Travellers told to allow three to four hours to pass through security and French border checks at port
French authorities have hit back at claims by the Port of Dover that French border control staff were to blame for a second day of hours-long delays, saying: “France is not responsible for Brexit.”
It came after the port blamed delays on insufficient border staff at police aux frontières.
Continue reading...Kent port apologises for delays and blames French border control as summer getaway kicks off
Holidaymakers have been warned chaos that triggered six-hour queues at Dover could spill into the weekend, after the port declared a “critical incident” that it blamed on “woefully inadequate” French border control staffing.
The Kent port apologised to travellers facing long waits to cross the Channel on an extremely busy day for travel across the UK, as schools across England and Wales break up for the holidays.
Continue reading...European Commission criticises ‘UK’s unwillingness to engage in meaningful discussion’ with regard to joint solutions
The European Union has launched fresh legal action against the UK for failing to comply with the Northern Ireland protocol.
In a statement, the European Commission says it is launching four new infringement procedures because the UK is ignoring obligations it has to the EU under the protocol, which imposes customs rules for goods going between Britain and Northern Ireland to avoid the need for checks at the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
In a spirit of constructive cooperation, the commission refrained from launching certain infringement procedures for over a year to create the space to look for joint solutions with the UK. However, the UK’s unwillingness to engage in meaningful discussion since last February and the continued passage of the Northern Ireland protocol bill through the UK parliament go directly against this spirit.
The aim of these infringement procedures is to secure compliance with the protocol in a number of key areas. This compliance is essential for Northern Ireland to continue to benefit from its privileged access to the European single market, and is necessary to protect the health, security and safety of EU citizens as well as the integrity of the single market.
Continue reading...New cases come on top of three others already in motion heading to European court of justice
The EU has expressed its anger over the backing given by MPs for legislation overriding post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland by launching a further four legal cases against the UK government.
The claims concern past failures to implement the 2019 deal agreed with Boris Johnson but the EU has been spurred to act by the passage through parliament of a bill that would rip up current arrangements.
Continue reading...Research also reveals EU remains ‘overwhelmingly dominant’ destination for UK manufacturing exports
Brexit-supporting regions in the UK are becoming increasingly dependent on the EU for their manufacturing exports, research by the trade body Make UK has found.
The report, based on quarterly manufacturing outlook data measuring performance in output, orders, employment and investment intentions, also found the EU remains the “overwhelmingly dominant” destination for UK manufacturing exports.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Labour leader, speaking after meeting German chancellor, condemns candidates’ ‘fanciful’ spending plans
Keir Starmer has dismissed the acrimonious Conservative leadership race as a “travelling circus”, in which the candidates have demolished their party’s economic credibility by promising billions of pounds of unfunded tax cuts.
Speaking on a visit to Berlin where he held talks with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, the Labour leader highlighted the “fanciful” spending pledges made by the five contenders battling it out to succeed Boris Johnson.
Continue reading...Fergus Linehan calls for visa-free travel for British artists to solve logistical problems of touring
The outgoing director of the Edinburgh festival has called for the UK’s visa and exports rules to be greatly simplified to allow musicians and artists to travel overseas far more smoothly.
Fergus Linehan, who directs his last international festival next month, said the UK’s post-Brexit visa rules had been a “disaster” for the arts and for artists by stifling collaboration and making it harder for British artists to tour abroad.
Continue reading...Analysis: If Johnsonomics stands for anything, it is a lack of plan or vision to address Britain’s economic woes
Boris Johnson entered Downing Street in July 2019 with a promise. The doubters, doomsters and gloomsters were going to get it wrong again: his leadership would make Brexit a success, re-igniting an economy stalled by the divisions over Europe.
Three years later, almost to the day, he prepares to leave with the country reeling from a political implosion of his own making, and an economy teetering on the brink of recession.
Continue reading...Labour leader says he will rebuild trust with EU and get ‘a better deal for the British people’
Keir Starmer has thrown Labour back into the Brexit debate by ruling out any return to the single market or customs union, but arguing he could remove trade and travel barriers as prime minister because the EU would trust him.
In a speech on Monday evening that ended Labour’s habitual silence on the subject since the referendum, Starmer pledged to tackle what he called a “fatberg of red tape and bureaucracy” caused by Johnson’s Brexit deal.
