said. “And we will be in election mode.”
The upcoming 25th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday peace agreement on April 10 heaped further pressure on the U.K. negotiators, amid interest from U.S. President Joe Biden in visiting Europe to mark the occasion.
“The anniversary was definitely playing on people’s minds,” the first U.K. official said.“Does [Sunak] really want to be the prime minister when there’s no government in Northern Ireland on the anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement?”
The pressure was ramped up further when Biden specifically raised the protocol in a meeting with Truss at the U.N. General Assembly in New York in late September, after which British officials said they expected the 25th anniversary to act as a “key decision point” on the dispute.
The King and I
Whitehall faced further pressure from another unlikely source — King Charles III, who was immediately planning a state visit to Paris within weeks of ascending the throne in September 2022. Truss had suggested delaying the visit until the protocol row was resolved, according to two European diplomats.
The monarch is now expected to visit Paris and Berlin at the end of March — and although his role is strictly apolitical, few doubt he is taking a keen interest in proceedings. He has raised the protocol in recent conversations with European diplomats, showing a close engagement with the detail.
One former senior diplomat involved in several of the king’s visits said that Charles has long held “a private interest in Ireland, and has wanted to see if there was an appropriately helpful role he could play in improving relations [with the U.K].”
By calling the deal the Windsor framework and presenting it at a press conference in front of Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences, No. 10 lent Monday’s proceedings an unmistakable royal flavor.
The king also welcomed von der Leyen for tea at the castle following the signing of the deal. A Commission spokesperson insisted their meeting was “separate” from the protocol discussion talks. Tory MPs were skeptical.
Cleverly does it
The British politician tasked with improving relations with Brussels was Foreign Secretary Cleverly, appointed by Truss last September. He immediately began exploring ways to rebuild trust with Commission Vice-President and Brexit point-man Maroš Šefčovič, the second U.K. official cited said.
His first hurdle was a perception in Brussels that the British team had sabotaged previous talks by leaking key details to U.K. newspapers and hardline Tory Brexiteers for domestic political gain. As a result, U.K. officials made a conscious effort to keep negotiations tightly sealed, a No. 10 official said.
“The relationship with Maroš improved massively when we agreed not to carry out a running commentary” on the content of the discussions, the second U.K. official added.
This meant keeping key government ministers out of the loop, including Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker, an arch-Brexiteer who had been brought back onto the frontbench by Truss.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is welcomed by European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič ahead of a meeting at the EU headquarters in Brussels on February 17, 2023 | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
The first U.K. official said Baker would have “felt the pain,” as he had little to offer his erstwhile backbench colleagues looking for guidance while negotiations progressed, “and that was a choice by No. 10.”
Cleverly and Šefčovič “spent longer than people think just trying to build rapport,” the second U.K. officialsaid, with Cleverly explaining the difficulties the protocol was raising in Northern Ireland and Šefčovič insistent that key economic sectors were in fact benefiting from the arrangement.
Cleverly also worked at the bilateral relationship with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, while Sunak made efforts to improve ties with French President Emmanuel Macron, Lidington noted.
A British diplomat based in Washington said Cleverly had provided “a breath of fresh air” after the “somewhat stiff” manner of his predecessors, Truss and the abrasive Dominic Raab.
By the Conservative party conference in early October, the general mood among EU diplomats in attendance was one of expectation. And the Birmingham jamboree did not disappoint.
Sorry is the hardest word
Baker, who had once described himself as a “Brexit hard man,” stunned Dublin by formally apologizing to the people of Ireland for his past comments, just days before technical talks between the Commission and the U.K. government were due to resume.
“I caused a great deal of inconvenience and pain and difficulty,” he said. “Some of our actions were not very respectful of Ireland’s legitimate interests. I want to put that right.”
The apology was keenly welcomed in Dublin, where Micheál Martin, the Irish prime minister at the time, called it “honest and very, very helpful.”
Irish diplomats based in the U.K. met Baker and other prominent figures from the European Research Group of Tory Euroskeptics at the party conference, where Baker spoke privately of his “humility” and his “resolve” to address the issues, a senior Irish diplomat said.
“Resolve was the keyword,” the envoy said. “If Steve Baker had the resolve to work for a transformation of relationships between Ireland and the U.K., then we thought — there were tough talks to be had — but a sustainable deal was now a possibility.”
There were other signs of rapprochement. Just a few hours after Baker’s earth-shattering apology, Truss confirmed her attendance at the inaugural meeting in Prague of the European Political Community, a new forum proposed by Macron open to both EU and non-EU countries.
Sunak at the wheel
The momentum snowballed under Sunak, who decided within weeks of becoming PM to halt the passage of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill in the House of Lords, reiterating Britain’s preference for a negotiated settlement. In exchange, the Commission froze a host of infringement proceedings taking aim at the way the U.K. was handling the protocol. This created space for talks to proceed in a more cordial environment.
An EU-U.K. agreement in early January allowed Brussels to start using a live information system detailing goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, seen as key to unlocking a wider agreement on physical checks under the protocol.
The U.K. also agreed to conduct winter technical negotiations in Brussels, rather than alternating rounds between the EU capital and London, as was the case when Frost served as Britain’s chief negotiator.
Trust continued to build. Suddenly the Commission was open to U.K. solutions such as the “Stormont brake,” a clause giving the Northern Ireland Assembly power of veto over key protocol machinations, which British officials did not believe Brussels would accept when they first pitched them.
The Stormont brake was discussed “relatively early on,” a third U.K. official said. “Then we spent a huge amount of effort making sure nobody knew about it. It was kept the most secret of secret things.”
Yet a second EU diplomat claimed the ideas in the deal were not groundbreaking and could have been struck “years ago” if Britain had a prime minister with enough political will to solve the dispute. “None of the solutions that have been found now is revolutionary,” they said.
An ally of Johnson described the claim he was a block on progress as “total nonsense.”
