Acclaimed sculptor calls leaving the EU ‘a practical disaster’ and a ‘betrayal’ as major retrospective opens
The acclaimed British sculptor Antony Gormley is to become a German citizen because of the “tragedy” of Brexit.
Speaking at a major retrospective of his work at the Museum Voorlinden near The Hague, Gormley, who is half-German, said his strong feelings about Britain’s departure from Europe had prompted him to apply for German nationality.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson allies seize on Tobias Ellwood’s comments to say Brexit would not be safe with rebel Tories
A Tory MP and arch critic of Boris Johnson has sparked a backlash from Brexiters after suggesting Britain rejoin the EU’s single market to help ease the cost of living crisis.
Tobias Ellwood’s comments were seized upon by allies of the prime minister as evidence that deposing Johnson would threaten the country’s more distant relationship with Brussels.
Continue reading...Exporters fear Northern Ireland protocol row will spur trade war with Brussels, making an already difficult job even harder
Mark Brearley is still frustrated by Brexit. More than a year from Britain’s formal withdrawal from the EU, on terms agreed by Boris Johnson’s government, exporting the goods his company produces hasn’t got any easier for the London-based manufacturer.
Describing it as “the same nightmare week after week”, he says: “A lot more time is spent with things going wrong. The EU really feels like the hardest place in the world to ship things to sometimes.”
Continue reading...Move is an apparent attempt to win support from Brexit voters in seats Tories fear losing
Boris Johnson will reportedly announce the return of imperial measurements to mark the Queen’s platinum jubilee, in an apparent attempt to garner support among Brexiter voters in battleground seats that the Conservatives are in danger of losing.
Britain currently uses a mix of imperial and metric measurements, with speed limits in miles per hour and milk and beer bought in pints.
Continue reading...Laboratory chief blames Brexit for closure as money for corvid brain power research dries up
One of Britain’s most important, and unusual, centres for studying cognition is facing imminent closure as a result of Brexit. Set up 22 years ago to study the minds of crows, rooks and other birds noted for their intelligence, the Cambridge Comparative Cognition Laboratory is set to cease operations in July.
Its director, Professor Nicola Clayton, told the Observer she was devastated by the prospect of ending her research there. Nor was she in any doubt about the prime reason for the centre’s closure.
Continue reading...Nicholas Walton gives up leadership of €2.8m pan-European research after dispute over Northern Ireland protocol
A Cambridge University astrophysicist studying the Milky Way and hoping to play a major part in the European Space Agency’s (Esa) next big project has been forced to hand over his coordinating role on the scheme after the row over Northern Ireland’s Brexit arrangements put science in the firing line.
Nicholas Walton, a research fellow at the Institute of Astronomy, reluctantly passed his leadership role in the €2.8m pan-European Marie Curie Network research project to a colleague in the Netherlands on Friday.
Continue reading...Micheál Martin visits Belfast to try to break deadlock over DUP’s opposition to Brexit protocol
Ireland’s taoiseach has said it is unacceptable for one party in Northern Ireland to block others from taking power, as he visited Belfast to try to break the deadlock over the Brexit protocol and power-sharing at Stormont.
After meetings with party leaders, Micheál Martin said the Northern Ireland assembly and executive should be formed while negotiations continued between the UK government and the EU over the protocol. “Our view is there should be parallel discussions,” he said as he urged the DUP to abandon its decision not to return to power-sharing until “decisive action” was taken over reforms to Northern Ireland’s Brexit arrangements.
Earlier he said it was “unheard of in a democratic world” that a parliament could not convene after an election. “We can’t have a situation where one political party determines that the other political parties can’t convene in a parliament,” he said.
Nine-strong delegation led by close Biden ally will also visit Brussels and Dublin in significant intervention on division over Brexit protocol
One of Joe Biden’s closest allies is due to arrive in London on Saturday as part of an influential US congressional delegation seeking to calm tensions over Northern Ireland.
