Brexit

The mood music on Brexit talks may be rather gloomy but there are signs suggesting progress is still being made. As well as an agreement in principle on all the outstanding issues in the Northern Ireland protocol, a date has been set for Boris Johnson’s meeting with Ursula von der Leyen. The Prime Minister will travel to Brussels on Wednesday for dinner with the European Commission president. Is this a crunch meeting? The strong suggestion from the UK side is no. Instead, it’s being billed as a ‘continuing process’ of talks, and the idea of it leading to a firm decision on the shape of a deal – or a decision to

The upshot of Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen’s conversation this evening is that the pair will meet in Brussels in the ‘coming days’ to see if they can resolve the remaining ‘significant differences’ on the level playing field, governance and fish. Presumably this meeting will take place before the European Council on Thursday. Johnson and von der Leyen are being left with a lot to resolve in their summit. This isn’t going to be simply about finding a compromise on fish but on sorting the three issues that have bedevilled the negotiations from the start. Optimists will point to how negotiations on the withdrawal agreement last year seemed

Boris Johnson’s internal market bill is back in the House of Lords next week, but will peers let it through?  The bill gives the government an express power (a written one in a statute) to break an international treaty. The Lords do not like that the government might break a specific treaty. Where you stand on those are political, not legal questions — so not for a lawyer like me to answer. But what is for law, is to firstly recognise (whether peers like it or not) that the power to break a treaty, does exist. Think of it like a physical thing; it is in our constitution and we’ve lost track of

That France was the country to throw a grenade threatening to blow up the UK-EU trade talks just as they were about to pass the finish line, does not come as a surprise to seasoned euro-watchers. No other EU member would so brazenly promote its own domestic self-interest at the cost to other EU members such as Germany and Ireland. To the British it has echoes of de Gaulle saying ‘non’, when vetoing the UK’s first attempts to join the Common Market. Many of the EU’s problems and (in my view) the ultimate reason Brexit happened, is down to a fundamental cause that is little remarked on in the UK.

Peter Mandelson’s remainer credentials are impeccable. He is a former European Commissioner who helped run Britain Stronger In and then the People’s Vote (PV) campaign. He is as committed and eloquent a champion of EU membership as you’ll find. Which makes his Brexit intervention in the Guardian so important: All the new benefits from every global trade deal we could ever aspire to will not begin to equal the size of our present European trade. This is the price we will pay for the triumph of hardline Tory Brexiters over those with a stronger sense of national interest in their party. It is also the price the rest of us in the pro-EU

Today the United Kingdom became the first country in the West to clinically authorise a vaccine protecting against Covid-19, after the medicines regulator, the MHRA, said the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was safe to use. The announcement puts Britain ahead of Europe when it comes to rolling out the vaccine, as the EU’s own regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), has not yet approved the vaccine. While Britain will begin administering Pfizer’s vaccine next week, countries like Belgium have announced that they will start their vaccination campaigns in January, subject to EMA approval. When it comes to vaccines, a few weeks of delay can make a big difference, given the economic and

A vote will be held in the House of Commons today, which will decide the freedoms Britons will have from this week, possibly until spring. Yet the official opposition is planning to abstain. There have also been rumours that if Boris Johnson does somehow get a Brexit deal with the EU this week, Labour will abstain on that vote as well. Two of the biggest Commons votes of our era – one built around the greatest health crisis of our times and what that means for individual freedoms in this country, the other about our future trade relationship with our immediate neighbours – and Labour appear to have decided not

Has a Brexit deal already been done? You’d be forgiven for thinking so if, like me, you listened to talk radio over the weekend. Much of the discussion on Brexit now focuses on whether or not Labour will vote for or against, or even abstain on the ‘deal’. What deal? In reality there is, of course, yet to be a trade agreement between the UK and the European Union and it actually looks fairly unlikely at this stage. The clock is ticking, but still the assumption remains that either side will fold before the year is out. I’m not convinced. At the end of last week, an offer was made by the