The ‘unholy trinity’
Away from the media focus, a group of seasoned U.K. officials began to engage with their EU counterparts in earnest. But there was one (not so) new player in town.
Tim Barrow, a former U.K. permanent representative to the EU armed with a peerless contact book, had been an active figure in rebuilding relations with the bloc since Truss appointed him national security adviser. He acquired a more prominent role in the protocol talks after Sunak dispatched him to Brussels in January 2023, hoping EU figures would see him as “almost one of them,” another adviser to Sunak said.
Ensconced in the EU capital, Barrow and his U.K. team of negotiators took over several meeting rooms in the basement of the U.K. embassy, while staffers were ordered to keep quiet about their presence.
Besides his work on Northern Ireland trade, Barrow began to appear in meetings with EU representatives about other key issues creating friction in the EU-U.K. relationship, including discussions on migration alongside U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman.
Barrow “positioned himself very well,” the first EU diplomat quoted above said. “He’s very close to the prime minister — everybody in Brussels and London knows he’s got his ear. He’s very knowledgeable while very political.”
But other British officials insist Barrow’s presence was not central to driving through the deal. “He has been a figure, but not the only figure,” the U.K. adviser quoted above said. “It’s been a lot of people, actually, over quite a period of time.”
When it came to the tough, detailed technical negotiations, the burden fell on the shoulders of Mark Davies — the head of the U.K. taskforce praised for his mastery of the protocol detail — and senior civil servant and former director of the Northern Ireland Office, Brendan Threlfall.
The three formed an “unholy trinity,” as described by the first U.K. official, with each one bringing something to the table.
Davies was “a classic civil servant, an unsung hero,”the official said, while Threlfall “has good connections, good understanding” and “Tim has met all the EU interlocutors over the years.”
Sitting across the table, the EU team was led by Richard Szostak, a Londoner born to Polish parents and a determined Commission official with a great CV and an affinity for martial arts. His connection to von der Leyen was her deputy head of cabinet until recently, Stéphanie Riso, a former member of Brussels’ Brexit negotiating team who developed a reputation for competence on both sides of the debate.
Other senior figures at the U.K. Cabinet Office played key roles, including Cabinet Secretary Simon Case and senior official Sue Gray.
The latter — a legendary Whitehall enforcer who adjudicated over Johnson’s “Partygate” scandal — has a longstanding connection to Northern Ireland, famously taking a career break in the late 1980s to run a pub in Newry, where she has family links. More recently, she spent two years overseeing the finance ministry.
Gray has been spotted in Stormont at crunch points over the past six months as Northern Ireland grapples with the pain of the continued absence of an executive.
Some predict Gray could yet play a further role, in courting the Democratic Unionist Party as the agreement moves forward in the weeks ahead.
For U.K. and EU officials, the agreement struck with Brussels represented months of hard work — but for Sunak and his Cabinet colleagues, the hardest yards may yet lie ahead.
This story was updated to clarify two parts of the sourcing.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
LONDON — Domestic abusers face stricter monitoring under a clampdown unveiled by Rishi Sunak Monday.
The U.K. prime minister kicks off the week with a package of planned reforms aimed at cutting down on the “appalling” crimes, including new duties on a host of public bodies to keep track of and manage convicted offenders.
The government is promising that those handed a year or more in prison or given a suspended sentence for “controlling or coercive behavior” will now be put on a par with offenders convicted of physical violence. It means they will be actively “managed” by the police, prison and probation services, who will have a legal duty to work together.
Meanwhile, a new, small-scale trial program of “Domestic Abuse Protection Notices and Orders” is being set up in parts of Wales, Manchester and London, imposing fresh requirements on perpetrators including potential electronic tagging and a requirement to tell police about name and address changes. Breaches will be treated as a fresh criminal offense.
The U.K. government is also promising to beef up a nationwide scheme known as “Ask for ANI,” which already sees staff in pharmacies across the country trained to discreetly assist victims who approach shop counters and give the “ANI” codeword. The program will now be trialed in 18 social security offices in the U.K., with a dedicated postcode-checker allowing people affected to find nearest support sites.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman is also ordering police forces to treat violence against women and girls as a “national threat” for the first time.
In comments released overnight by No. 10, Sunak said: “No woman or girl should ever have to feel unsafe in her home or community and I am determined to stamp out these appalling crimes.”
Sunak’s government last year unveiled £257 million in fresh funding over two years to help local councils provide refuges and shelters for those fleeing domestic abuse.
But campaign group Women’s Aid warned that more than £800 million would be needed to “sustainability fund all specialist domestic abuse services in England,” and said some services were struggling to stay afloat amid soaring energy costs.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
LONDON — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in London to meet the U.K. prime minister and King Charles III as Britain announces new training programs for fighter pilots and marines.
Zelenskyy’s surprise trip includes a visit to see Ukrainian troops being trained by the British armed forces and an address to the U.K. parliament. He will be granted an audience with the British monarch at Buckingham Palace Wednesday afternoon.
This is Zelenskyy’s second trip overseas since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The Ukrainian leader had also been expected to visit EU leaders in Brussels later this week, but that stop has been cast in doubt after the plans leaked on Monday.
In a statement Wednesday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced the U.K. will now train pilots on the operation of NATO-standard fighter jets as well as marines. This comes in addition to an expansion of U.K. training Ukrainian recruits from 10,000 to 20,000 soldiers this year.
The new training programs show Britain’s commitment “to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukraine for years to come,” Sunak said.
During their talks, Sunak is expected to offer the Ukrainian president longer-range weapons and his backing for Zelenskyy’s plans to work toward peace, No. 10 Downing Street said.
“President Zelenskyy’s visit to the U.K. is a testament to his country’s courage, determination and fight, and a testament to the unbreakable friendship between our two countries,” Sunak added.
The U.K. will also announce further sanctions Wednesday in response to Russia’s continued bombardment of Ukraine, the prime minister’s office said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
LONDON — “Back to her old self again” was how one erstwhile colleague described Liz Truss, who made her return to the U.K.’s front pages at the weekend.
