Category: UK News

Just seven days before the Brexit transition period was slated to end on December 31, the European Union (EU) and the UK announced the reaching of an agreement that will govern the trade and security relationship between the two sides starting from January 1, 2021.

The European Parliament and EU member states hailed the last-minute deal reached on Thursday with relief while some, with a sentiment tinged with caution, pledged to scrutinize the text before giving a green light, reports Xinhua news agency.

Also Read – UK, EU Strike A Christmas Eve Deal On Post Brexit Trade

At a press conference in Brussels on Thursday evening, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the 27-member bloc has reached “a fair and balanced agreement” with the UK, which officially exited the EU this January.

“It is fair, it is a balanced deal, and it is right and responsible thing to do for both sides.

“To our friends in the UK, I want to say, parting is such sweet sorrow,” she added.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in his virtual press conference at Downing Street, said his country has “taken back control” when securing the post-Brexit trade deal.

“We have taken back control of every jot and title of our regulation, in a way that is complete and unfettered,” he said.

Johnson also said the agreement offers certainty for businesses across the whole country and will benefit the whole of Britain because “there will be no palisade of tariffs on January 1 (2021) and there will be no non-tariff barriers to trade”.

DEAL: We have agreed a zero tariff free trade deal which is great news for British families and businesses.

[Breakdown of the deal below] pic.twitter.com/npnQRe5yvc

— UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) December 24, 2020

The deal will need the approval of the European Parliament, the British Parliament and the EU’s 27 member states.

The EU is likely to impose a “provisional application” of the agreement until MEPs vote on it in 2021.

Hailing the “historical importance” of the deal, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country will examine it to decide whether it supported the result.

“With the agreement, we are creating the basis for a new chapter in our relationship,” Merkel said in a statement, adding that the government will now intensively examine the text of the agreement to judge quickly whether Germany can support the negotiation result.

“I am very confident that we have a good result here,” said Merkel.

In a separate statement, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said: “We have finally seen white smoke rise from the negotiations, but the agreement is not yet finalised.”

Zuallererst: Dank und Hochachtung an @MichelBarnier und sein Team. So komplexe Verhandlungen dauern sonst viele Jahre. Sie haben für die EU in absoluter Rekordzeit eine Einigung mit 🇬🇧 ausgehandelt – trotz Corona. Es hat sich gelohnt, die „Extrameile“ zu gehen. #BrexitDeal (1/4)

— Heiko Maas 🇪🇺 (@HeikoMaas) December 24, 2020

Maas added that the deal should be approved by all 27 EU member states and later the European Parliament before it comes into force.

“As the Council Presidency, we want to do everything we can to ensure that the agreement can come into force provisionally on January 1, 2021,” he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the deal proved that “European unity and steadfastness have paid off” and “Europe is moving forward and can look to the future, united, sovereign and strong”.

Merci @MichelBarnier pour votre ténacité et votre engagement à défendre les intérêts des Européens et leur unité. Grâce à vous et @vonderleyen, la solidarité européenne a montré sa force. https://t.co/w4yDn7kK0I

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) December 24, 2020

“The deal with the UK is essential to protect our citizens, our fishermen, our producers. We will make sure this is the case,” he added.

“Excellent news that an agreement on a new EU-UK partnership has been reached after tough negotiations. This is of great importance to us all. We will now study it carefully,” tweeted Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, in his message, described the deal as “good news”.

“Interests and rights of European businesses and people will be guaranteed. The UK will be a central partner and ally for the EU and Italy,” Conte said.

Bene l’accordo Ue con il Regno Unito. Interessi e diritti di imprese e cittadini europei garantiti.
UK partner centrale e alleato per l’unione e per l’Italia.

— Giuseppe Conte (@GiuseppeConteIT) December 24, 2020

“Welcome to the beginning of the agreement between the EU and UK,” said Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Twitter.

“The member states will examine it and EU Council will comment in the coming days. Spain and the UK continue to dialogue to reach an agreement on Gibraltar.”

Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Prime Minister Antonio Costa also welcomed the deal, stressing that the UK will remain an ally and important partner.

The UK and the European Union have reached a post-Brexit trade deal, after months of disagreements over fishing rights and future business rules.

Downing Street said: “We have got Brexit done and we can now take full advantage of the fantastic opportunities available to us”, the BBC reported.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will shortly hold a press conference, announcing the agreement. It comes after months of wrangling in Brussels.

WATCH LIVE: My update on our future partnership with the European Union. https://t.co/cTd8qWRbrn

— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) December 24, 2020

In a press conference in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said: “This was a long and winding road but we have got a good deal to show for it. It is fair, it is a balanced deal, and it is the right and responsible thing to do for both sides.”

