Britain - US relations; The long awaited British-US trade deal has still not materialized

   It was meant to be the jewel in the Brexit crown, but the United Kingdom has, so far, failed to sign a free trade agreement with the United States.

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Brexit: UK economy almost flatlined in October, adding to rate hike doubts - by William Schomberg and Andy Bruce

Gross domestic product edged up by just 0.1%, slowing sharply from September’s 0.6% growth and much weaker than a forecast of 0.4% in a Reuters poll of economists.

The world’s fifth-biggest economy remained 0.5% smaller than it was just before Britain was first hit by COVID-19 in early 2020, the Office for National Statistics said.

Read more at: UK economy almost flatlined in October, adding to rate hike doubts - Metro US

Britain: History repeats itself: The U.K. in the 1970s and Today: Déja Vu All Over Again - by Denis MacShane

Why do I feel I am reliving the 1970s? That was my first proper political decade, after the warm-up excitement of being part of the 1968 generation at Oxford—student occupations, Vietnam, Paris, sex, drugs, Stones in the Park, rock’n roll.-

Read more at: https://www.theglobalist.com/the-united-kingdom-in-the-1970s-and-today-deja-vu-all-over-again/#noredirect

France-UK relations: Deadlock over fish as UK and France spar over Brexit deal - by Elizabeth Piper and Michel Rose

Britain and France clashed again in a post-Brexit fishing row on Sunday, with London denying it had shifted its position and Paris insisting it was now up to Britain to resolve a dispute that could ultimately hurt trade.

The two sides painted different pictures of a meeting between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit in Rome.

Read more at: Deadlock over fish as UK and France spar over Brexit deal | Reuters

Britain - EU relations:Brexit: why does Northern Ireland matter so much? – by Robin Wilson

T today the vice-president of the European Commission for inter-institutional relations, Maroš Šefčovič, presented a pragmatic solution to the conflict. He offered to remove the majority of checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, introduced as part of the protocol to avoid the risk of unregulated ware entering the single market via the Irish border.

Read more at: Brexit: why does Northern Ireland matter so much? – Robin Wilson

Britain heads further down the Brexit rabbit-hole – by Paul Mason

At my local petrol station a cadre of young men have suddenly appeared, in high-visibility jackets, to instruct car drivers in the fine art of the jammed-nose-to-tail refill. Each pump has three nozzles, for diesel and petrol—with some careful driving, and shouted instructions, two cars can use one at the same time.

That doesn’t stop the queue backing up 30 metres into the roadway, hazard lights flashing. After a while the jacketed men flip the makeshift sign, from ‘no petrol cans’ to ‘no petrol’, and the commotion ends. This is what happens when a country runs short of 100,000 truck and tanker drivers and the government says ‘don’t panic’.

In the supermarket next door there are rows of empty shelves. Fresh vegetables are a problem, fruit is a bigger problem and the remaining flowers look sad and wilted. The primary cause of the food shortage is said to be the absence of carbon dioxide for processing—itself a side-effect of the soaring price of natural gas.

Read more at: Britain heads further down the Brexit rabbit-hole – Paul Mason

Britain: Brexit (stupidity on steroids) choices are making Britain's fuel and food shortages worse

Rising energy bills, higher prices and a critical shortage of workers leading to food and fuel supply constraints are threatening to stall Britain's recovery from the pandemic. The crises afflicting the UK economy have sparked talk in newspapers and among politicians of a looming "winter of discontent," a reference to the wave of strike action in 1978-79 that brought the British economy to its knees. There's even talk of stagflation, the nightmare combination of stagnant growth and high inflation. Although shortages, supply chain delays and rising food and energy costs are affecting several major economies, including the United States, China and Germany, Britain is suffering more than most because of Brexit.

Specifically, the form of Brexit pursued by the UK government — which introduced stringent immigration policies and took Britain out the EU market for goods and energy, making it much harder for British companies to hire European workers and much more costly for them to do business with the country's single biggest trading partner.

It didn't have to be this way — there were other options for a future EU-UK relationship. Worker shortages, for example, were not an inevitable outcome of Brexit, nor was going it alone on energy. But in Prime Minister Boris Johnson's ideological rush to "get Brexit done" amid fraught negotiations with the European Union, agreements in several crucial areas, including energy, were sidelined.

Read more at: Brexit choices are making Britain's fuel and food shortages worse - CNN

EU-Britain relations: UK seeks Northern Ireland rewrite of Brexit deal

The British government on Wednesday asked the EU to rewrite part of the Brexit deal both sides agreed to last year, arguing that its impact on trade between the mainland and Northern Ireland is threatening the "fabric" of the United Kingdom.

Speaking to the House of Lords, David Frost, the Brexit minister, said it was creating unrest in the province and was hampering business.