That’s exactly what Rishi Sunak and his allies were afraid of.
Truss, who spent 49 turbulent days in No. 10 Downing Street last year, is back. After a respectful period of 13 weeks’ silence, the U.K.’s shortest-serving prime minister exploded back onto the scene with a 4,000-word essay in the Sunday Telegraph complaining that her radical economic agenda was never given a “realistic chance.”
In her first interview since stepping down, broadcast Monday evening, she expanded on this, saying she encountered “system resistance” to her plans as PM and did not get “the level of political support required” to change prevailing attitudes.
While the reception for Truss’s relaunch has not been exactly rapturous — with much of the grumbling coming from within her own party — it still presents a genuine headache for her successor, Sunak, who must now deal with not one but two unruly former prime ministers jostling from the sidelines.
Boris Johnson is also out of a job, but is never far from the headlines. Recent engagements with the U.S. media and high-profile excursions to Kyiv have ensured his strident views on the situation in Ukraine remain well-aired, even as he racks up hundreds of thousands in fees from private speaking engagements around the world.
Wasting no time
Truss and Johnson have, typically, both opted for swifter and more vocal returns to frontline politics than many of their forerunners in the role.
“Most post-war prime ministers have been relatively lucky with their predecessors,” says Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London. “They have tended to follow the lead of [interwar Conservative PM] Stanley Baldwin, who in 1937 promised: ‘Once I leave, I leave. I am not going to speak to the man on the bridge, and I am not going to spit on the deck.’”
Such an approach has never been universal. Ted Heath, PM from 1970-74, made no secret of his disdain for his successor as Tory leader Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher in turn “behaved appallingly” — in Bale’s words — to John Major, who replaced her in Downing Street in 1990 after she was forced from office.
But more recent Tory PMs have kept a respectful distance.
David Cameron quit parliament entirely after losing the EU referendum in 2016, and waited three years before publishing a memoir — reportedly in order to avoid “rocking the boat” during the ongoing Brexit negotiations.
And while Theresa May became an occasional liberal-centrist thorn in Boris Johnson’s side, she did so only after a series of careful, low-profile contributions in the House of Commons on subjects close to her heart, such as domestic abuse and rail services in her hometown of Maidenhead.
“You might expect to see former prime ministers be a tad more circumspect in the way they re-enter the political debate,” says Paul Harrison, former press secretary to May. “But then she [Truss] wasn’t a conventional prime minister in any sense of the word, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that she’s done something very unconventional.”
Truss’s rapid refresh has not met with rave reviews.
Paul Goodman, editor of influential grassroots website ConservativeHome, writes that “rather than concede, move on, and focus on the future, she denies, digs in and reimagines the past,” while Tory MP Richard Graham told Times Radio that Truss’ time in office “was a period that [people] would rather not really remember too clearly.”
One long-serving Conservative MP said “she only had herself to blame for her demise, and we are still clearing up some of the mess.” Another appraised her latest intervention simply with an exploding-head emoji.
Trussites forever
But despite Tory appeals for calm, the refusal of Truss and Johnson to lie low remains a serious worry for the man eventually chosen to lead the party after Truss crashed and burned and Johnson thought better of trying to stage a comeback.
Between them, the two ex-PMs have the ability to highlight two of Sunak’s big weaknesses.
While Truss may never live down the disastrous “mini-budget” of last September which sent the U.K. economy off the rails, her wider policy agenda still has a hold over a number of Conservative MPs who believe they have no hope of winning the election without it.
This was the rationale behind the formation last month of the Conservative Growth Group, a caucus of MPs who will carry the torch for the low-tax, deregulatory approach to government favored by Truss and who continue to complain Sunak has little imagination when it comes to supply-side reforms.
Simon Clarke, who was a Cabinet minister under Truss, insisted “she has thought long and hard” about why her approach failed and “posed important questions” about how the U.K. models economic growth in her Telegraph piece.
Other Conservatives have been advocating a reappraisal of the actions of the Bank of England in the period surrounding the mini-budget, arguing that Truss was unfairly blamed for a collapse in the bond market.
But Harrison doubts whether she may be the best advocate for the causes she represents. “There’s a question about whether it actually best serves her interests in pushing back against a strong prevailing understanding of what happened so soon after leaving office.”
Johnson, meanwhile — to his fans, at least — continues to symbolize the star quality and ballot box appeal which they fear Sunak lacks.
One government aide who has worked with both men said Johnson’s strength lay in his “undeniable charisma” and persuasive power, while Sunak, more prosaically, “was all about hard work.”
These apparent deficiencies feed into a fear among Sunak’s MPs that he is governing too tentatively and, as one ally put it recently, needs to rip off the “cashmere jumper.”
It’s been posited that British prime ministers swing back and forth between “jocks” and “nerds” — and nothing is more likely to underline Sunak’s nerdiness than a pair of recently-deposed jocks refusing to shut up.
Trouble ahead
Unluckily for Sunak, there are at least three big-ticket items coming up which will provide ample ground on which his nemeses can cause trouble.
One is the forthcoming budget — the government’s annual public spending plan, due March 15. Truss and Johnson are unlikely to get personally involved, but Truss loyalists will make a nuisance of themselves if Sunak’s approach is judged to offer the paucity of answers on growth they already fear.
Before that, Truss is expected to make her first public appearance outside the U.K. with a speech on Taiwan which could turn up the heat on Sunak over his approach to relations with China.
One person close to her confirmed China would be “a big thing” for her, and is expected to be a theme of her future parliamentary interventions.
Then there is the small matter of the Northern Ireland protocol, the thorniest unresolved aspect of the Brexit deal with Brussels where tortured negotiations appear to be reaching an endgame.
Sunak has been sitting with a draft version of a technical deal since last week, according to several people with knowledge of the matter, and is now girding his loins for the unenviable task of trying to get a compromise agreement past both his own party and hardline Northern Irish unionists.
