Latest news with #Brexiteers
Spectator
a day ago
- Politics
- Spectator
The youth mobility scheme is just the start of a Brexit reversal
Will Britain continue to be dragged back closer and closer to the EU so that when we eventually rejoin, in say a decade's time, our politicians can present it as a mere exercise in regularising an arrangement which effectively already exists? At some point it must have dawned on most frustrated remainers that they were never going to reverse Brexit in one fell swoop. That would reopen old wounds, motivate a strong reaction from Brexiteers and a sense of ennui. Such an attempted move would probably be doomed by the 'Brenda from Bristol' effect alone (the elderly lady who reacted to the declaration of the 2017 election campaign by exclaiming to a reporter, 'What, another one?'). But what if Britain were to be drawn back into the bloc by degrees? It is easy to argue in favour of joining an EU youth mobility scheme for 18 to 30-year-olds. Use those words and people tend to think about university students and graduates gaining experience of living in other countries. As supporters are eager to point out, we already have such arrangements with 13 countries, from Japan to Australia to Uruguay, and no one goes around saying that we have 'free movement' with those countries. Then again, an EU scheme could end up with a very different balance. No one worries too much about our youth mobility scheme with Australia, for example, because more UK citizens take advantage of it than Australians – the latter of whom only filled 9,000 of the 45,000 places which were available last year (there is an argument for saying that the greater worry is why so few Australians want to come to Britain? Is it a symptom of national decline?). A European scheme, on the other hand, may have a very different effect. The demographic which would benefit – 18-30 year olds – rather matches the large numbers of Eastern Europeans who took advantage of free movement during Britain's membership of the EU. It would end up as just another source of cheap labour for employers, which ends up suppressing wages and opportunities for UK workers at the bottom end of the jobs market. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper does sound alive to the risks of entering into a youth mobility scheme. She is reported to be pressing for EU citizens using such a scheme to be limited to twelve months in Britain; any longer and they will appear in official migration figures. But it isn't just on free movement that Britain risks being drawn back into the EU's sphere of influence. Keir Starmer's reset in EU relations has already, quietly, led to Britain agreeing to mirror EU rules and regulations on food and agriculture. It could mean, unless Starmer succeeds in persuading the EU to allow Britain an exemption, the end of our newfound freedom to embrace gene-edited crops. EU regulations previously destroyed what had been a promising UK industry in genetically modified (GM) foods a quarter of a century ago by making it all but impossible to conduct field trials. We are heading towards the 'vassal state' which many Brexiteers feared. I don't think we have seen the end of this process. We should expect more initiatives to draw us back towards EU rules and regulations. An 'ever closer union' might be one way of describing it. So long as every step is small, the government's diehard remainers might just get away with it.
South China Morning Post
5 days ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Starmer's statesmanship abroad no substitute for vision at home in Britain
Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Britain is a nation in slow drift, outwardly composed but inwardly unravelling. His resolute backing of Ukraine and vocal commitment to European security have restored a measure of Britain's standing on the world stage. Advertisement However, this diplomatic poise conceals a glaring domestic void. Behind the polished speeches and choreographed handshakes lies a country buckling under stagnation. Its economic pulse is weakening, its public services are fraying and its faith in Westminster is eroding by the day. Not long ago, Brexiteers promised prosperity and a golden future , but for millions of Britons the reality is rising poverty and shrinking opportunity. More than 14 million people in the UK, including more than 4 million children, were living in poverty in 2022-23 – that is 1 in 5 people in the country. Britain's economy contracted unexpectedly for a second consecutive month in May, while inflation stood at 3.4 per cent that month – up from 2 per cent a year ago and high enough to keep food prices elevated and energy bills burdensome. Household budgets were already strained by years of austerity and Brexit-induced economic dislocation , and now they are stretched to the breaking point. The cost of simply getting by has become an impossible luxury for many. Youth unemployment reveals the crisis in even starker terms. According to the Office for National Statistics, 14.3 per cent of under-25s were out of work and actively seeking employment, more than double Germany's youth unemployment rate of 6.6 per cent. Add rising crime rates and the public's disapproval of the Labour government skyrocketing, and one finds a recipe for democratic disaster. Advertisement
Irish Times
13-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Don't believe the myth: Britain's services industry has been hit hard by Brexit
