Brexit Is Teaching Britain A Lesson In Humility; Boris Johnson finalizes EU Exit Deal!
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UK’s Sunak Announces 10,000 Extra Seasonal Farm Worker Visas
Workers carry empty trays to harvest cherries at a fruit farm near Sittingbourne, UK.Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
ByAlex Morales
May 16, 2023 at 1:09 PM EDT
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the UK government will allow an extra 10,000 seasonal agricultural workers to enter the country next year in response to demands from farmers.
The premier on Tuesday told the UK Farm to Fork Summit that ministers had rolled over to next year a seasonal workers program that allows for 45,000 temporary laborers to enter the country for horticulture and poultry, his office said in a statement. There will be the capacity for an extra 10,000 visas if needed, he told attendees.
Sunak also vowed the government won’t lower standards in its pursuit of trade agreements. He detailed two concerns that have frequently been voiced when discussing a potential deal with the US, saying: “So no chlorine-washed chicken. No hormone- treated beef. Not now. Not ever.”
Ministers call for immigration and UK food prices to increase
Exclusive: Sunak urged to take urgent action to solve food crisis at meeting with Defra and farmers
www.theguardian.com
Ministers call for immigration and UK food prices to increase
Helena Horton Environment reporter
Mon 15 May 2023 01.00 EDT
Exclusive: Sunak urged to take urgent action to solve food crisis at meeting with Defra and farmers
A shortage of foreign workers has caused fruit and vegetables to remain unpicked and left to rot on British farms. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty
Immigration and food prices must increase to solve the food crisis, ministers are to say at a summit.
Rishi Sunak will be joined by ministers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as well as farmers and industry leaders at the meeting at No 10 on Tuesday.
The Guardian understands there is a battle between the home secretary, Suella Braverman, and Defra over immigration.
Fruit and vegetables have been rotting in the fields, and some farmers have gone out of business, as there are not enough people willing to pick them.
Farmers and Defra ministers have been lobbying the Home Office to increase the number of temporary visas for agricultural workers, but a senior Defra source said Braverman was “ideologically opposed” to such a move.
Sources at Defra hope Sunak will publicly concede at Tuesday’s meeting that more workers are needed, thus pushing the Home Office into agreeing to more visas.
The talks are expected to cover issues of inflation and food security in the British food and agricultural sector. While the Treasury has been telling supermarkets not to increase prices, even as costs to suppliers increase, ministers at Defra have pointed out that farmers and food suppliers going out of business would be more inflationary than a modest increase in food prices.
Food prices in the UK are lower, ministers point out, than across Europe, with British consumers spending less of their income on groceries than other Europeans.
In many cases, supermarket items are sold at less than the price of production. However, food prices are increasing with inflation, and last week there was a record 17.8% increase in the cost of fresh food year on year, according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC).
The National Farmers Union (NFU), BRC and Morrisons are believed to be among the sector chiefs likely to attend the event.
The NFU will urge the government to set a food self-sufficiency target for the country. Its leader, Minette Batters, will say that at the very minimum the target should be maintained at 60%, estimated to be the current figure.
She said: “The past 18 months have been a stark reminder of how vulnerable the nation’s food security is. It has been a wake-up call for the importance of a secure domestic supply of food, and it is vital that the summit delivers actions, not just words.
“A start would be a serious commitment from government to maintaining Britain’s food production self-sufficiency level at 60%, with a statutory duty to report on domestic food levels and utilise powers under the Agriculture Act to make supply chains fairer.”
The BRC has also called for a proper policy on labour, with immigration to match the needs of growers. Andrew Opie, the organisation’s director of food and sustainability, said: “Retailers will want government to commit to sustainable UK food production – that includes a coherent labour policy, more focus on carbon reduction, and minimising the financial impact of incoming regulations.”
Guy Singh-Watson, a farmer and founder of the Riverford Organic vegetable company, said he agreed food prices had to increase: “It drives me up the bloody wall – why don’t the government put the same amount of effort into making sure rent is cheap? Most people spend four times as much on rent as they do on food. Food cannot be produced at the current price levels and it certainly cannot be any cheaper – farmers are leaving the business.
“We have a government that is completely ideologically wedded to the market providing the solution to everything. Unless it becomes a real electoral issue, they are just going to leave it to the supermarkets, who will continue screwing growers, and we won’t have much of a horticultural or egg industry left.”
He added that without more visas for food pickers over the next couple of years, there was a risk of supply chain failures.
“The reality of the conditions of many those who work in the fields picking our food is pretty abhorrent,” Singh-Watson said. “I really don’t like the dependence on foreign workers who are inevitably treated badly. But in reality, to get the fruit and vegetables picked over the next few years, we do need more people coming from abroad to save the industry we have left.”