Johnson tweeted a picture of himself smiling with both thumbs lifted in the air.

In its statement, Downing Street said: “Everything that the British public was promised during the 2016 referendum and in the general election last year is delivered by this deal. We have taken back control of our money, borders, laws, trade and our fishing waters.”

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier said that Britain and France are working to unblock the cross-channel trade “as fast as possible.”…reports Asian Lite News

More than 1,500 trucks remain stranded in Kent after France shut the border over fears of a new variant of coronavirus. Meantime the politicians are thrashing out a plan to reopen the border to trade and travel.

France has closed its border with Britain for 48 hours, with no lorries or ferry passengers able to sail from the port of Dover, the BBC reported.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier said that Britain and France are working to unblock the cross-channel trade “as fast as possible.”

Johnson made the statement when he was speaking at a virtual press conference at Downing Street after the French government banned trucks entering from Britain over concerns about the highly transmissible new coronavirus strain, the Xinhua news agency reported.

Johnson said he just had “a very good call” with French President Emmanuel Macron to solve the issue.

“I have just spoken to President Macron, we had a very good call. And we both understand each other’s positions and want to resolve these problems as fast as possible,” said the Prime Minister.

“We are working with our friends across the Channel to unblock the flow of trade as fast as possible,” he said.

Johnson said the disruption at Dover will not affect the vast majority of food and medical supplies, adding that the government has been preparing for such a situation for a while.

“These delays are only occurring at Dover, only affect human-handled freight and that is only 20 per cent of the total arriving from or departing to the European continent,” he said.

The Prime Minister said that he understands the anxieties of the other countries over the new virus strain, pledging to work with other countries to develop treatment.

More than 40 countries including Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, and Bulgaria have announced travel restrictions from Britain following the disclosure that the highly infectious new strain is widespread in parts of Britain.

Also on Monday, European Union member states will in Brussels to discuss a co-ordinated response to the development.

The new variant, the discovery of which was announced by Johnson on December 19, has spread quickly in London and south-east England, but health officials have said that there was no evidence that it is more deadly or would react differently to vaccines.

According to the Health Secretary Matt Hancock, Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned that the new variant, which may be up to 70 per cent more transmissible, was “getting out of control”.

From Sunday morning, London, the South East and East of England moved into Tier Four restrictions, which will be broadly similar to national restrictions introduced in England in November.

The planned relaxation of coronavirus rules for Christmas has been scrapped for a large part of southeast England, and cut to one day for rest of the region.

The restrictions will last for two weeks and will be reviewed on December 30.

Also Read: UK media regulator fines Republic TV for hate speech

Also Read: India Suspends all flights from UK

Brexit shows Britain has never got over the Second World War …. Writes Mihir Bose

What a year we have had and on January 1, as Boris Johnson has said, we will at last be free people. This has been the great dream of the Brexiters but I must say I have always found that absurd. I was born in India just a few months before India won freedom from the British. My generation of Indians is known as the Midnight’s Children generation as it was on midnight 15th August 1947 that the Union Jack was lowered  from the Red Fort in Delhi and the Indian tricolour hoisted. My generation was very proud that we were the first generation of free Indians for 200 years which was the length of British rule.

I was made aware of what freedom meant when I met Nelson Mandela in 1991 soon after he was released from prison. It was a wonderful Sunday morning having coffee with him in his house in Soweto. The rainbow nation had not come into being. Indeed, it was not certain the whites would give up power and end apartheid. He told us how he was going to use sport. He said de Klerk, the white President of apartheid South Africa, had told him that if Mandela could get the All Blacks, New Zealand’s great rugby team, to come and play the Springboks, the white South African rugby team, he could convince his fellow whites to end apartheid.

Also Read – Brexit talks reaching climax

Mandela spoke of his own interest in sport. How in 1949 he had been to see South Africa play Australia in a Test in Durban. The South African team was, of course, all white and he as a non-white had to sit behind a cage as all non-white fans had to under apartheid.  Like all blacks he wanted Australia to win, to relish the one moment when his white tormentors would be humbled. But South Africa looked like winning when Neil Harvey, a wonderful Australian batsman, turned things round and Australia won. Mandela was overjoyed. I asked him if he went up to Harvey to congratulate him. He said “No, no, we couldn’t do that, we would have been thrown out, even arrested. We could show no emotion.”

Now observe, seven years later, the Australian cricket team come to India. Neil Harvey destroys my great sporting hero the Indian leg spinner Subhash Gupte, one of the greatest leg spinners in the game. He breaks my heart. But I, a boy of nine watching the match, did not sit in a cage. I sat with my father in a nice seat and I could show my feelings. Go up to Harvey and get his signature.  I had more freedom than Mandela a grown man.