Continue reading...Latest updates: prime minister tells Nato conference UK will spend 2.5% of GDP on defence by 2030
And in another interview Liz Truss refused to endorse Boris Johnson’s claim that “toxic masculinity” helped to explain Vladimir Putin’s conduct and that he would not have invaded Ukraine if he were a woman. Asked if she agreed, she told Times Radio:
[Putin is] clearly is capable of very, very evil acts ... I don’t pretend that I can conduct a psychological analysis on him, nor do I think it’s helpful ...
I think that both women and men are capable of terrible and appalling acts.
All of Ukraine that has been invaded by Russia is illegally occupied. And, ultimately, the Russians need to be pushed out of all of that territory, and certainly what we shouldn’t be doing as friends and allies [of Ukraine] ... is implying that there are any trade-offs or any bits of Ukrainian territory that could be traded away or compromised on.
It is realistic, and that is why we are supplying the extra lethal aid we’re supplying.
Continue reading...EU chief says UK and EU are ‘natural allies’ against Russian aggression and repeats criticism of Northern Ireland protocol bill
A senior EU official has urged Boris Johnson’s government to move on from Brexit and work with the bloc in the face of Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine.
Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission’s vice-president who is in charge of UK relations, repeated his criticism of the government’s “illegal” plan to rip up parts of the Northern Ireland protocol, two days after the bill cleared its first hurdle in the House of Commons.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Union organisation says ministers in talks with 13 countries with poor track record
Ministers have been accused of pushing for post-Brexit trade deals with more than a dozen countries around the world that do not guarantee workers’ rights or systematically violate employee protections.
The Trades Union Congress said ministers were in active talks with 13 nations with a worrying track record on employment rights, including Brazil, Burundi, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in order to secure trade deals after leaving the EU.
Continue reading...This live blog has now closed, you can find our latest political coverage here
Boris Johnson restated his commitment to levelling up this morning. (See 12.03pm.) But a new report from the Resolution Foundation underlines quite what a challenge this will be. Using data showing how average incomes at local authority level have changed since 1997, it says inequalities have been persistent and that over the last 25 years overall change has been limited. It says:
We begin by showing that income differences at the local authority level are substantial. In 2019, before housing costs income per person in the richest local authority – Kensington and Chelsea (£52,451) – was 4.5 times that of the poorest – Nottingham (£11,708). These outliers clearly paint an extreme picture, but even when we compare incomes at the 75th and the 25th percentiles the differences remain significant. In 2019, for example, Oxford had an average per person income that was more than 20 per cent higher than Torbay (£18,700, compared with £15,372). More critically, the income gaps between places are enduring: the differences we observe in 1997 explain 80 per cent of the variation in average local authority income per person 22 years on. This means, for example, that the average income per person in Hammersmith and Fulham has stubbornly been two-to-three times higher than in Burnley for more than two decades.
Britain is beset by huge economic gaps between different parts of the country, and has been for many decades. While progress has been made in reducing employment gaps, this been offset by a surge in investment income among better-off families in London and the south-east.
People care about these gaps and want them closed, as does the government via its ‘levelling up’ strategy. The key to closing these gaps is to boost the productivity of our major cities outside London, which will also lead to stronger growth overall.
Driving a massive, massive agenda for change is a huge, huge privilege to do. And nobody abandons a privilege like that.
The mandate that the electorate gave us in 2019, there hasn’t been a mandate like it for the Conservative party for 40 years, it’s a mandate to change the country, to unite and to level up, and that’s what we’re going to do.
I’ve got a new mandate from my party which I’m absolutely delighted with … it’s done.
I think the job of government is to get on with governing, and to resist the blandishments of the media, no matter how brilliant, to talk about politics, to talk about ourselves.
I think most fair minded people, looking at how the UK came through Covid, around the world most people would say, actually fair play to them. They got the first vaccine into people’s arms, and they had the fastest vaccine rollout. Actually, they’ve got pretty low unemployment. They’ve got investment flooding into their country, they have got a lot of things going for them.
Continue reading...Defeat for the Tories in two key byelections shows that tactical voting could put safe seats in play if replicated at a general election
Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton are at opposite ends of the country geographically, socially and politically. But they have two features in common: both voted Leave heavily in 2016, and both turned against the Conservatives last week. Defeats on the same day in a northern “red wall” seat and a southern rural stronghold suggest that, six years on from the EU referendum, the Conservative majority Boris Johnson stitched together with a promise to “get Brexit done” is beginning to unravel.