One by one the supposed pillars of the economic argument for Brexit have been knocked away by the realities. Far from being shackled to a corpse, as some Brexiteers described the European Union economy, both the euro zone and the EU have grown faster than the UK since the 2016 referendum. Britain's goods exports have slumped compared with the rest of the G7. 'Look at services,' Brexiteers cry. Their export growth has been exceptional, according to Policy Exchange, the right-of-centre think-tank. The Office for Budget Responsibility also noted a year ago that UK services trade growth had been the strongest in the G7. Should the UK be happy that its trade in services has performed well? Was this the result of Brexit? The short answers are 'no' and 'no'. Instead it should be annoyed that services exports did not grow even more, and blame Brexit for this disappointment, according to new research from the London School of Economics. READ MORE Before explaining the findings, it is important to note that although the UK economy has many weaknesses, services are a strength. While television crews will always want to picture industries such as manufacturing or fishing to visually describe what makes a country wealthy, this is not relevant to 80 per cent of Britain's economic activity. The UK's success lies in its lawyers, information providers, creative types, management consultants and educators. A handful of universities generate more export income than the entire fishing industry, for example. [ Post-Brexit export drive hampered by UK trade finance regulations, ICC warns Opens in new window ] Unusually for any economy, UK services exports exceed those of goods and not by a trivial amount – almost 40 per cent higher in 2024, with the gap widening. The OBR noticed, however, that not all of the UK's services exports appeared equally strong. Business services including management consultancy and research and advertising – where Brexit barriers were small or nonexistent – were growing strongly. Other services did not perform nearly as well, including finance and transport, where the barriers erected by leaving the single market were significant. But the fiscal watchdog left its analysis hanging. The Juggle: the issues facing women with young children when balancing childcare and their careers Listen | 44:30 Picking up the baton has been left to LSE team economists Shania Bhalotia, Swati Dhingra and Danyal Arnold. Using data that allowed comparison of the growth in services trade across different sectors and between a large number of pairs of countries, they examined how strong UK services exports were in each sector compared with all other countries. They also meticulously examined the UK-EU Trade and Co-operation Agreement to document which services exports into the EU faced new barriers after the post-Brexit deal came into effect in 2021. The results are stark. The OBR was right to note that UK services exports facing new Brexit barriers appeared to perform worse. UK exports to countries with greater barriers were hit much harder. Where the most extreme barriers were introduced, services exports fell 90 per cent. [ Brexit was 'single stupidest thing a country's ever done' Opens in new window ] On average there was a 16 per cent drop in services exports to the EU in sectors where Brexit imposed new trade frictions compared with bilateral trade between other countries in the same sectors. Did Brexit allow British companies to focus on trade with the US and other countries? Again, the answer was 'no'. Overall, the research found that UK services exports five years after Brexit were 4-5 per cent lower than they would have been without the effect of new trade frictions. In a nation that struggles to accept its relative economic decline since Brexit, the UK has been far too quick to celebrate the better performance of services. Instead of showing that Brexit might have some benefits, it simply shows that the UK had specialised in the right industries at the right time, allowing many world-class companies to sell globally. Rather than generate 'global Britain', leaving the EU has had one simple effect: economic harm. Without Brexit, they would have done even better. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
Daily Mirror
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
Small boat migrants will be detained as part of France return deal
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said people who arrive on small boats will be detained as part of a 'groundbreaking' one-in-one-out returns deal with France - but refused to say how many would be affected Small boat arrivals will be detained as part of a returns deal with France, Yvette Cooper has revealed. The Home Secretary said migrants will be prevented from fleeing so they can be sent back across the Channel when a new trial scheme starts. She said the UK wants to extend the agreement - the first returns agreement the UK has struck with France since Brexit - "as far as we're able". On Thursday Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron announced they had agreed on a one-in-one-out pilot scheme to deter small boat crossings. This will see people who come to the UK without authorisation returned to France in exchange for migrants with a legitimate case to settle in the UK. Ms Cooper told BBC Radio 4's Today programme:"We will be detaining people certainly as the pilot is introduced and as the programme becomes operationalised." Pressed who would be detained, the Home Secretary said: "Those will be operational decisions and we will update people on those as we roll the programme out." It is initially expended that 50 