He said there was a "growing sense in Northern Ireland we have not found the right balance, seen in an ongoing febrile political climate, protests and regrettable instances of occasional disorder."

Read more at: UK seeks Northern Ireland rewrite of Brexit deal | News | DW | 21.07.2021

Britain - Brexit: I’d love to believe Brexit is working. But why are there so many weird shortages? - by Zoe Williams

It started with a rabbit hutch, insanely expensive, but reportedly worth it: the only guaranteed fox-proof outdoor hutch on the market. I ordered it in January; I’d say I got an email about its progress roughly once a week. Twenty-five emails later, still no hutch, and I had started sending elaborate replies to an automated customer service entity: “It’s lucky I don’t have two rabbits, otherwise I’d need another 63 hutches by now, and when would I get those – 2027?” There were a couple of weeks when they were blaming the Suez canal, but mostly, it was “delays caused by Brexit”.

read more at: I’d love to believe Brexit is working. But why are there so many weird shortages? | Zoe Williams | The Guardian

Brexit: N. Ireland broadens Brexit horizons - by Cecily Liu

Northern Ireland, once an industrial powerhouse, wants closer ties with China to safeguard against economic uncertainty as the United Kingdom prepares to exit from the European Union.

On Saturday, more than 100 provincial and municipal leaders from China gathered in Belfast for the third UK-China Regional Leaders Meeting, a gathering created during President Xi Jinping's state visit to the UK in October 2015, at the start of the "golden era" of relations between China and Britain.

"Brexit has prompted us to more actively engage with new markets further afield, and China is a key focus," said Tim Losty, director of the Beijing bureau of Northern Ireland's executive office.

Read more at: N. Ireland broadens Brexit horizons - World - Chinadaily.com.cn

EU-Britain Relations: EU will 'react' if UK continues to make unilateral decisions on Brexit, says MEP

The European Union will react strongly if the United Kingdom continues to make unilateral decisions in relation to the Northern Ireland Protocol, according to the Parliament's top MEP on Brexit.

David McAllister, who chairs the UK's Coordination Group, was speaking to Euronews prior to the five-year anniversary of the UK's referendum on EU membership on Wednesday, where he said that the difficulties between the two must be resolved.

Read more at: EU will 'react' if UK continues to make unilateral decisions on Brexit, says MEP | Euronews

Britain-EU Relations: Thousands of EU citizens refused UK entry in three months since Brexit took effect

Thousands of EU citizens were refused entry at the UK border in the first three months of 2021, representing a major surge in cases despite a decline in travel due to the coronavirus pandemic.

As many as 3,294 EU citizens were blocked from entering the UK in the first quarter of 2021, according to new data published by the British government.

The figure represents a major increase from the first quarter of last year, when fewer than 500 EU citizens were denied entry, despite travel rates being significantly higher.

Read more at: Thousands of EU citizens refused UK entry in three months since Brexit took effect | Euronews

Post-Brexit riots flare up in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland has seen nightly outbreaks of street violence in recent days, as unionists and nationalists clashed with each other and police.

On Wednesday (7 April), the escalation in rioting saw a bus set on fire in Belfast.

Read more at: Post-Brexit riots flare up in Northern Ireland

Britain-EU relations: Europe's trust in Britain has gone. We're now a problem, not a partner - by Raphael Behr

The pandemic is landing well-aimed punches on the already bruised relationship between Britain and the European Union. A dispute over vaccine supplies threatens to bring blunt instruments of trade war down on delicate national feelings. Not in the darkest hours of Brexit negotiations did either side imagine that supply-chain management would so quickly become a matter of life and death.

At a summit later this week, European leaders will discuss a possible ban on exports to the UK from an AstraZeneca plant in the Netherlands. There is frustration in Brussels that millions of vaccine doses have gone overseas (mostly Pfizer ones) and none have come over in return. The UK responds that it cannot be blamed for moving earlier, signing better contracts and generally getting its immunising act together faster.

Tory MPs say Brussels is lashing out in jealousy. Vaccination is something Boris Johnson’s government is doing well, and the EU is floundering. That has less to do with Brexit than is claimed by triumphant ministers, but as propaganda the point is irresistible: there is nothing else to trumpet as a benefit of detachment from the continent, and winning the vaccination race resonates with voters grateful for jabs.

Read more at: Europe's trust in Britain has gone. We're now a problem, not a partner | Brexit | The Guardian

The Netherlands: Brexit: Amsterdam surpasses London as Europe’s leading share trading hub - by Ben Chapman

Amsterdam has surpassed London as Europe’s leading share trading hub in the wake of Brexit.

An average €9.2bn shares a day were traded on Euronext Amsterdam and the Dutch arms of CBOE Europe and Turquoise in January, according to data from CBOE Europe first reported by the Financial Times.