A government spokesperson said: “The home secretary is clear that overall migration should come down. At the same time, seasonal labour is an integral part of the UK’s rural economy.
“No other sector in the UK economy has the level of access to seasonal labour that is enjoyed by the food supply chain. We continue to support our farmers through the seasonal workers’ visa route and have now provided 45,000 visas though it, with the potential for a further 10,000 places.”
Brexit blame game erupts again: how leaving EU came back to bite Tories
Carmakers’ criticisms and migration figures add to pressure on Rishi Sunak, who is not trusted by leavers
www.theguardian.com
Brexit blame game erupts again: how leaving EU came back to bite Tories
Carmakers’ criticisms and migration figures add to pressure on Rishi Sunak, who is not trusted by leaversKiran Stacey, Rowena Mason, Ben Quinn and Aletha Adu
Fri 19 May 2023 12.00 EDT
‘I voted for Brexit, I believe in Brexit’: Rishi Sunak. Photograph: Chris J Ratcliffe/EPA
Rishi Sunak cut a relaxed figure as he sat in shirtsleeves, clutching a Downing Street mug, chatting to journalists on the plane to the G7 conference in Japan this week. One question ruffled his smooth demeanour, though: what did he make of Nigel Farage’s eye-opening comments the previous evening?
Brexit had “failed”, Farage had said. Britain had “not actually benefited … economically” from leaving the EU. And who was to blame for this sorry state of affairs? “Useless” Tory governments.
Sunak bristled at these remarks. “I voted for Brexit, I believe in Brexit … as chancellor and prime minister I am actually delivering the benefits of Brexit as opposed to talking about it,” he said.
He had reason to feel sensitive. More serious than Farage’s jibes was what had prompted them: a warning from the carmaker Stellantis that it would close manufacturing operations in the UK if the government did not renegotiate its trading terms with the EU.
Stellantis, which was quickly followed by other carmakers such as Jaguar Land Rover and Ford, said it would not be able to comply with incoming rules requiring 45% of its cars to be made in the UK and EU to avoid tariffs, because most electric vehicle batteries are still made in China. Unless these so-called “rules of origin” were delayed, Stellantis said, it would be forced to pull some of its manufacturing out of the UK.
And the prime minister knew that worse was to come. Next week, the Office for National Statistics will publish figures showing another surge in net immigration, which may have hit close to 1 million in 2022. Given that the Tories were elected in 2019 on a promise to bring net immigration down from its level at the time of about 250,000 a year, this would be a major policy failure.
Alastair Campbell, a former Labour media adviser, said: “The public have been seeing the Brexit failure for some time now … It’s clearly going even worse than people said it would. Despite the propaganda in rightwing press, people have just wised up to the fact that what was promised has not been delivered and what we were told wouldn’t happen has happened.”
It is not just prominent remainers like Campbell who believe that Brexit is not working: voters agree. About 35% of voters now think it was right to leave the EU, and roughly 55% say it was wrong.
According to YouGov, only one in five voters now think the Tories are best placed to manage Brexit, with almost the same number saying it would be Labour – a stark contrast with three years ago, when 40% of voters believed the Tories would be best and just 13% said it would be Labour.
Those poll findings were underlined by this month’s local election results, in which Labour achieved a bigger swing in leave areas than in remain ones.
John Curtice, a professor of politics at Strathclyde University, said: “[This shift] is being driven in part by the views of people who didn’t bother to vote in the 2016 referendum, but it is also true now that the loyalty of leave voters is weaker. Liz Truss not only destroyed the reputation of her party for economic competence, she also added to a tendency towards some movement in relation to Brexit and the regrets of people who were leavers.”
The difficulties with Brexit may be becoming clearer to some voters, but the question remains as to what the two main parties are going to do about it. Keir Starmer insists Labour will not rejoin the EU or the customs union. But this leaves room for the party to argue for closer relations in a number of different areas, from defence cooperation to science funding.
This week, Starmer allowed himself to appear more pro-EU than at any other time in his three-year leadership so far. First, he suggested EU citizens should be allowed to vote in general elections, in what would amount to a massive expansion of the British franchise. He told LBC: “If someone has been here 10, 20, 30 years, contributing to this economy, part of our community, they ought to be able to vote.”
And then, when asked by Sky News whether the warnings from car manufacturers should prompt a renegotiation of the post-Brexit trade deal, Starmer replied: “Yes, we want a closer trading relationship.”
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, said Labour was aiming to use the 2025 review of the trading agreement to change some of its terms. “We will use that review to reduce friction for British business, remove unnecessary barriers for trade in services and ensure our world-leading research and development sector can thrive through access to cross-border cooperation,” he said.