A Whitehall official working on the protocol said Johnson “absolutely” had the power to detonate that process, and that “he should never be underestimated as an agent of chaos.”
One option touted by onlookers is for Sunak to attempt to assemble the former prime ministers and ask them to stand behind him on a matter of such huge national and international significance. But as things stand such a get-together is difficult to picture.
At the heart of Johnson and Truss’ actions seems to be an essential disquiet over the explosive manner of their departures.
They appear fated to follow in Thatcher’s footsteps, as Bale puts it — “not caring how much trouble they cause Sunak, because in their view, he should never have taken over from them in the first place.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
WAREHAM, Dorset — Ukrainian fighter pilots will soon be trained in Britain — but Kyiv will have to wait a little longer for the modern combat jets it craves.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy left the U.K. Wednesday with a firm British commitment to train fighter jet pilots on NATO-standard aircraft, along with an offer of longer-range missiles.
U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has now been tasked with investigating which jets the U.K. might be able to supply to Ukraine, Downing Street announced — but Prime Minister Rishi Sunak fell short of making actual promises on their supply, which his spokesman said would only ever be a “long-term” option.
Speaking at a joint press conference at the Lulworth military camp in Wareham, southern England, Sunak said the priority must be to “arm Ukraine in the short-term” to ensure the country is not vulnerable to a fresh wave of Russian attacks this spring.
Standing alongside Zelenskyy in front of a British-made Challenger 2 tank, Sunak restated that “nothing is off the table” when it comes to provision of military assistance to Ukraine, and said fourth-generation fighter jets were part of his conversation with the Ukrainian president “today, and have been previously.”
These talks also covered the supply chains required to support such sophisticated aircraft, Sunak said.
But he cautioned a decision to deliver jets would only be taken in coalition with allies, and said training pilots must come first and could take “some time.”
“That’s why we have announced today that we will be training Ukrainian air force on NATO-standard platforms, because the first step in being able to provide advanced aircrafts is to have soldiers or aviators who are capable of using them,” Sunak said. “We need to make sure they are able to operate the aircraft they might eventually be using.”
The first Challenger 2 tanks pledged by Britain will arrive in Ukraine by next month, Sunak added.
President Zelenskyy ramped up the pressure on Rishi Sunak joking that he had left parliament two years earlier grateful for “delicious English tea”, but this time he would be “thanking all of you in advance for powerful English planes” | Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images
Describing his private conversations with Sunak as “fruitful,” Zelenskyy said he was “very grateful” that Britain had finally heard Kyiv’s call for longer-range missiles.
But he warned that without fighter jets, there is a risk of “stagnation” in his country’s battle against Russian occupation.
“Without the weapons that we are discussing now, and the weapons that we just discussed with Rishi earlier today, and how Britain is going to help us, you know, all of this is very important,” he said. “Without this, there would be stagnation, which will not bring anything good.”
Rolling out the red carpet
The U.K. had rolled out the red carpet for Zelenskyy’s surprise day-long visit, which alongside the visit to the military base included talks with Sunak at Downing Street, a meeting with King Charles at Buckingham Palace and a historic address to the U.K. parliament in Westminster.
Only a handful of leaders have made such an address in Westminster Hall over the past 30 years, including Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama.
“We have freedom. Give us wings to protect it,” Zelenskyy told British lawmakers, after symbolically handing House of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle a helmet used by one of Ukraine’s fighter pilots. The message written upon it stated: “Combat aircraft for Ukraine, wings for freedom.”
Zelenskyy’s call was backed by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who urged Sunak to meet his request.
“We have more than 100 Typhoon jets. We have more than 100 Challenger 2 tanks,” he said. “The best single use for any of these items is to deploy them now for the protection of the Ukrainians — not least because that is how we guarantee our own long-term security.”
Western defense ministers will gather to discuss further military aid to Ukraine on February 14, at a meeting at the U.S. base of Ramstein in southwest Germany.
Sunak’s spokesman said that while Britain has made no decision on whether to send its own jets, “there is an ongoing discussion among other countries about their own fighter jets, some of which are more akin to what Ukrainian pilots are used to.”
Training day
Britain’s announcement marks the first public declaration by a European country on the training of Ukrainian pilots, and could spur other European nations into following suit. France is already considering a similar request from Kyiv.
Yuriyy Sak, an adviser to Ukrainian Minister of Defence Oleksii Reznikov, praised the U.K.’s decision and said allies “know very well that in order to defeat Russia in 2023, Ukraine needs all types of weaponry,” short of nuclear.
“A few weeks ago, the U.K. showed leadership in the issue of providing tanks to Ukraine, and then other allies have followed their example,” he said. “Now the U.K. is again showing leadership in the pilot training issue. Hopefully other countries will follow.”
The British scheme is likely to run in parallel to an American program to train Ukrainian pilots to fly U.S. fighters, for which the U.S. House of Representatives approved $100 million last summer. In October Ukraine announced a group of several dozen pilots had been selected for training on Western fighter jets.
The first Ukrainian pilots are expected to arrive in Britain in the spring, with Downing Street warning the instruction program could last up to five years. Military analysts, however, say the length of any such scheme could vary significantly depending on the pilots’ previous expertise and the type of fighter they learn to operate.
The U.K. announcement is therefore of “significant value” but “does not suggest the provision of fighter jets is imminent,” said Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow for airpower at the British think tank RUSI.
The British program is likely to involve simulators and focus on providing training on NATO tactics and basic cockpit procedures to Ukrainian pilots who already have expertise in flying Soviet-era jets, Bronk said.
The new training programs come in addition to the expansion in the numbers of Ukrainian early recruits being trained on basic tactics in the U.K., from 10,000 to 20,000 soldiers this year.
‘Unimaginable hardships’
Wednesday’s visit marked Zelenskyy’s first trip to the U.K. since Russia’s invasion almost a year ago and only his second confirmed journey outside Ukraine during the war, following a visit to the United States last December.
