BREXIT! BREXIT! BREXIT!

[Scot Dutchy]

Chlorinated chickens welcome. Gearing down for American exports?

UK ministers gain power to allow lower-standard food imports

Trade bill vote rejects Lords amendment giving MPs greater scrutiny of trade deals

Ministers will be able to approve the import of animal and agricultural products of a lower standard than currently permitted in the UK, after attempts to amend the trade bill failed.

The government has repeatedly vowed not to allow the import of chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef, but has refused to sign those pledges into law.

The House of Lords put forward amendments to the trade bill that would have required future trade agreements to be scrutinised by parliament, with a view to ensuring standards are retained, but the key amendment fell on Tuesday night by 353 votes to 277.

Campaigners said the new post-Brexit arrangements for food imports and food production standards in the UK would allow ministers to make sweeping changes to existing food safety regulations without consultation.

Many products could be affected. For instance, while the government has said it will not allow chlorinated chicken, meat can be washed in a variety of other substances that have similar effects: peracetic acid, cetylpyridinium chloride, acidified sodium chlorite, or organic acid rinses.

[Brian Peacock]

Brexit means Brexit.

[JimC]

My advice to Britishers is to have your own chicken coop!

[Scot Dutchy]

How about the rest Jim?

[Scot Dutchy]

More red tape and small print.

Cheshire cheesemaker says business left with £250,000 'Brexit hole'

Simon Spurrell says his firm lost 20% of sales and will switch £1m investment to France

A commercial cheesemaker in Cheshire has been left with a £250,000 Brexit hole in his business as a direct result of the UK’s departure from the EU on 1 January.

Simon Spurrell said he has lost 20% of his sales overnight after discovering he needed to provide a £180 health certificate on retail orders to consumers in the EU, including those buying personal gift packs of his award-winning wax-wrapped cheese worth £25 or £30.

He says he had hoped to take part in the “sunny uplands” promised by the government post-Brexit but has instead seen the viability of his online retail come to a “dead stop”.

“Our business had high hopes of continued growth in the EU market, after seeing the avoidance of the no-deal and announcement of a free trade deal.

“What has only become clear in the last week is that our successful B2C [business to consumer] online sales to EU consumers is now impossible to operate,” he said.

To save his business he will now have to switch a £1m investment he was planning to make in a new distribution centre in Macclesfield to the EU, with the loss of 20 jobs and tax revenue to the UK.

Johnson's 'sunny uplands' are suffering from winter storms.

[Scot Dutchy]

MEPs vote to add Channel and British Virgin Islands to tax haven blacklist

UK overseas territories such as Cayman Islands also may lose protection once afforded by UK’s EU membership

The European parliament is pushing for UK overseas territories including the British Virgin Islands, Guernsey and Jersey to be added to an EU tax havens blacklist after the conclusion of the Brexit deal.

Sending a signal that tougher action on tax avoidance was required in response to the coronavirus pandemic, MEPs voted overwhelmingly in favour of adding more nations and territories to the list of non-cooperative jurisdictions.

The resolution, passed earlier this week by a vote of 587 to 50, included measures calling for the automatic inclusion on the blacklist of countries which use a 0% tax regime. Among these are the UK overseas territories, viewed by transparency campaigners as havens for tax avoidance.

[Brian Peacock]

Massive corruption scandal in the Virgin Isles at the moment: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-55709515

[Scot Dutchy]

It must be some kind of ultimate excuse instead of admitting you have made a complete balls up.

Move to EU to avoid Brexit costs, firms told

Exporters advised by Department for International Trade officials to form EU-based companies to circumvent border issues

British businesses that export to the continent are being encouraged by government trade advisers to set up separate companies inside the EU in order to get around extra charges, paperwork and taxes resulting from Brexit, the Observer can reveal.

In an extraordinary twist to the Brexit saga, UK small businesses are being told by advisers working for the Department for International Trade (DIT) that the best way to circumvent border issues and VAT problems that have been piling up since 1 January is to register new firms within the EU single market, from where they can distribute their goods far more freely.

