Arlene Foster and senior MPs want new post-Brexit trade arrangements to stop disruption at Irish Sea ports
The leader of the Democratic Unionist party, Arlene Foster, and senior DUP MPs are launching a legal action challenging the Brexit deal’s Northern Ireland protocol.
They will be joining other unionists from across the UK in judicial review proceedings unless alternative post-Brexit trade arrangements are put in place that secure their consent.
Continue reading...In Holyhead, traffic has fallen 50% as hauliers stymied by Brexit find their way from Ireland to France without entering the UK
Perched on the shores of Anglesey, the island linked by road bridges to the north-west coast of Wales, Holyhead’s geography has given it a leading role in British-Irish trade since the early 19th century.
About 50 miles directly across the Irish Sea from Dublin, a journey of just three-and-a-quarter hours by ferry, Holyhead was until December the second busiest roll-on roll-off port in the UK after Dover. About 450,000 trucks rumbled through each year on their way to Dublin, with cargoes of meat and agricultural produce, secondhand cars and items destined for the shelves of Irish supermarkets.
Continue reading...England waits to see if PM will stay restrained or bow to backbench pressure with Covid plan
It was an uncharacteristically subdued Boris Johnson who announced from Downing Street that Britain had surpassed the first, phenomenally ambitious target of giving 15 million people a coronavirus vaccine: this was a success, yes, but it was “no moment to relax”, the prime minister said on Monday.
The boosterish rhetoric has been restrained for several weeks – gone is the talk that led to claims there would be normality by November last year, or that it would be “inhuman” to cancel Christmas. Now, escape from the third lockdown must be “cautious but irreversible”.
Continue reading...Business leaders buoyed by meeting with Michael Gove and EU counterpart on protocol glitches
Business leaders in Northern Ireland are optimistic that Brexit barriers preventing parcels, pets, potatoes and plants getting to the region from Britain will be eased after a meeting between Michael Gove and his EU counterpart, Maroš Šefčovič, on Thursday.
They said the UK and the EU had a legitimate reason to remove or ease the barriers because they were having an impact on daily lives, in breach of a pledge in the Northern Ireland protocol that states the “application of this protocol should impact as little as possible on the everyday life of communities in both Ireland and Northern Ireland”.
Continue reading...Western foreign ministers to discuss response to Iranian plan to ban snap intrusive inspections
The future of the Iran nuclear deal is hanging in the balance as the west prepares its response to Iranian plans to increase pressure on Washington by banning snap intrusive inspections of its nuclear sites.
The German, French and British foreign ministers are to confer urgently with the US secretary of state, Tony Blinken, on how to respond to Iran’s plans, which it is expected to implement on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Analysis: Operation Moonshot rhetoric has been toned down but tests will help spot variants
When the government’s Operation Moonshot plans for mass testing of the population for Covid-19 were first revealed, the intention was to use that as the route out of perpetual cycles of lockdown.
It was described as a £100bn-plus endeavour, with resources likened to the Manhattan Project, the top-secret wartime endeavour led by the US to develop a nuclear bomb.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Ban on plants being moved across Irish Sea is major setback for tree-planting programmes in region
Orders for almost 100,000 trees have been cancelled by Northern Ireland buyers because of a post-Brexit ban on the plants being moved from Britain, the Guardian can reveal.
Leaders in the business say it is a major setback for tree-planting programmes in Belfast and elsewhere in the region.
Continue reading...The troubled times we live in, and the rise of social media, have created an age of endless conflict. Rather than fearing or avoiding disagreement, we need to learn to do it well
In 2010, Time magazine made Mark Zuckerberg its person of the year. It described Facebook’s mission as being to “tame the howling mob and turn the lonely, antisocial world of random chance into a friendly world”. During the first decade of mass internet use, this was a popular theory: the more that people were able to communicate with others, the more friendly and understanding they would become, the result being a more peaceable and harmonious world.
In 2021, that vision seems painfully naive. Howling online mobs clash day and night, and some of them commit real-world violence. The internet is connecting people, but it isn’t necessarily creating fellow feeling. At its worst, it can resemble a vast machine for the production of mutual antipathy.
Continue reading...Julie Walters among signatories to letter saying post-Brexit changes a ‘towering hurdle’ to working in Europe
New visa rules for British artists, actors and theatre workers who want to work in Europe after Brexit are a “towering hurdle” that must be urgently addressed, according to an open letter signed by stars including Sir Ian McKellen, Julie Walters and Patrick Stewart.
In the letter from the performing arts union Equity, some of the biggest names in British theatre have implored the prime minister to go back to the negotiating table to ensure visa-free work in the EU.
Continue reading...The prime minister said the government would provide target dates for sectors to reopen ‘if we possibly can’ when he reveals his plan for easing lockdown next week. Speaking to broadcasters in Kent, Johnson said: ‘The dates that we will be setting out will be the dates by which we hope we can do something at the earliest’
Continue reading...Chinese newspaper said countries that boycott 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics over treatment of Uighurs would face retaliation
The Liberal Democrats have warned China against “international bullying” after a call by UK MPs for countries to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics was met by a warning of potential sanctions.