The Ukrainian president arrived on a Royal Air Force plane at an airport north of London Wednesday morning, the entire trip a closely guarded secret until he landed.
Recounting his first visit to London back in 2020, when he sat in British wartime leader Winston Churchill’s armchair, Zelenskyy said: “I certainly felt something — but it is only now that I know what the feeling was. It is a feeling of how bravery takes you through the most unimaginable hardships to finally reward you with victory.”
Zelenskyy travelled to Paris Wednesday evening for talks with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. In a short statement, Zelenskyy said France and Germany “can be game-changers,” adding: “The earlier we get heavy weapons, long-range missiles, aircraft, alongside tanks, the sooner the war will end.”
Macron said Ukraine “can count on France and Europe to [help] win the war,” while Scholz added that Zelenskyy expected attendance at a summit of EU leaders in Brussels Thursday “is a sign of solidarity.”
Dan Bloom and Clea Caulcutt provided additional reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
LONDON — As nations around the world scramble to secure crucial semiconductor supply chains over fears about relations with China, the U.K. is falling behind.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the world’s heavy reliance on Taiwan and China for the most advanced chips, which power everything from iPhones to advanced weapons. For the past two years, and amid mounting fears China could kick off a new global security crisis by invading Taiwan, Britain’s government has been readying a plan to diversify supply chains for key components and boost domestic production.
Yet according to people close to the strategy, the U.K.’s still-unseen plan — which missed its publication deadline last fall — has suffered from internal disconnect and government disarray, setting the country behind its global allies in a crucial race to become more self-reliant.
A lack of experience and joined-up policy-making in Whitehall, a period of intense political upheaval in Downing Street, and new U.S. controls on the export of advanced chips to China, have collectively stymied the U.K.’s efforts to develop its own coherent plan.
The way the strategy has been developed so far “is a mistake,” said a former senior Downing Street official.
Falling behind
During the pandemic, demand for semiconductors outstripped supply as consumers flocked to sort their home working setups. That led to major chip shortages — soon compounded by China’s tough “zero-COVID” policy.
Since a semiconductor fabrication plant is so technologically complex — a single laser in a chip lithography system of German firm Trumpf has 457,000 component parts — concentrating manufacturing in a few companies helped the industry innovate in the past.
But everything changed when COVID-19 struck.
“Governments suddenly woke up to the fact that — ‘hang on a second, these semiconductor things are quite important, and they all seem to be concentrated in a small number of places,’” said a senior British semiconductor industry executive.
Beijing’s launch of a hypersonic missile in 2021 also sent shivers through the Pentagon over China’s increasing ability to develop advanced AI-powered weapons. And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine added to geopolitical uncertainty, upping the pressure on governments to onshore manufacturers and reduce reliance on potential conflict hotspots like Taiwan.
Against this backdrop, many of the U.K.’s allies are investing billions in domestic manufacturing.
The Biden administration’s CHIPS Act, passed last summer, offers $52 billion in subsidies for semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. The EU has its own €43 billion plan to subsidize production — although its own stance is not without critics. Emerging producers like India, Vietnam, Singapore and Japan are also making headway in their own multi-billion-dollar efforts to foster domestic manufacturing.
US President Joe Biden | Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Now the U.K. government is under mounting pressure to show its own hand. In a letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak first reported by the Times and also obtained by POLITICO, Britain’s semiconductor sector said its “confidence in the government’s ability to address the vital importance of the industry is steadily declining with each month of inaction.”
That followed the leak of an early copy of the U.K.’s semiconductor strategy, reported on by Bloomberg, warning that Britain’s over-dependence on Taiwan for its semiconductor foundries makes it vulnerable to any invasion of the island nation by China.
Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of its territory, makes more than 90 percent of the world’s advanced chips, with its Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) vital to the manufacture of British-designed semiconductors.
U.S. and EU action has already tempted TSMC to begin building new plants and foundries in Arizona and Germany.
“We critically depend on companies like TSMC,” said the industry executive quoted above. “It would be catastrophic for Western economies if they couldn’t get access to the leading-edge semiconductors any more.”
Whitehall at war
Yet there are concerns both inside and outside the British government that key Whitehall departments whose input on the strategy could be crucial are being left out in the cold.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is preparing the U.K.’s plan and, according to observers, has fiercely maintained ownership of the project. DCMS is one of the smallest departments in Whitehall, and is nicknamed the ‘Ministry of Fun’ due to its oversight of sports and leisure, as well as issues related to tech.
“In other countries, semiconductor policies are the product of multiple players,” said Paul Triolo, a senior vice president at U.S.-based strategy firm ASG. This includes “legislative support for funding major subsidies packages, commercial and trade departments, R&D agencies, and high-level strategic policy bodies tasked with things like improving supply chain resilience,” he said.
“You need all elements of the U.K.’s capabilities. You need the diplomatic services, the security services. You need everyone working together on this,” said the former Downing Street official quoted above. “There are huge national security aspects to this.”
Referring to lower-level civil servants, the same person said that relying on “a few ‘Grade 6’ officials in DCMS — officials that don’t see the wider picture, or who don’t have either capability or knowledge,” is a mistake.
For its part, DCMS rejected the suggestion it is too closely guarding the plan, with a spokesperson saying the ministry is “working closely with industry experts and other government departments … so we can protect and grow our domestic sector and ensure greater supply chain resilience.”
The spokesperson said the strategy “will be published as soon as possible.”
But businesses keen for sight of the plan remain unconvinced the U.K. has the right team in place for the job.
Key Whitehall personnel who had been involved in project have now changed, the executive cited earlier said, and few of those writing the strategy “have much of a background in the industry, or much first-hand experience.”
Progress was also sidetracked last year by lengthy deliberations over whether the U.K. should block the sale of Newport Wafer Fab, Britain’s biggest semiconductor plant, to Chinese-owned Nexperia on national security grounds, according to two people directly involved in the strategy. The government eventually announced it would block the sale in November.
