Category: Brexit
Let the train take the strain…
Getting Brexit Done
Is Brexit done yet?
UK science is struggling because it’s not part of Europe’s Horizon programme. The leading candidate to become the new Prime Minister next week is threatening to invoke Article 16 early in her premiership. I have to queue and get my passport stamped when entering Europe. Our energy prices have risen further and faster than the rest of Europe.
To say there’s a monster under the bed suggests the monster is hiding, not that politicians appear to have their head stuck in the sand.
City should brace itself for €900bn Brexit hit if Brussels plays clearing politics
Marks & Spencer blames Brexit as it closes 11 French stores
Brexit exclusive: Up to 80,000 EU nationals may be forced to leave UK
UK food firms beg ministers to let them use prisoners to ease labour shortages
Ian Botham appointed UK trade ambassador to Australia
Need I say more? Maybe just throw “cronyism” in there?
There is more to add. From the article:
“Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, has been appointed a trade envoy to Cameroon. He already serves as a trade envoy to Egypt.
“The former Labour MP Kate Hoey, who sits in the House of Lords as a non-affiliated peer and who, like Botham, was a high-profile Brexit supporter in the 2016 referendum, has been made a trade envoy to Ghana.”
Rob’s politics notes, 8th January 2021
Here we are, a week after the end of the transition period, and the signs are that it’s going to get worse before it gets better (he wrote, with the naive hope to will get better).
BBC’s Reality Check asks “Were there hold-ups in first week after Brexit?” (Short answer: yes.). It also covers problems reported by Marks and Spencer, DPD, seafood exporters and others in “Marks & Spencer Percy Pig sweets hit by Brexit red tape.”
The Guardian mentions some of the “rules of origin” knock-on effects as “Firms including M&S suspend EU exports over Brexit smallprint“, and also talks to a few truck drivers “‘I’m stuck here’: lorry drivers in Calais begin to feel effects of Brexit“.
Rob’s politics notes, 7th January 2021.
Where to start?
In the USA, where Donald Trump incited his followers to stage an attempted armed coup?
Halfway across the Atlantic where various politicians tried to ridicule British politicians for criticising Trump when all they had done was suggest that perhaps a second vote on the misinformed advisory Brexit referendum that was being treated as a mandate for a “hard Brexit” might not be a bad idea.
One in particular that I’ve been following is Andrew RT Davies, a (and I dislike this phrase more than you could know) Welsh Tory.
What’s worse is that even after many comments he doubled down on it and quoted Darren Grimes’ tweet:
Meanwhile, back to the Brexit stuff that kicked this all off.
- European buyers of British goods have been surprised by the imposition of VAT.
- I’m wary of talking too much about .eu domain names, but leave.eu transferred their registration to Ireland (as they had to do or lose the domain).
- Supermarkets (or at least shipping companies) were not fully prepared for the extra paperwork to transfer goods from Great Britain to Ireland.
- John Lewis has scrapped deliveries outside the UK.
This really is going to be a long year.