EU-based financial firms are banned from trading in London because the EU has not recognised UK regulations on exchanges as equivalent to its own.

Read more at: Brexit: Amsterdam surpasses London as Europe’s leading share trading hub | The Independent

British and Netherlands Relations: Meet the Brexiles who have swapped the UK for the Netherlands to escape Brexit

Britain might be out of the EU, but many Remainers have upped sticks and are now starting a new life in a member state. We meet the Brexpats in the Netherlands and find out what made them leave Brexit Britain behind.

Read more at DutchNews.nl: Meet the Brexiles who have swapped the UK for the Netherlands to escape Brexit - DutchNews.nl

The UK’s European question is far from over – by Kirsty Hughes

As 2021 begins, the European Union and the United Kingdom have a new relationship, underpinned by their trade and co-operation agreement. This fractures, damages and complicates economic, political and social links between the UK and EU. And, alongside the 2019 withdrawal agreement, it ensures there is a customs and regulatory border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland—meaning the fractures go within as well as beyond the UK.

This attempted distancing of the UK from the rest of Europe, in the pursuit of some illusory, right-wing, ‘global Britain’ ideology combined with continuing propaganda around regaining sovereignty, is bound to fail overall. Instead, the UK is moving into the position of being a rather large economic and political satellite of the EU. And while in some ways, as intended by the Brexiters, leaving the EU will certainly weaken EU-UK relations, Brexit will mainly have the result of leaving the UK with less influence, less voice and less say but still hugely dependent on, and interdependent with, its European neighbours

The political and media frenzy around the possibility of deal or no deal was deliberately stoked by the prime minister, Boris Johnson, and his entourage to encourage headlines of an ultimate UK victory in the talks (Johnson’s cowardice and self-interest always making a deal look the more likely outcome). The stand-off also served to take attention away from the fact that any deal was bound to put up trade and other barriers and to fracture the UK’s part in the EU’s economic and political institutions, and so to damage the UK. But now, in the face of a 1,246 page deal—and much more yet to be negotiated or unilaterally decided (on data, financial services and more)—the reality is laid clearly out for all to see..

Read more at: The UK’s European question is far from over – Kirsty Hughes

Britain alone: The new rules for British Citizens who want to visit the EU - by Miles Brignall, Patrick Collinson and Anna Tims

Before Brexit, UK citizens could travel, live, go on holiday and work anywhere in the EU without any special permits or visas. As of 1 January 2021 that is no longer the case.

Read more at: Brexit: how the new rules will change your visits to Europe | Politics | The Guardian

Britain an "Island" again: How U.K.'s Separation From EU Will Affect The Country

New Year's Eve - the ball drops, the champagne corks pop and the United Kingdom finally officially finishes its divorce from the world's largest trading bloc, the European Union. Brexit has huge consequences for business, travelers and regular people who built lives based on a Europe that spanned the English Channel. This is a big gamble for the U.K., one that started more than four years ago when one of the biggest cheerleaders for Brexit was a former London mayor named Boris Johnson.

Johnson and his fellow Brexiteers had no real plan for how to actually untangle decades of economic and legal integration with Europe. And so a country known for effective, sometimes dull governance was plunged into years of political chaos that cost two prime ministers their jobs; first, David Cameron, the man who called the referendum, even as he urged Brits to vote against it.

From the perspective of a political scientist, you could not have hoped to live through a more interesting time to study the politics of your country. The other thing for me that is fascinating, though, is that many - for many people who supported Brexit, leaving the European Union wasn't an end in itself. It was a means to an end. That is to say if we leave the European Union, then we can, dot, dot, dot. You fill in that blank as you want - become a more activist international player, deregulating the way the European Union would never let us. So actually, the real test of Brexit in many ways is yet to come, which is now you've got that freedom. What the hell are you going to do with it? And how are you going to make people's lives better because of it, despite the fact that you're in charge of an economy that is growing less fast than it would have done had we not left in the first place?

Read more at: How U.K.'s Separation From EU Will Affect The Country : NPR

View from the EU: Britain 'taken over by gamblers, liars, clowns and their cheerleaders'

Britain faces an uncertain future as it finally pulls clear of the EU’s orbit, continental commentators have predicted, its reputation for pragmatism and probity shredded by a Brexit process most see as profoundly populist and dangerously dishonest.

“For us, the UK has always been seen as like-minded: economically progressive, politically stable, respect for the rule of law – a beacon of western liberal democracy,” said Rem Korteweg, of the Clingendael Institute thinktank in the Netherlands.

read more at: View from the EU: Britain 'taken over by gamblers, liars, clowns and their cheerleaders' | Politics | The Guardian