And while a draft of the plan existed last year, it never progressed to the all-important ministerial “write-around” process — which gives departments across Whitehall the chance to scrutinize and comment upon proposals.
Waiting for budget day
Two people familiar with current discussions about the strategy said ministers are now aiming to make their plan public in the run-up to, or around, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s March 15 budget statement, although they stressed that timing could still change.
Leaked details of the strategy indicate the government will set aside £1 billion to support chip makers. Further leaks indicate this will be used as seed money for startups, and for boosting existing firms and delivering new incentives for investors.
U.K. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt | Leon Neal/Getty Images
There is wrangling with the Treasury and other departments over the size of these subsidies. Experts also say it is unlikely to be ‘new’ money but diverted from other departments’ budgets.
“We’ll just have to wait for something more substantial,” said a spokesperson from one semiconductor firm commenting on the pre-strategy leaks.
But as the U.K. procrastinates, key British-linked firms are already being hit by the United States’ own fast-evolving semiconductor strategy. U.S. rules brought in last October — and beefed up in recent days by an agreement with the Netherlands — are preventing some firms from selling the most advanced chip designs and manufacturing equipment to China.
British-headquartered, Japanese-owned firm ARM — the crown jewel of Britain’s semiconductor industry, which sells some designs to smartphone manufacturers in China — is already seeing limits on what it can export. Other British firms like Graphcore, which develops chips for AI and machine learning, are feeling the pinch too.
“The U.K. needs to — at pace — understand what it wants its role to be in the industries that will define the future economy,” said Andy Burwell, director for international trade at business lobbying group the CBI.
Where do we go from here?
There are serious doubts both inside and outside government about whether Britain’s long-awaited plan can really get to the heart of what is a complex global challenge — and opinion is divided on whether aping the U.S. and EU’s subsidy packages is either possible or even desirable for the U.K.
A former senior government figure who worked on semiconductor policy said that while the U.K. definitely needs a “more coherent worked-out plan,” publishing a formal strategy may actually just reveal how “complicated, messy and beyond our control” the issue really is.
“It’s not that it is problematic that we don’t have a strategy,” they said. “It’s problematic that whatever strategy we have is not going to be revolutionary.” They described the idea of a “boosterish” multi-billion-pound investment in Britain’s own fabricator industry as “pie in the sky.”
The former Downing Street official said Britain should instead be seeking to work “in collaboration” with EU and U.S. partners, and must be “careful to avoid” a subsidy war with allies.
The opposition Labour Party, hot favorites to form the next government after an expected 2024 election, takes a similar view. “It’s not the case that the U.K. can do this on its own,” Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy said recently, urging ministers to team up with the EU to secure its supply of semiconductors.
One area where some experts believe the U.K. may be able to carve out a competitive advantage, however, is in the design of advanced semiconductors.
“The U.K. would probably be best placed to pursue support for start-up semiconductor design firms such as Graphcore,” said ASG’s Triolo, “and provide support for expansion of capacity at the existing small number of companies manufacturing at more mature nodes” such as Nexperia’s Newport Wafer Fab.
Ministers launched a research project in December aimed at tapping into the U.K. semiconductor sector’s existing strength in design. The government has so far poured £800 million into compound semiconductor research through universities, according to a recent report by the House of Commons business committee.
But the same group of MPs wants more action to support advanced chip design. Burwell at the CBI business group said the U.K. government must start “working alongside industry, rather than the government basically developing a strategy and then coming to industry afterwards.”
Right now the government is “out there a bit struggling to see what levers they have to pull,” said the senior semiconductor executive quoted earlier.
Under World Trade Organization rules, governments are allowed to subsidize their semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, the executive pointed out. “The U.S. is doing it. Europe’s doing it. Taiwan does it. We should do it too.”
Cristina Gallardo contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
LONDON — Whisper it softly, but the Brexit endgame has arrived.
Eighteen months after Brussels and London reopened talks on the contentious Northern Ireland protocol — and more than three years after Britain actually left the EU — panicked officials on both sides of the English Channel are frantically trying to manage expectations as reports of a technical-level deal between the two sides emerge.
“They’re still in calls with the EU, but it’s literally just lawyers tidying up bits of text,” one senior British government official said Wednesday, in reference to the U.K. negotiating team. “We’re done.”
Multiple reports suggest U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak now has a draft technical deal on his desk to consider, despite a wave of both official and unofficial denials from politicians and diplomats on all sides.
“I suspect it is more the technical shape of a deal than a deal per se,” said a second person close to the talks on the U.K. side, “which might be giving them wriggle room to deny it.”
Denials of an outright agreement were still coming thick and fast Wednesday night after the Times reported that London and Brussels had indeed reached a deal on the key customs and governance disputes that have dogged talks over the protocol. Crucially — and most contentiously — its front page story suggested the EU has given ground on the role its top court will play in resolving future disputes.
That followed earlier reporting late last week by Bloomberg News that technical-level solutions on customs, state aid and checks were indeed within touching distance.
Talks on smoothing the operation of the Northern Ireland protocol have been ongoing since the summer of 2021, with negotiators long targeting a deal this month, ahead of an expected visit to Ireland by U.S. President Joe Biden in April.
The protocol arrangement, agreed as part of the Brexit divorce deal, sees Northern Ireland continue to follow the EU’s customs union and single market rules, in an effort to avoid a politically-sensitive hard border with the neighboring Republic of Ireland, which remains an EU member state.
Yet Northern Ireland’s unionist politicians have long objected to the protocol, with the Democratic Unionist Party boycotting power-sharing and arguing that checks on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland effectively separate the region from the rest of the U.K. They’re backed by critics in Sunak’s governing Conservative Party who resent the Court of Justice of the European Union’s place in protocol governance.
Selling a deal to those domestic audiences represents an almighty political challenge for a prime minister already battling to keep his fractured party together.
