Anthony was a sales engineer, now retired and living in North Yorkshire after a long career representing several European manufacturers in the UK. Seeing first hand how continental companies work and how they strive to become world-class businesses makes him fear for Britain's post-Brexit future. He is interested in politics, although not as an active party member, and enjoys reading, gardening and DIY.
After years of claiming Britain is being ‘stifled’ by EU regulations that need scrapping, a government task force headed by Iain Duncan Smith to identify such rules, doesn’t even have the repeal of any of them as one of its objectives.
Lord Frost is appointed to cabinet as his disastrous trade deal starts to look like the greatest bargain of all time – for the EU. They get the jobs and tax revenues in exchange for ‘giving’ us what we already had, sovereignty. It is a slap in the face for Britain.
London’s position in the global league table of financial centres has slipped further with a new survey showing just a third of senior executives believing that the City will be a leading hub in five years’ time.
A significant part of the £1,750 bill for UK citizens returning from a list of 33 high risk Covid-19 countries will go to G4S for security services it has been revealed.
Among many Yorkshire businesses struggling with difficulties adjusting to new EU trade realities, a single Brexit supporting CEO of a chemical intermediates’ exporter is claiming no issues, and surprisingly, not even any extra costs after Brexit.
As the practical impact of the bureaucracy and red tape agreed as part of the NI protocol become clear for businesses and citizens in the province, there are worrying signs of tensions rising between London and Brussels.
The news that the UK is bidding to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership or CPTPP will come as a surprise to those suffering as a result of our withdrawal from the EU, which on the surface, looks like an almost identical body on our doorstep.
Businesses across the UK are suffering the malign consequences of Brexit with desperate stories becoming ever more frequent and the distress calls louder by the day. Yorkshire Bylines’ Davis Downside Dossier and Digby-Jones index provide a unique record of the unfolding calamity.
The fact that an adviser, or advisers, at the Department for International Trade has been advising businesses to set up in the EU should come as no surprise. This is the obvious, inevitable and easily foreseeable result of organising our EU trade as if we were Canada.
The chancellor is to head up a new ‘red tape challenge’ to uncover the elusive bureaucracy that the Tory party has convinced itself must be lurking somewhere in Whitehall. After Brexit, it will be a symbolic measure of how far Britain is prepared to diverge from EU rules.
Fishing trade organisations have accused Johnson of negotiating a “desperately poor” deal for them, misleading them by claiming the deal was a major success and essentially of telling lies about the new quotas. Tory MPs who were quick to offer support find themselves out on a limb.
As fishermen accuse the government of betrayal and selling them out, Michael Gove’s words are about to come back to haunt him. In 2016, he accused the EU of being a “job destroying machine”. Four years on he has become an industry destroyer.
Even the Daily Mail has finally woken up to discover the reality of Brexit, warning that supplies of fresh fruit and vegetables are being squeezed by Brexit red tape at our ports. The Guardian reports one leading business figure figure describing the new rule book as a complete “shitshow”.
Boris Johnson seems unable to decide what regulations he wants to scrap and has now asked business leaders if they can come up with some that might justify the huge cost of Brexit
The UK fishing industry voted for Brexit in 2016 with high hopes of a better future but Johnson’s deal appears to many to be a betrayal of their communities, leaving them worse off and facing a bleak future
A Cambridge law professor has highlighted the unstable nature of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which can be terminated by either side with 12 months’ notice, or tariffs imposed by way of retaliation if one side’s regulations diverge excessively from the other.
Johnson has claimed his deal is from the patisserie shop but he seems to be finding it difficult to identify the cake we are going to have or how we will be able to eat it. There is still no indication of where Britain intends to diverge from EU rules.
The year is beginning as did the last one. A treaty signed and more EU negotiations ahead. This is Britain’s post-Brexit future as far ahead as we can see, as we learn to live alongside the world’s largest and richest single integrated market.
The government updated its Border Operating Model yesterday giving exporters just a few hours to prepare before the transition period ended. Model case histories show the colossal increase in paperwork that starts from today.
With suspicious timing, the government finally landed a free trade deal at the eleventh hour. Is it the freedom promised or has Boris Johnson negotiated Britain into a strait jacket and what will it mean for our future relationship with the EU?
As the clock ticks ominously down, the EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier has updated EU ambassadors on progress in the trade talks. He told them the latest UK offer on fish is unacceptable. It is a growing sign that Downing Street is making the final concessions needed for a deal.
For Brexiters the trade talks have always been about achieving a victory over the hated EU. The final high stakes game will be played out in Brussels with both sides intent on not breaching any red lines. But there can only be one winner, as Johnson will soon discover.
The government spin machine is cranking into gear to sell the UK-EU trade deal to Tory Eurosceptics who are suspicious of anything European, many of who prefer no deal at all. It threatens to be an impossible job.
The pivotal role of chief negotiator Lord Frost is coming under scrutiny as the trade talks limp towards the abyss. Johnson is not a details man and there are concerns Frost has not always conveyed a true picture of EU red lines to the PM.
The last big sticking points between the EU and the UK are ideological and the most problematic as a result. It’s the different outlook between British consumer society and European producer society.
Even before Brexit hits, there is growing chaos being reported with containers of food products destined for UK clients held in Dutch ports due to problems at Felixstowe. Importers are unable to rearrange transport and meanwhile products are stuck.
We are entering the Brexit endgame. Johnson is under enormous pressure to accept compromises to avoid the catastrophe of a no deal Brexit while under the watchful eyes of hardline Brexiteers in the ERG who are suspicious of the prime minister’s record of betrayal.
The prime minister’s pledge of unfettered access for trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland is proving as worthless as his many other pledges.
The battered Brexit can took another kicking down the road last night as Johnson and von der Leyen, instead of making decisions, agreed to order their negotiators to carry on talking. Unless Downing Street gets real and very soon, we could get a no deal Brexit by default.
How fitting – and worrying for the ERG – that after almost five years of truth twisting and obfuscation the final concessions on the UK’s red lines are to be made by the slippery charlatan who bears most responsibility for the unholy mess that we find ourselves in.