Experts say, however, that the changes under consideration are unlikely to provide a major boost to the UK’s sluggish growth. Anand Menon, the director of the thinktank UK in a Changing Europe, said: “What Labour is proposing is sensible fiddling around the edges. They might be able to help musicians tour more easily, or farmers trade, but it will be pretty trivial in aggregate economic terms.”
Even if Starmer’s proposals are minor in comparison with the economic problems facing the country, they still have the potential to trigger outrage. His comments about voting and about trade earned him negative front-page headlines in rightwing newspapers and were hastily “clarified”.
No, he had no immediate plans to expand the franchise, he told the Times on Wednesday. And no, his plans to tweak the UK-EU trading arrangements did not amount to full-scale “renegotiation”, his press team insisted on Thursday.
For all the problems Brexit is posing for Labour, the problems are far worse for Sunak and the Tories. Despite Sunak having campaigned to leave the EU, Conservative party observers say he is not trusted by leavers who have changed their mind, or by those who still think it was the right thing to do.
“The immigration thing is huge, given that a huge part of the vote for Brexit was regaining a sense of control over our borders,” said Tim Montgomerie, the founder of the Tory grassroots website ConservativeHome. “Sunak has steadied the ship, but he doesn’t seem to the average Brexiteer as someone who gets why we voted for Brexit. Many don’t even believe he really voted for Brexit.”
The two party leaders grasp one more important truth, say their advisers: they both know that even if they wanted a major overhaul in post-Brexit relations with the EU, the 27 member nations would be unlikely to grant it.
“If we win the next election, we will have a lot of things we need to achieve in a short space of time,” said one Labour adviser. “There is no way we want to be pitched into protracted negotiations with the EU in the middle of all of that.”
Montgomerie said: “Brexit, whether you think it was right or wrong, is safe.”
They’re openly saying it: Brexit has failed. But what comes next may be very dark indeed | Jonathan Freedland
The ‘remoaner elite’, the civil service, the BBC, universities, unions, refugees: anything is blamed but Brexit itself, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland
www.theguardian.com
Fri 19 May 2023 12.06 EDT
They’re openly saying it: Brexit has failed. But what comes next may be very dark indeed
Jonathan FreedlandThe ‘remoaner elite’, the civil service, the BBC, universities, unions, refugees: anything is blamed but Brexit itself
‘Farage said three words of striking simplicity and truth: “Brexit has failed.”’ Nigel Farage at a press conference in London on 20 March 2023. Photograph: Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Images
It lasts no more than a second, but it is a moment for the ages. Interviewed on BBC Newsnight on Monday, Nigel Farage made a confession that, by rights, should end the debate that has split this country down the middle for much of the last decade. A month ahead of the seventh anniversary of the 2016 vote that took Britain out of the European Union, Farage said three words of striking simplicity and truth: “Brexit has failed.”
You can watch the clip over and over, for it is something to behold. Here is the arch-Brexiter himself, the man who dedicated his life to the cause of rupture from the EU, admitting it has been a disaster. Of course, as we shall see, he and his fellow Brexiters do not blame that failure on the idea itself, but it’s the admission that counts. It offers grounds for modest celebration: now, at last, the contours of an emerging national consensus are visible, as remainers and leavers alike can join in agreement that this thing has not worked. And yet it comes at a price, one that also became darkly visible this week.
Start with the facts that even Farage can no longer duck. During the referendum campaign, he and his allies promised that Brexit would be a boon for the UK economy, unshackling it from Brussels red tape and releasing it into a roaring future. Seven years on, we can see the reality: a country in the grip of a cost of living crisis that means millions can no longer afford what they once regarded as the basics. Britain is becoming poorer and falling behind its peers. Ours is now forecast to be one of the worst performing economies in the world, not merely seventh in the G7 but 20th in the G20 – behind even a Russia under toughening international sanctions – according to the International Monetary Fund.
The consequences of being poorer are seen and felt everywhere, whether it’s in the 3m food parcels delivered by food banks last year, the family who can’t get a mental health appointment for a troubled child, or in courts that are jammed and backlogged for years. For a while, the Brexiters could blame all our woes on anything but Brexit: Covid or Ukraine. But there’s no hiding place now.
This week came a warning that post-Brexit trading arrangements with the EU threaten the very existence of the entire UK automotive industry, which employs some 800,000 people. Ford, Jaguar Land Rover and the owners of Vauxhall called on the government to renegotiate the Brexit deal. Such demands are getting louder. Next month, a thousand businesses, alongside representatives of farming and fishing, will gather in Birmingham for the Trade Unlocked conference, called to discuss a post-Brexit landscape most say has made commercial life infinitely harder and more bureaucratic. “Business is beginning to find its voice,” one organiser tells me.