The official line
Officially, both sides are sticking to the script and insisting that talks continue.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters Wednesday: “I’m very sorry, but I cannot give partial elements — because you never know in the very end how the package looks like.”
In Downing Street, Sunak’s official spokesperson tried to steer journalists away from what he called “speculative” reporting.
“No deal has been agreed, there is still lots of work to do on all areas, with significant gaps remaining between the U.K. and EU positions,” the spokesperson said. “Talks are ongoing on potential solutions including on goods.”
But the senior U.K. official quoted before said the message from No. 10 that negotiations are ongoing only applied at a political level.
They added: “It’s now up to politicians to decide ‘yay’ or ‘nay.’ Rishi could have further technical talks with Ursula von der Leyen and [EU Brexit point-man] Maroš Šefčovič and stuff like that, but officials are done. It’s plain as day.”
According to the second person close to the talks, Sunak has been receiving regular updates on the evolving technical shape of the deal.
“As far as I know, he hasn’t given it the green light yet,” they said. “But it is all being quite ‘secret squirrel’ in the [U.K.] Cabinet Office. So I don’t think many people will be fully in the loop.”
In Brussels and in London, EU diplomats were busy rubbishing reports of an imminent resolution, while acknowledging that information on the state of play is being kept tight. European ambassadors were briefed on Wednesday morning that a breakthrough is yet to be reached, and that the CJEU issue remains particularly tricky.
Even inside the U.K., claim and counter-claim were flying. Another British official close to the talks said it was “just wrong [that a deal] is close,” with “fundamental” issues outstanding “including making sure there isn’t a border.” They would not, the person added, “expect anything in the short term.”
One EU diplomat summed up the mood: “If somebody tells you they know what’s happening, they’re lying.”
In truth, a final agreement on Brexit has never looked so close.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
LONDON — Public sector workers on strike, the cost-of-living climbing, and a government on the ropes.
“It’s hard to miss the parallels” between the infamous ‘Winter of Discontent’ of 1978-79 and Britain in 2023, says Robert Saunders, historian of modern Britain at Queen Mary, University of London.
Admittedly, the comparison only goes so far. In the 1970s it was a Labour government facing down staunchly socialist trade unions in a wave of strikes affecting everything from food deliveries to grave-digging, while Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives sat in opposition and awaited their chance.
But a mass walkout fixed for Wednesday could yet mark a staging post in the downward trajectory of Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives, just as it did for Callaghan’s Labour.
Britain is braced for widespread strike action tomorrow, as an estimated 100,000 civil servants from government departments, ports, airports and driving test centers walk out alongside hundreds of thousands of teachers across England and Wales, train drivers from 14 national operators and staff at 150 U.K. universities.
It follows rolling action by train and postal workers, ambulance drivers, paramedics, and nurses in recent months. In a further headache for Sunak, firefighters on Monday night voted to walk out for the first time in two decades.
While each sector has its own reasons for taking action, many of those on strike are united by the common cause of stagnant pay, with inflation still stubbornly high. And that makes it harder for Sunak to pin the blame on the usual suspects within the trade union movement.
Mr Reasonable
Industrial action has in the past been wielded as a political weapon by the Conservative Party, which could count on a significant number of ordinary voters being infuriated by the withdrawal of public services.
Tories have consequently often used strikes as a stick with which to beat their Labour opponents, branding the left-wing party as beholden to its trade union donors.
But public sympathies have shifted this time round, and it’s no longer so simple to blame the union bogeymen.
Sunak has so far attempted to cast himself as Mr Reasonable, stressing that his “door is always open” to workers but warning that the right to strike must be “balanced” with the provision of services. To this end, he is pressing ahead with long-promised legislation to enforce minimum service standards in sectors hit by industrial action.
Sunak has made tackling inflation the raison d’etre of his government, and his backbenchers are reasonably content to rally behind that banner | POOL photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images
Unions are enraged by the anti-strike legislation, yet Sunak’s soft-ish rhetoric is still in sharp relief to the famously bellicose Thatcher, who pledged during the 1979 strikes that “if someone is confronting our essential liberties … then, by God, I will confront them.”
Sunak’s careful approach is chosen at least in part because the political ground has shifted beneath him since the coronavirus pandemic struck in 2020.
Public sympathy for frontline medical staff, consistently high in the U.K., has been further embedded by the extreme demands placed upon nurses and other hospital staff during the pandemic. And inflation is hitting workers across the economy — not just in the public sector — helping to create a broader reservoir of sympathy for strikers than has often been found in the past.
James Frayne, a former government adviser who co-founded polling consultancy Public First, observes: “Because of the cost-of-living crisis, what you [as prime minister] can’t do, as you might be able to do in the past, is just portray this as being an ideologically-driven strike.”
Starmer’s sleight of hand
At the same time, strikes are not the political headache for the opposition Labour Party they once were.
Thatcher was able to portray Callaghan as weak when he resisted the use of emergency powers against the unions. David Cameron was never happier than when inviting then-Labour leader Ed Miliband to disown his “union paymasters,” particularly during the last mass public sector strike in 2011.
Crucially, trade union votes had played a key role in Miliband’s election as party leader — something the Tories would never let him forget. But when Sunak attempts to reprise Cameron’s refrains against Miliband, few seem convinced.
QMUL’s Saunders argues that the Conservatives are trying to rerun “a 1980s-style campaign” depicting Labour MPs as being in the pocket of the unions. But “I just don’t think this resonates with the public,” he added.
Labour’s current leader, Keir Starmer, has actively sought to weaken the left’s influence in the party, attracting criticism from senior trade unionists. Most eye-catchingly, Starmer sacked one of his own shadow ministers, Sam Tarry, after he defied an order last summer that the Labour front bench should not appear on picket lines.
Starmer has been “given cover,” as one shadow minister put it, by Sunak’s decision to push ahead with the minimum-service legislation. It means Labour MPs can please trade unionists by fighting the new restrictions in parliament — without having to actually stand on the picket line.