The nine-strong delegation includes Democratic and Republican delegates from the House of Representatives and Senate including members of the powerful ways and means committee chaired by Richard Neal, who will lead the group.
Continue reading...Bluntly worded intervention comes as tensions rise over plans by Liz Truss to nullify parts of the protocol
The US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has warned that unilateral UK legislation affecting the Northern Ireland protocol could endanger British prospects for a free trade deal with the US.
Pelosi’s bluntly worded intervention came two days after the UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, confirmed that the government was planning to table legislation that would nullify parts of the protocol by exempting some goods moving between Great Britain and Ireland from EU customs checks.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed. You can find our latest cost of living stories below:
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the international trade secretary, has warned that inflation will experience a further “bump” before prices are likely to stabilise.
In a Q&A after delivering a speech on green trade at Bloomberg’s HQ in London, she said countries around the world were facing a “a global battle against inflation”. She went on:
This is something we have to tackle across the board.
And the worry we always have is that inflation tends to have two bumps to it.
Continue reading...Analysis: UK among hardest-hit countries thanks to perfect storm of war in Ukraine, Covid and Brexit
Britain’s inflation rate has soared to the highest level since the early 1980s. After a record increase in gas and electricity bills in April, inflation is the highest in the G7. Having reached 9% last month, it is above the 8.3% rate in the US and Germany’s reading of 7.4%. Japan, an economy characterised by low inflation for decades thanks to an ageing population, has the lowest rate at 1.2%.
Here are some of the reasons why prices are rising faster in the UK than in other major economies.
Continue reading...Pascal Lamy says row is solvable if PM stops using emotional Brexit politics to solve ‘technical problem’
Boris Johnson’s row with the EU over Northern Ireland’s Brexit arrangements is “absolutely solvable” but only if the UK accepts that a border is inevitable, the former head of the World Trade Organization has said.
But Pascal Lamy said the prime minister could only achieve a breakthrough if he stopped mixing “oil and vinegar” and throwing emotional Brexit politics on to what he said was essentially a technical problem.
Continue reading...Analysis: leak blindsided US officials, caused shock waves in Europe and appears to have annoyed No 10
Given that it has just announced a bill that could spark a trade war in the middle of a cost of living crisis, it is remarkable how often members of the government say that what they want is for everyone to calm down.
The intention to legislate is now formally announced but when the bill will be seen by MPs is intentionally unclear. The Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, says it was never meant to be this week. Of course it wasn’t. Now the only commitment is “before the summer”.
Continue reading...Latest updates: Maroš Šefčovič responds to Truss, saying EU keen to reach a settlement but stresses UK actions raise ‘significant concerns’
In the Commons the government chief whip, Chris Heaton-Harris, has just moved the writ for two forthcoming byelections - in Wakefield, and in Tiverton and Honiton.
Both byelections are expected to be held on Thursday 23 June - the sixth anniversary of the Brexit referendum.
Under pressure from some Conservative MPs, some of whom have been threatening to write letters of no confidence in Boris Johnson unless they get their way, ministers have retreated from banning “Buy One Get One Free” deals and from imposing a watershed of 9pm on junk food advertising. While some measures, such as rules on the positioning of unhealthy foods by retailers, will still go ahead in October, this U-turn adds to the long history of failed obesity strategies.
Humans evolved, when food was scarce, to indulge in calorie-dense foods if the opportunity arose. Now, the abundance of food and its particularly highly processed nature, which means we go on eating for a long time before feeling full, leads us to eat a lot of the wrong things. Food companies have an overwhelming incentive to design products that lead us ever further down this chemically induced addiction to foods that make us overweight, more prone to disease, and less able to work and enjoy life to the full. This is not freedom ...