The heads of two UK businesses that have been beset by Brexit-related problems have told the Observer that, following advice from experts at the Department for International Trade, they have already decided to register new companies in the EU in the next few weeks, and they knew of many others in similar positions. Other companies have also said they too were advised by government officials to register operations in the EU but had not yet made decisions.

[Scot Dutchy]

The nightmare is complete within a month!

'A Brexit nightmare': the British businesses being pushed to breaking point

Less than a month after leaving the EU, trade is flowing so badly that small firms are moving operations abroad to survive


Christophe Fricker lectures in German at the University of Bristol and adores living in England. He was born in Germany but his anglophilia became so strong after moving here that he wrote a book called 111 Gründe, England zu lieben (“111 Reasons to Love England”) in 2018. He selected the gardens of Cornwall, the National Portrait Gallery, the way the English use collective nouns for groups of animals (herds, packs, and so on) and their fascination with murder cases in his varied list of reasons for loving this country.

But since 1 January, Fricker has been reminded that there are also worrying things about life in England – and being outside the EU is now chief among them.

Having run short of copies of his book to distribute to friends, Fricker contacted his publishers in Berlin a few days ago to ask them to ship over some more. The company was keen to help but said that, as a result of new rules, regulations and costs resulting from Brexit, it had decided not to export any more books to the UK at all, not even 111 Reasons to Love England.

For someone born in Germany but who had come to feel very much part of his adopted homeland, it was a jolt – a small but powerful demonstration of what living outside the European club of nations will really mean. “If you erect barriers, then people are going to be affected on both sides of them,” Fricker says. “The promise from those who supported Brexit was that nothing was going to change afterwards. That was obviously ludicrous.

“My concern is not so much about my book, but that if there are problems with cross-border trade, it becomes more difficult for small businesses to operate – in this case to trade cultural goods – so the business will all go to huge companies like Amazon.”

Less than a month after the UK finally left the European single market and customs union – amid claims from Boris Johnson that its people and its businesses were now free to live and trade as they wished – UK companies that export to the EU, and EU ones that send goods here, are beginning to realise that the reverse is true. And so are their customers.

It is not just British fishing crews who now cry betrayal, as they find themselves unable to sell their fresh fish into EU markets because of delays at ports. Nor is it the famous musicians who complained to the Times last week that their money-spinning tours to the EU would be made more difficult by visa restrictions, who will suffer most. Rather, it is millions of hard-working people running, and employed in, less romantic and exotic small businesses who are feeling utterly let down and wondering if their companies will even survive.

The UK will shortly be knocking on the EU door again. It will be lucky if somebody opens it.

[Scot Dutchy]

It continues:

he bill for Boris Johnson’s Brexit is coming in and it’s punishingly steep

Ministers say it is just teething trouble. To many businesses it feels more like root canal surgery without the benefit of anaesthetic

You would have to possess a heart of stone not to weep with laughter at some of those who are now suddenly complaining about Brexit. It is a bit late for Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party, those lusty sponsors of the great experiment with the UK’s prosperity, to be wailing that they have been betrayed. I smiled to see that Roger Daltrey, the Leave-supporting lead singer of the Who, has joined the chorus of rock stars furious that the post-Brexit visa rules will ruin their prospects of touring across the Channel. Mr Daltrey will have to sing Won’t Get Fooled Again to himself before moving on to Boris the Spider and I Can’t Explain.

It is particularly rending for the soul to witness the rightwing press discovering that the cause they so noisily championed is not the nirvana that they sold to their readers. They were cheering when Boris Johnson flourished the Brexit deal that he concluded on Christmas Eve and proclaimed: “This is a cakeist treaty.” The UK would be having the sweet stuff and eating it by gaining lots of shiny new benefits from being outside the EU while still enjoying the historical advantages of frictionless trade with its closest neighbours.