Last week, Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, joined with the Labour MP and former Foreign Office minister Chris Bryant in demanding that the government and the British Olympic Association act over the mass repression of the Muslim Uighur population in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, which campaigners say constitutes genocide.
Continue reading...Research argues ministers should create economic ‘big bang’ for area that turned Tory in last election
The prime minister should repay voters in the north of England who lent the Conservatives their vote at the last election by unleashing billions of pounds of private investment, according to a report.
It argues that ministers should aim to harness the “restless radicalism” from those who voted for Brexit in 2016 and the Conservatives in 2019 by creating an economic “big bang”, along the lines of the Thatcherite deregulation of the City in the 1980s which reinforced London’s position as a global financial centre.
Continue reading...Backbenchers’ calls dismissed but clamour for a more fixed schedule seems set to increase
Downing Street is pushing back against pressure from Conservative MPs to set a swift timetable to end the lockdown in England after meeting its first major vaccination target, saying any hastiness in reopening could risk undoing the progress made in combating the coronavirus pandemic.
In a sign of the likely battle ahead in the coming weeks, ministers and officials flatly ruled out a demand from Tory backbenchers for all Covid restrictions to be over by the start of May, saying any plan needed to be both more cautious and decided step by step.
Continue reading...Exclusive: early detection hailed as ‘major breakthrough’ for treatment of Britain’s deadliest form of cancer
Thousands of lives could be saved if people at risk of developing Britain’s deadliest cancer were screened to diagnose it before it becomes incurable, a major NHS study has found.
Giving smokers and ex-smokers a CT scan uncovers cancerous lung tumours when they are at an early enough stage so they can still be removed, rather than continuing to grow unnoticed, it shows.
Continue reading...Foreign secretary talks up global growth opportunities and says Brussels ‘imposing obstacles’ to trade
Potential losses in UK trade with the EU because of Brexit will be more than made up by more opportunities in developing markets, Dominic Raab has claimed, saying people should take a “10-year view” of the current troubles faced by companies.
Questioned about warnings from a number of firms that bureaucracy and duties means they will go out of business, or have to relocate operations inside the EU, the foreign secretary also appeared to blame Brussels, saying it was “imposing” obstacles to trade.
Continue reading...The £150m repair of Hammersmith Bridge, closed since 2019, is mired in squabbling – and it’s just one of many across the UK that need work
Toby Gordon-Smith can see the district of Hammersmith from his flat. In normal times it takes him a few minutes to get there in his wheelchair. His cannabidiol products business is there, with the accessible tube station that he needs to get to the rest of London. The station is the reason why he moved to the area, but now it might as well be in another city. For he lives in Barnes, on the south side of the River Thames, opposite Hammersmith, and the bridge that connected them is closed for safety reasons – to vehicles since April 2019, and to pedestrians, cyclists and wheelchair users since last August. Although it is nearly two years since the first closure, there is still no clear plan for fixing the bridge.
There are thousands of stories like Gordon-Smith’s. For children in Barnes who go to schools in Hammersmith, what was once a 15-minute walk is now a tortuous three-mile journey along a towpath regularly flooded by the tide, up flights of steps on to a railway bridge (which makes cycling difficult) and through an ill-lit park with high rates of crime. Or they can take a long bus ride, which means getting up at 6am, if you’re going to beat the rush-hour traffic. The area’s main hospital, Charing Cross, is on the north side of the river, so those of its staff who live to the south, and patients needing such things as chemotherapy, now have to make gruelling journeys of an hour or more each way. Ambulances face potentially lethal delays.
Continue reading...Fears of illness over nitrites used in US but currently banned in Britain and EU
British stores could be flooded with “dangerous” bacon and ham from the US, marketed under misleading labels, as the result of a transatlantic trade deal, says the author of a new book based on a decade of investigation into the food industry.
The meat has been cured with nitrites extracted from vegetables, a practice not permitted by the European Commission because of evidence that it increases the risk of bowel cancer. But it is allowed in the US, where the product is often labelled as “all natural”. The powerful US meat industry is likely to insist that the export of nitrite-cured meat is a condition of a post-Brexit UK-US trade deal, which the UK government is under intense pressure to deliver.
Continue reading...Prime minister says priority is to reopen schools on 8 March once 15m in priority groups vaccinated
Boris Johnson has said he is optimistic about announcing the easing of some lockdown measures soon as the government nears its target of offering vaccines to 15 million people in priority groups.
Speaking on Saturday at a visit to the Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies plant in Billingham, Teesside, where the new Novavax vaccine will be manufactured, the prime minister said his first priority remained opening schools in England from 8 March, to be followed by other sectors.
Continue reading...Border staff not briefed about even basics of Covid protection system starting on Monday, says union
Immigration officials expected to enforce a mandatory quarantine intended to protect the UK from new coronavirus variants have not been briefed on even the basics about how the system will work, little more than 48 hours before it begins, the Guardian has been told.
The Immigration Services Union (ISU), which represents many of the Home Office’s immigration officers, said that before the start on Monday of the new policy, staff had not been told if they would be expected to check for arrivals who had not properly declared their status, or when and how those obliged to quarantine would be taken to hotels.
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