Freedom is, most crucially, being free from oppression, violence or discrimination. But it is also the freedom of a child to skip and somersault; of an adult to enjoy running down a country lane or in a city park; of an old person to keep their quality of life until their final days ... These are the freedoms being denied to vast numbers of people who are the victims, not the free agents, in a system that wants to fill them up with salt, sugar and saturated fat.
It is therefore a terrible error to associate conservatism with a reluctance to protect people from their natural appetites being abused, in an industrial age for which they were not designed. If we could liberate more people from that fate, they could enjoy greater personal freedom and have some chance of a lighter tax burden.
MPs who have pressed, seemingly successfully, for the dilution of the obesity strategy are profoundly mistaken. They are acquiescing in a future of higher dependence, greater costs, reduced lifestyle choice and endless pain. For the government to give in to them is intellectually shallow, politically weak and morally reprehensible.
Continue reading...Foreign secretary confirms plans to ditch parts of deal, saying Good Friday agreement ‘under strain’
Liz Truss has claimed the east-west relationship between Great Britain and Northern Ireland has been “undermined” by the Northern Ireland protocol, as she confirmed plans to table legislation that would scrap parts of the agreement.
The UK foreign secretary, who is also responsible for Brexit, set out plans for the move in a statement in the House of Commons. The bill is not expected to be published for several weeks, but if enacted could spark a trade war with the EU.
Continue reading...Archie Norman backs UK plans to scrap parts of protocol, saying lorries require ‘700 pages of documents’
The chairman of Marks & Spencer has backed government plans to override parts of the Northern Ireland protocol, saying that some food exported south of the border now requires 700 pages of customs documents, partly written in Latin.
Archie Norman, a former Conservative MP, called on the UK government and EU to come to an agreement, saying the rules for sending food between them were “highly bureaucratic and pretty pointless” given that British food standards were in line with or higher than those of Brussels.
Continue reading...Analysis: bloc has various retaliatory weapons available through the post-Brexit trade agreement
The EU could impose tariffs on UK fish and agricultural goods in just seven days if Boris Johnson goes ahead with moves to disapply parts of the Northern Ireland Brexit protocol, legal experts have said.
The short, sharp shock is one of the three key retaliatory weapons available through the trade agreement, according to Catherine Barnard, a professor of EU law at Cambridge University.
Continue reading...Northern Ireland secretary reiterates stance as Liz Truss prepares to tell MPs of plans to lift checks
The UK will not “shy away” from legislating to change the Northern Ireland protocol without agreement from the EU, the Northern Ireland secretary has said, as Liz Truss prepares to tell the Commons about plans to unilaterally lift checks.
The foreign secretary will tell MPs of plans to bring forward the draft legislation after a cabinet discussion on Northern Ireland. However, the timetable for the draft laws has slipped, with the text now only promised before the summer break, according to Whitehall sources.
Continue reading...Latest updates: UK prime minister meets Sinn Féin and DUP as Mary Lou McDonald suggests forming Stormont assembly is not UK government priority
This is from my colleague Jennifer Rankin in Brussels on the UK government’s mixed messaging over the Northern Ireland protocol.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Sinn Féin’s leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, have said they recognise there are “serious issues” in relation to the implementation of the Brexit protocol that Boris Johnson is planning to override in part.
They expressed serious concern about possible unilateral moves on the protocol by the British government, which would have a destabilising impact on Northern Ireland.
They recognised that there are genuine issues regarding aspects of the implementation of the protocol but these can be taken forward in the context of EU-UK discussions.
Continue reading...Foreign minister criticises ‘sabre-rattling’ from UK amid signs British rhetoric is softening over Northern Ireland protocol
Plans to shred parts of the Northern Ireland protocol “would send headlines around the world” that the UK is prepared to break treaties, Ireland’s foreign minister has said, as a British cabinet minister insisted the UK did not intend to break the law.
The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, said the UK had “the right to act in a sovereign way” and to “reopen or re-examine the protocol” but denied the actions would constitute a breach of international law.
Continue reading...