But it’s not just the economic numbers. Remember, Farage and the others argued that a hit to GDP would be worth it, so long as Brexit fulfilled its other promises – most cherished among them, a reduction in the number of immigrants to the UK. Yet if you were among those persuaded, against the evidence, to see immigration as a cost, rather than a benefit, to the country, Brexit has failed on even that measure. Immigration has gone up, not down, since we left the EU, with one analysis suggesting net annual migration figures published next week could see a rise to 700,000 or even 1 million. Turns out Britain needs migrants – but now they have to come from far away, rather than in reciprocal movement between us and our nearest neighbours.
Given all this, what are the Brexiters to do? Some still deny reality altogether, insisting that we should disbelieve the evidence of our own eyes. The rest admit that Brexit has failed, and then face one of two options. Either they can atone for their role in visiting this calamity upon the nation and move to correct it. Or they can blame others for not doing it right.
On Newsnight, Farage made the latter choice. Yes, it was true that Britain had “not actually benefited from Brexit economically” but that was because “useless” politicians had “mismanaged this totally”. It’s the manoeuvre perfected in an earlier era by western communists confronted by the brute realities of the Soviet Union: nothing wrong with the communist idea, they insisted, it just hadn’t been implemented properly.
But that logic is tricky for the Brexiters, because it’s they who have been in charge. The exit deal was signed, sealed and pushed through parliament by one of their own, Boris Johnson, and a conviction Brexiter is in Downing Street now, in the form of Rishi Sunak. So there has to be someone else to blame, other shadowy forces who betrayed the cause.
Some point to Sunak himself, aided by Kemi Badenoch, who this month halted the planned shredding of thousands of EU-tainted regulations. For others, it’s the Blob or the “remoaner elite”, made up of the civil service, the BBC, the universities, the unions: anyone who, along with desperate refugees in small boats, can be blamed for standing between Britain and the promised Brexit nirvana.
This is hardly a new dynamic. Nationalism, with its impossible promise of a perfect future, always has to have a traitor to blame for perfection’s delayed arrival. That is the process we are witnessing now: the steady nurturing of a stab-in-the-back myth for Brexit. History suggests that this hunt for the wielder of the treacherous dagger will only get nastier.
Which is why many were rightly alarmed by this week’s gathering in the name of “national conservatism”, where the writer Douglas Murray declared that nationalism need no longer hide its face just because the Germans had “mucked up” in the last century – a novel way to describe the murderous record of national socialism. That conference was a three-day search for those whose betrayal could be blamed for the failure of the Brexit project.
The quest will intensify as the damage caused by Brexit piles up. The worse the economy gets, the higher interest rates rise, the tighter incomes are squeezed, the louder and more vitriolic the attacks on the supposed true culprits will have to be – if only to quieten the obvious thought: namely that it is Brexit itself that is to blame.
It means those who opposed this madness from the start now have two reasons to break the understandable, if still bizarre, omertà on Brexit that prevails in Westminster. The first is the need to point to the source of our national ailing: if the patient is losing blood, you cannot keep ignoring the wounds where he shot himself in both feet. Less obvious, but no less urgent, is the need to acknowledge that Brexit’s failure is injecting a new toxin into the system, one that will spread the more apparent that failure becomes – and spread faster if we refuse to name its actual cause.
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
Thought the headline said Brazil 
Britain is a failed state
Britain is a failed state
This Nigel Farage character throws grenades and hides his hands. Wasn't he the chief campaigner for the so-called Brexit? He knows he will never be in the position of power to ever be held accountable for the bullshyt he pushes. The ultimate grifter.
‘Our town has gone downhill ever since - we need it back!’
Residents say their town has “lost its vibrancy”, investment has plummeted and the high street has declined since a vital service was ripped away.
‘Our town has gone downhill ever since - we need it back!’
Residents say their town has “lost its vibrancy”, investment has plummeted and the high street has declined since a vital service was ripped away.www.kentonline.co.uk
Brexit is the strongest argument against direct democracy
Brexit is not an argument against direct democracy, but it reinforces the importance of the electorate being informed.
There were an astounding number of voters who actually voted for Brexit BEFORE googling and doing their research on what the consequences might be.
I think you are making a string case against direct democracy.
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
Nationalism for sure but yeah probably direct democracy
There was no real “mechanisms” to hold Tories responsible and to be honest with the populace which might be the bigger problem
There was no real “mechanisms” to hold Tories responsible and to be honest with the populace which might be the bigger problem
Alastair Campbell bluntly tells Brexiteers 'you were lied to by conmen'
Alastair Campbell has bluntly told Brexiteers that they "were lied to".Speaking during a leave voter special of BBC Question Time, the former Labour spin doctor unsurprisingly slammed Brexit and said people who vote for the policy were conned by Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.He said: "Look, I...
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