migrants a week will be returned to France, with 50 others going the other way. But Ms Cooper refused to be drawn on the number, hinting that it could rise higher in the future. She said: "We will want to be able to extend this as far as we're able to where we will continue to build." She had earlier told Times Radio: "The numbers are not fixed, even for this pilot phase that we are starting now. "So this will be a programme that we roll out step-by-step, and we will provide updates as we go. But we are going to do this in a steady way." The Labour frontbencher said France is committed to stopping the crossings to end the "nightmare" of camps and people moving to northern towns like Calais. The UK has long been seeking a returns deal with France, to replace a scheme it lost access to after Brexit. Ms Cooper said: "This is us working properly with our neighbouring countries in a way that frankly the previous Government never did. "For six years they just shouted at France, they didn't work with France, they didn't get France to change their maritime rules, they didn't get France to come up with this new agreement that means we can return people to France. And it's something people have been calling for for a long time." In a blistering statement on Thursday, Mr Macron claimed Brits had been told a pack of lies by Brexiteers about the impact on immigration. He said losing access to the Dublin Agreement - an EU wide deal that means migrants can be returned to the first country they entered - had been devastating for the UK. Asked if he had a point, Ms Cooper told Sky News: ""I think what I've seen happen is that the way that the criminal smuggler gangs operate is that they will weaponise anything that is happening. "And so what we saw in the run-up to Brexit being implemented was we saw criminal gangs promising people that they had to cross quickly, and they had to pay money to the smuggler gangs quickly in order to be able to cross in time before Brexit happened. "As soon as Brexit happened, they then said 'Oh, well, now you've got to pay us money, because this means you can't be returned because the Dublin Agreement isn't in place'. "So the thing about the criminal smuggler gangs is whatever arrangements are in place, they will use them in order to make money, but that's why we have to be fundamentally undermining their model."
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Donald Tusk has found his own ‘special place in hell'
He once warned Brexiteers they faced their own 'special place in hell'. Now Donald Tusk is in a purgatory of his own. Poland's prime minister has narrowly won a vote of confidence in his warring coalition after his preferred centrist presidential candidate was defeated earlier this month. Instead, the Trump-inspired Eurosceptic Karol Narwocki crossed the line first in Poland's presidential elections. On Wednesday, a total of 243 MPs in the 460-seat parliament backed Mr Tusk's coalition, achieving the simple majority needed for the government to survive in a result he said will give his cabinet new momentum. 'We have a mandate to take full responsibility for what's going on in Poland,' Tusk told parliament in a debate ahead of the confidence vote. 'Governing Poland is a privilege.' But despite surviving the vote, the prime minister now faces two and a half years of being a lame duck leader hobbled by the new veto-wielding opposition president. While most of the power in Poland's political system rests with an elected parliament, and a government chosen by the parliament, the president can veto legislation. This will likely see Mr Narwocki block reform efforts planned by Mr Tusk, such as the planned introduction of same-sex partnerships or easing a near-total ban on abortion. There are therefore questions about what Mr Tusk can realistically achieve before the next parliamentary election, scheduled for late 2027, and analysts say many Polish voters are disillusioned with the government's failure to deliver on key promises, including reforming the judiciary and raising the threshold at which Poles start paying taxes. Mr Tusk's authority has also been badly damaged with murmurs that the time has come for him to hand over leadership of the alliance, something he has refused to do. 'I know the taste of victory, I know the bitterness of defeat, but I don't know the word surrender,' he said. Mr Tusk, the former president of the European Council, was withering about Brexit before he became Poland's prime minister. He said at the time there was a 'special place in hell' for 'those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan of how to carry it out safely'. Now he is facing the possible fall of his pro-EU government in what threatens to become his David Cameron moment. Emmanuel Macron, another fierce critic of Brexit, has already suffered a similar fate at the hands of Eurosceptic populists. He called snap elections in France after he was trounced by Marine Le Pen's National Rally in last year's European Parliament elections. The French president lost his majority, dramatically reducing his ability to act in domestic politics. He would have lost control of the government, had a 'front republican' of voters not united to keep the hard Right from power. There was an expectation that a similar 'front republican' would have prevented Mr Narwocki's victory in Poland, but it fell just short. That is a warning before the presidential elections in France in 2027, which the ardently Europhile Mr Macron will not be able to contest. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