For both opposition parties, the byelections have a distinctly 1990s flavour, with the return of a pattern from the Major years that has been largely absent in the past decade of Conservative government – voters in both seats seemed determined to eject Tory incumbents and flocked to the local opposition candidate seen as best placed to do so. Tactical coordination among Labour and Liberal Democrats voters is back, and if replicated at a general election, it could put a lot of seemingly safe Conservative seats in play.
Continue reading...David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, confirms party won’t seek to rejoin single market or EU bloc
Labour has broken its long silence on Brexit, laying out detailed plans to improve, not scrap, the deal Boris Johnson struck with the EU, in a move it concedes will enrage remain supporters.
On the sixth anniversary of the Brexit referendum, the shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, confirmed the party would seek only limited changes and would not seek to rejoin the single market which would bring the return of free trade and free movement of people.
Continue reading...Survey of EU nationals shows ‘profound and lasting’ impact of Brexit on sense of identity
A study of EU citizens living in the UK has revealed the “open wound” left by Brexit, with respondents saying the decision to leave the bloc had left them feeling betrayed, insecure and distrustful towards the country that most nonetheless still call home.
The survey of EU nationals from 22 countries, who had mostly been in Britain for more than five years and stayed since Brexit, showed “a profound and lasting impact on the lives and sense of identity and belonging of EU citizens in the UK”, the authors said.
Continue reading...Exclusive: officials’ comments put paid to idea displeasure with UK is limited to Irish caucus on Capitol Hill
The US government has warned that Boris Johnson’s move to unilaterally axe some of the Northern Ireland Brexit arrangements protocol was a matter of continuing concern and “not conducive” to a trade deal.
Senior officials have hit back at suggestions that the lack of public commentary by the Biden administration meant it was not troubled by the move to bring in new laws to ditch part of the Brexit deal signed in 2020.
Continue reading...EU withdrawal fuelling higher import costs and costing British workers nearly £500 a year, says Resolution Foundation
Britain’s cost of living crisis is being made worse by Brexit dragging down the country’s growth potential and costing workers hundreds of pounds a year in lost pay, new research claims.
The Resolution Foundation thinktank and academics from the London School of Economics said the average worker in Britain was now on course to suffer more than £470 in lost pay each year by 2030 after rising living costs are taken into account, compared with a remain vote in 2016.
Continue reading...General secretary Mick Lynch confirms strike action will proceed, as transport secretary Grant Shapps says rail unions to blame
Tim Shoveller, the chief negotiator for Network Rail, told the Today programme this morning that he did not think the government needed to get involved in the talks on the rail dispute. He said this was an issue for the industry to resolve with trade unions.
He said managers wanted to make the rail industry “more efficient to generate the funds so that we can make the pay awards that our colleagues want”.
I think it would be a disaster for the country. It would be a disaster for our passengers and, look, really bad for our employees, who would lose loads of money by having a long, drawn-out strike – that really is the worst place we can get to.
At the end of the day, the facts about the support the government’s provided in terms of the £16bn through Covid, etc – all of those are well-known and documented.
The Criminal Bar Association (CBA), which represents barristers in England and Wales, said several days of court walkouts will begin from next week.
The promised industrial action, announced on Monday following a ballot of members, comes at a time of significant backlogs across the court system.
This extraordinary commitment to the democratic process reflects a recognition amongst criminal barristers at all levels of call and across all circuits that what is at stake is the survival of a profession of specialist criminal advocates and of the criminal justice system which depends so critically upon their labour.
Without immediate action to halt the exodus of criminal barristers from our ranks, the record backlog that has crippled our courts will continue to inflict misery upon victims and defendants alike, and the public will be betrayed.
Continue reading...Ukraine war, China lockdowns and Brexit help push up inflation, with products that rely on wheat worst hit
Food price rises in the UK could hit 15% this summer – the highest level in more than 20 years – with inflation lasting into the middle of next year, according to a report.
Meat, cereals, dairy, fruit and vegetables are likely to be the worst affected as the war in Ukraine combines with production lockdowns in China and export bans on key food stuffs such as palm oil from Indonesia and wheat from India, the grocery trade body IGD warns.
Continue reading...