Author: Anthony Robinson

The decision to place France on the Amber Plus list, meaning double-vaccinated travellers will still have to quarantine, is baffling.

Cummings engaged in a marathon battle on Twitter yesterday afternoon as he attempted to brush over the Northern Ireland protocol disaster

As Johnson marks the first two years of his chaotic and increasingly scary premiership, many Conservatives may be regretting their choice

Lord Frost, architect of the Northern Ireland protocol, has warned it faces a series of “rolling crises” unless a “new balance” is negotiated in the way the protocol operates.

Northern Ireland protocol court case hears that parliament didn’t understand what it was voting for when it approved the agreement

If Tory government efforts over the last ten years are anything to go by, there will never be a ‘bonfire’ of EU red tape.

Biden has apparently ordered a rare diplomatic rebuke to Johnson over the UK’s failure to implement the Northern Ireland protocol

Despite intensive negotiations underway to resolve the issues with the Northern Ireland protocol and the Irish border, there remain significant areas of disagreement

The PM’s former senior adviser will be giving evidence in the Wilson Room at Portcullis House tomorrow but his sights are firmly locked on Downing Street, just across the road, where he is headed like a heat seeking missile.

EU member states are said to be facing a diplomatic “onslaught” as the British government steps up efforts to secure bilateral deals with individual nations as a way of augmenting the bare bones Trade deal agreed in December.

Increasingly urgent calls from various quarters to reopen talks with the EU are in danger of making Britain look like Europe’s Oliver Twist; please sir can we have some more?

Lord Frost’s appearance in front of the EU scrutiny committee yesterday sparked a lot of comments on Twitter – none of them complementary.

The Queen’s speech yesterday continues the nation’s strange slide into authoritarian rule under a prime minister wearing the reassuringly crumpled outfit of a libertarian while ruthlessly tightening his grip on power.

The nation remains divided over Brexit. Re-joining the EU is out of the question unless there is a significant majority in favour. But Brexit cannot be said to be ‘done’ until accepted by a significant majority. And how likely is that?

Brexit: A Grand illusion – Barnier’s book on the Brexit negotiations – lifts the lid on the hubris and delusional thinking of British governments led by both May and Johnson during three years of fractious talks.

Johnson’s trademark smirk is apparently known to psychologists as “duping delight” – the sheer joy of duping people, or in the prime minister’s case, entire nations, given away by an involuntary smirk, a “leaked expression of pleasure.”

Cummings is preparing an onslaught to bring down Boris Johnson. If anyone can do it, it’s Cummings. Downing Street is “terrified” that he has a ‘treasure trove’ of internal memos and emails in a damaging dossier.

Talks on the NI protocol continue with the UK government seeking to reduce the level and frequency of border checks on products of plant and animal origin as a way of lowering tensions in loyalist communities but won’t accept the obvious and proven solution because it might compromise sovereignty.

Reports that the EU and UK are edging towards a new NI deal may be optimistic with the two sides said to be far apart on many issues and the PM himself “in denial” about the role he has personally played in sparking off violence in Northern Ireland

Ellesmere Port’s future as a centre of car manufacturing means building electric vehicles, but this needs greater investment and Vauxhall has already earmarked other plants to build battery-powered cars,

The Brexit disaster wasn’t built on lies, but on arrogance and stupidity by men and women who didn’t know their own limitations, and still don’t

Rising tension in Northern Ireland is claimed to stem from frustration and anger among loyalist communities concerning the NI protocol which is widely thought to be separating the province from Great Britain by a sea border and has already created some disruption at ports of entry.

Boris Johnson has rendered the phrase “they’re all the same” totally redundant. He is in class of his own, impropriety personified

It is now abundantly clear that the massive overnight changes to trade terms, which industry only learned about with seven days to go and with inadequate guidance and woeful preparations, have been a disaster for Britain’s £700 billion a year trade with the EU.

The UK service sector has effectively suffered a no-deal Brexit. Services implies people and travel and the impact of Brexit has so far been concealed behind the covid restrictions. The sector is soon to face a ‘bewildering’ array of new visa application and work permit rules.

It is now clear that the massive constitutional, economic and political importance of the Irish border issue raised by Brexit and routinely dismissed at the time, were not appreciated at the highest level of government until as late as early 2018 and arguably not until the last few weeks.

Confirmation that the EU is about to take legal action against the UK for breaching provisions of the withdrawal agreement, marks another ratcheting up of the rapidly escalating row between London and Brussels

A new report, showing Britain’s exports have fared worse than most of our international competitors, makes grim reading for anyone who might be optimistic that 2021 will see the UK make a rapid recovery from the double impact of covid-19 and Brexit.

Lord Frost has barely settled into his new role before breaking an international treaty and unilaterally extending until October the 3-month grace period that the UK government declared in December last year was not renewable having committed itself to being fully ready by 1 April.

The EU shellfish issue has further exposed the total incompetence of those who campaigned for Brexit and, having ‘taken back control’, now find themselves in positions of power. In what must surely rank as one of the most humiliating letters ever received by a UK government minister, DEFRA Secretary George Eustice has had to be […]