So far it seems to be working. Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, an umbrella group representing millions of U.K. trade unionists, told POLITICO: “Frankly, I’m less concerned about Labour frontbenchers standing up on picket lines for selfies than I am about the stuff that really matters to our union” — namely the government’s intention to “further restrict the right to strike.”
The TUC is planning a day of action against the new legislation on Wednesday, coinciding with the latest wave of strikes.
Sticking to their guns
For now, Sunak’s approach appears to be hitting the right notes with his famously restless pack of Conservative MPs.
Sunak has made tackling inflation the raison d’etre of his government, and his backbenchers are reasonably content to rally behind that banner.
As one Tory MP for an economically-deprived marginal seat put it: “We have to hold our nerve. There’s a strong sense of the corner (just about) being turned on inflation rising, so we need to be as tough as possible … We can’t now enable wage increases that feed inflation.”
Another agreed: “Rishi should hold his ground. My guess is that eventually people will get fed up with the strikers — especially rail workers.”
Furthermore, Public First’s Frayne says his polling has picked up the first signs of an erosion of support for strikes since they kicked off last summer, particularly among working-class voters.
“We’re at the point now where people are feeling like ‘well, I haven’t had a pay rise, and I’m not going to get a pay rise, and can we all just accept that it’s tough for everybody and we’ve got to get on with it,’” he said.
More than half (59 percent) of people back strike action by nurses, according to new research by Public First, while for teachers the figure is 43 percent, postal workers 41 percent and rail workers 36 percent.
‘Everything is broken’
But the broader concern for Sunak’s Conservatives is that, regardless of whatever individual pay deals are eventually hammered out, the wave of strikes could tap into a deeper sense of malaise in the U.K.
Inflation remains high, and the government’s independent forecaster predicted in December that the U.K. will fall into a recession lasting more than a year.
More than half (59 percent) of people back strike action by nurses, according to new research by Public First, while for teachers the figure is 43 percent, postal workers 41 percent and rail workers 36 percent | Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images
Strikes by ambulance workers only drew more attention to an ongoing crisis in the National Health Service, with patients suffering heart attacks and strokes already facing waits of more than 90 minutes at the end of 2022.
Moving around the country has been made difficult not only by strikes, but by multiple failures by rail providers on key routes.
One long-serving Conservative MP said they feared a sense of fatalism was setting in among the public — “the idea that everything is broken and there’s no point asking this government to fix it.”
A former Cabinet minister said the most pressing issue in their constituency is the state of public services, and strike action signaled political danger for the government. They cautioned that the public are not blaming striking workers, but ministers, for the disruption.
Those at the top of government are aware of the risk of such a narrative taking hold, with the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, taking aim at “declinism about Britain” in a keynote speech Friday.
Whether the government can do much to change the story, however, is less clear.
Saunders harks back to Callaghan’s example, noting that public sector workers were initially willing to give the Labour government the benefit of the doubt, but that by 1979 the mood had fatally hardened.
This is because strikes are not only about falling living standards, he argues. “It’s also driven by a loss of faith in government that things are going to get better.”
With an election looming next year, Rishi Sunak is running out of time to turn the public mood around.
Annabelle Dickson and Graham Lanktree contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Rishi Sunak has fired Conservative Party chairman Nadhim Zahawi over a “serious breach” of U.K. government ethics rules relating to his tax affairs.
Zahawi has been hit by weeks of damaging headlines over an investigation into his personal taxes carried out by HM Revenue and Customs.
The party chairman and Cabinet Office minister was hit by a penalty from the tax authority while serving as a senior minister, with media reports putting the total charge at £4.8 million. An independent probe, ordered by Sunak and published Sunday morning, concluded Zahawi had not been sufficiently transparent about his private dealings with the tax authority when accepting a succession of senior ministerial roles.
In a letter to Zahawi confirming his sacking, Sunak said he had vowed to put “integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level” of his administration, and that the investigation by the government’s ethics watchdog Laurie Magnus had found “a serious breach of the Ministerial Code.”
“As a result, I have informed you of my decision to remove you from your position in His Majesty’s Government,” Sunak said.
No.10 also published Magnus’ letter to Sunak, setting out the findings of his short investigation. The ethics chief said that while Zahawi had “provided his full and open cooperation” with his own inquiry, he had shown “insufficient regard” for the ministerial code, and in particular, its requirement to be “honest, open and an exemplary leader.”
Zahawi had, Magnus concluded, failed to declare the HMRC investigation when he became Boris Johnson’s chancellor in July last year; failed to update his declaration of ministerial interests when he settled with HMRC last September; and failed to disclose the nature of the HMRC probe and penalty when Sunak was forming his own government in October 2022, “including to Cabinet Office officials who support that process.”
“Without knowledge of that information, the Cabinet Office was not in a position to inform the appointing Prime Minister,” Magnus concluded.
Zahawi hits out at press
In his reply to the prime minister, Zahawi — who served as U.K. vaccines minister as Johnson’s government vied to get COVID-19 under control — said it had been, “after being blessed with my loving family, the privilege of my life to serve in successive governments and make what I believe to have been a tangible difference to the country I love.”
Zahawi’s own letter made no mention whatsoever of his tax affairs and instead attacked the media, saying he is “concerned” about “the conduct from some of the fourth estate in recent weeks.”
“In a week when a Member of Parliament was physically assaulted, I fail to see how one headline on this issue ‘The Noose Tightens’ reflects legitimate scrutiny of public officials,” he said, referring to the front page of the Independent newspaper, whose reporting helped bring the tax investigation to light.
The sacking was seized on by the opposition Labour Party, with Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson arguing that Sunak had taken too long to act, and is a prime minister “trying to manage his MPs, rather than govern in the national interest.”
“It’s vital that we now get answers to what Rishi Sunak knew and when did he know it,” she added. “We need to see all the papers, not just have the prime minister’s role in this brushed under the carpet.”
This developing story is being updated.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