This is clearly not the sort of loss of freedom the Brexiters mean when they talk of having been enslaved by Europe and how the vote for Brexit means getting the country back. The only explanation for such language is that this country has been suffering from an amnesia ever since the end of the second world war. It has not come to terms with the fact that the war led to the collapse of its empire. Britain beat the Nazis only to wake up and find that the empire it had when it declared war on Germany and the power it had when Hitler invaded Poland had gone. That was not what was anticipated or even desired when this country went to war as there was no intention of setting the people Britain had enslaved free. It was one of the unanticipated consequences of the war.

Also Read – EU gives nod to coronavirus vaccine

Before the war this country could boast that so large was its empire the sun never set on it, although as Krishna Menon, one of India’s freedom fighters and later Defence Minister, mocked: that was because God did not trust the British in the dark. But when after the war the sun did set on its empire this country did not know what to do. And this country has still not got over its loss of the empire.

When I came to this country in 1969 the most popular sitcom was Dad’s Army. It is still hugely popular which says a lot about how the British cling on that part of its history which it finds so comforting.  

It is this inability to look at its past that explains Brexit and why it is such a cry of anguish.  While Brexit is seen by leavers as a great revolution, the fact is this country has been crying out aloud just as the Brexiters have been doing for many years.  Back in 1963 as a 16-year-old growing up in Mumbai, while rummaging in the city’s many street bookstalls, I picked up a copy of a magazine called Encounter then possibly the most influential literary journal of its time. It was the July issue and a special one entitled Suicide of a Nation? An Inquiry into the State of Britain Today, which Arthur Koestler guest-edited.

 A Jewish-Hungarian refugee, who had managed to flee the Nazis and had arrived in the UK without an entry permit in 1940, Koestler was then at the height of his fame, due in large measure to his having moved from communism to become a fervent warrior for the West in the struggle against the Soviet Union. His novel Darkness at Noon showed how the best minds of the West could be seduced by communism and refuse to realise its evil nature. Koestler, incidentally, hated India and wrote a book denouncing Indian culture and Gandhi in particular, The Lotus and the Robot. There was nothing redeeming he could find in India.

But here he was concerned with the state of Britain and held the British political class responsible for turning the second world war victory into defeat. Reading him you might think it is Nigel Farage who is speaking. “When the war was won, Britain’s political and moral prestige in Europe was at an unprecedented height; in less than twenty years, her leaders managed to bring it down to an equally unprecedented low.”

The magazine was full of articles by the leading writers and thinkers of the day, Malcolm Muggeridge, Henry Fairlie, Cyril Connolly, Lord Altrincham, all bemoaning the state of Britain. They depicted Britain in 1963 as a poor European outcast, its economy in desperate plight, compared to France and Germany, booming thanks to the Common Market; its culture and education at a very low level and reduced to begging President De Gaulle of France to let Britain join the European Economic Community, as it was then called.

And this raises an interesting question as to how the Brexiters have spun the word “sovereignty” when it comes to Europe. Much has been made of how Britain would even be prepared to leave the EU without a deal if a deal meant giving up sovereignty. Now in any trade negotiations deals are made which means a country agrees to do things which limit its ability to act in return for getting some benefits. It is not loss of sovereignty it is a calculation that in doing such a deal the country will benefit.

If we are to talk about sovereignty then have a look at Britain’s relationship with America, the much talked about “special relationship”. In winning the war, Britain had gone broke and its great economist, John Maynard Keynes, had had to rush to Washington in August 1945 and spend five months in hard negotiations with the Americans—so hard, in fact, that the strain killed him shortly after—to persuade the Americans to provide a 50-year loan, the final repayment of which was not made until 2006. During the war the British, keen to get American help, bent its knee to the Americans to such an extent that American soldiers were not subject to British law and in 1943 George Orwell wrote, “It is difficult to go anywhere in London without having the feeling that Britain is now Occupied Territory.”  The war also resulted in America acquiring bases in this country. They remain to this day and there British writ does not run. They are sovereign American territory. And American soldiers in this country take their orders only from American officers even when they attend Remembrance Day ceremonies where all others from many countries take orders from the British in charge of the ceremony.

There are no EU bases in this country. But Brexiters would never dream of talking of loss of sovereignty as far as America is concerned because America is family. At the height of its empire the British also saw Europe as part of its wider family. In the empire the British always described themselves as European, presenting themselves as representing the master white races. Even their cricket team was called European. But now that the empire has gone that is not something this country likes to be reminded about. It would rather present a trade link with Europe as a phony fight over freedom and sovereignty. Unless the British can look at their history, see where it has come from and get over its imperial nostalgia it will always be like Archie in John Osborne’s play The Entertainer moaning about what a wretched hand history has dealt this once great country since the war.