[Scot Dutchy]

Brussels warns Britain against downgrading EU ambassador’s status

Denying mission full privileges under the Vienna convention risks poisoning diplomatic ties, No 10 told

Downing Street has been warned by Brussels that downgrading the status of the EU’s ambassador to the UK will poison diplomatic relations for years to come.

The UK has so far declined to grant the bloc’s representative, João Vale de Almeida, and his 25-strong mission the privileges and immunities afforded to diplomats under the Vienna convention.

The British government’s approach has stirred anger in Brussels as the EU has 143 delegations around the world, each of which has full diplomatic status.

Speaking after a meeting of foreign ministers for the 27 member states, Josep Borrell, a former Spanish minister who is the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, said there was “clear view” in the capitals at the apparent snub.

“It’s not a friendly signal,” he said, “the first one that the United Kingdom has sent to us immediately after leaving the European Union. If things continue like this there are no good prospects.”

The Foreign Office’s opening position with the EU is that it does not want to set a precedent by treating an international body in the same way as a nation state.

Other international organisations would then apply, it is argued, leading to a proliferation of others seeking diplomatic status.

In other words dont fuck with us Johnson.

[Scot Dutchy]

WTF.

EU citizens offered financial incentives to leave UK

European nationals added to voluntary returns scheme, which can include flights and up to £2,000 for resettlement

EU citizens are being offered financial incentives to leave the UK, the Guardian has learned, months before the deadline to apply for settled status.

From 1 January EU citizens have quietly been added to the government’s voluntary returns scheme where financial support is offered as an encouragement to return to their country of origin.

Payments can include flights and up to £2,000 resettlement money. The scheme is designed to help some migrants in the UK to leave voluntarily.

People working to help vulnerable EU citizens in the UK said the offer of money to return home contradicted the government’s claim that it was doing everything it could to encourage people to register for settled status. The deadline for Europeans living in the UK to apply for the EU settlement scheme (EUSS) is 30 June.

[Brian Peacock]

Brexit negotiator David Frost pulled away from national security role

Plum job given to permanent secretary at MoD after Tory backlash against Frost’s appointment

David Frost, who negotiated the Brexit deal on behalf of Boris Johnson, will no longer be given the plum role of national security adviser, the government has announced.

Lord Frost’s appointment provoked a backlash from Conservatives including the former prime minister Theresa May because of his lack of relevant expertise.

Johnson handpicked Frost to run the Brexit negotiations, replacing the career civil servant Ollie Robbins, who was regarded with suspicion by the Vote Leave veterans in Downing Street.

Frost’s pugnacious style and flat rejection of anything more than a bare-bones Canada-style trade deal is regarded as crucial in shaping the eventual agreement. The prime minister gave him a peerage last year.

Frost will now take on the role of Brexit and international policy representative – a job that appears to have been created for him. One Whitehall source said Frost’s new post was “the role he wants”...

[Scot Dutchy]

Chumocracy.

[Scot Dutchy]

Chaos complete.

UK firms plan to shift across Channel after Brexit chaos

Threat to British jobs as companies look to move operations overseas

Hundreds of UK companies could switch operations to countries inside the EU in what is threatening to become a dramatic exodus of investment and jobs caused by Brexit.

The Observer can reveal that by 1 January this year some 500 businesses – mostly UK-owned, or UK-based with overseas owners – were already making inquiries about setting up branches, depots or warehouses in the Netherlands alone, for “Brexit-related reasons”. Since then the number of inquiries from UK companies has increased further.

If companies switch all or parts of their operations to Europe it will mean the loss of jobs, economic activity and tax revenue at home.

The figures have been compiled by government unit the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency, , which said that while most of the firms were already based in the UK, a minority were new companies from the US and Asia which had investigated a UK move, but had decided against investing here because of Brexit.

Lyne Biewinga, of the Netherlands British Chamber of Commerce, said she and her team had been working “night and day” on inquiries from UK companies in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, in an interview with this newspaper, Austria’s economic affairs minister, Margarete Schramböck, said inquiries from UK companies about moving to her country – which had been high for several years – had increased threefold since 1 January.