Brexit: Will I need a visa to travel to the EU after 2021?

The present right of free movement will be surrendered when the Brexit transition period ends

For British travellers, much is uncertain about how life will be from 2021 onwards.

But UK visitors to the EU will need to get used to more red tape when an online system is introduced, probably in 2022.

These are the key questions and answers.

Will I need a visa to visit the European Union?

Not immediately. Until the end of 2020, everyone is pretending that the UK is still a member of the EU. British passport holders are entitled to travel anywhere in the 27 remaining member states for as long as they like.

UK travel documents will be regarded as full EU passports up to and including the date of expiry or 1 January 2021, whichever comes first. (This applies even if the passport was issued after Britain leaves.)

After Brexit a UK passport will continue to be valid as a British travel document – there is no need to renew.

But at the end of the transition British passports will lose much of their power and become subject to additional constraints – including, in time, the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (Etias). This will require prospective UK visitors to the Schengen area to apply online for permission to enter.

The Schengen area comprises most of the 27 remaining members of the European Union (but not Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Ireland and Romania) plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and plucky Liechtenstein.

Is Etias a visa?

Officially, no. Europe says that Etias is “a pre-travel authorisation system for visa-exempt travellers”. It is a similar concept to the US Esta and Canadian eTA, which are not technically visas.

“Its key function is to verify if a third country national meets entry requirements before travelling to the Schengen area.” says the EU.

But as Etias requires visitors to apply in advance, provide lots of personal information, pay money (€7/£6), and be issued with a permit to cross a border, I contend it amounts to a normal person’s understanding of a visa.

When and where must I apply?

There is no need to worry about this aspect of Brexit until 2022. The European Union originally hoped it would be ready by 2021, but that date has slipped.

At the heart of the system will be an Etias app and website – presumably etias.eu, though this URL does not yet route anywhere.

What details will be required?

Personal information including name, address, contact details, passport details and occupation (with your job title and employer, or for students, the name of educational establishment).

There will also be questions about your state of health, particularly any infectious diseases.

You must give details of any serious convictions in the past 20 years.

Next, you must say why you are travelling (holiday, business, visiting family, etc), specify the country you will first arrive in and provide the address of your first night’s stay — which will pose a problem for travellers who like to make plans as they go along.

What happens to the information?

Every application will be checked against EU and relevant Interpol databases, and “a dedicated Etias watch-list”. The system is tuned to pick out individuals suspected of being involved in terrorism, armed robbery, child pornography, fraud, money laundering, cybercrime, people-smuggling, trafficking in endangered animal species, counterfeiting and industrial espionage.

How long will it take for a decision to be made?

The intention is that the vast majority of applications will be approved within a few minutes. But if an application is flagged – ie there is a “hit” with one of the databases – then a decision could take as long as four days.

It may result in a straight rejection of permission, or require the applicant to attend an interview at a consulate of the first country they intend to visit.

In a case of mistaken identity, will I be able to appeal?

Yes. Details of how to appeal will be included with the notice of rejection.

Once I have an Etias, am I guaranteed admission to the Schengen Area?

No. “Mere possession of a travel authorisation does not confer an automatic right of entry”, says the EU. As with the US, travellers can be turned away for any reason.

Does everyone have to pay?

No, those under 18 or over 70 are exempt.

If I am granted entry to the European Union with an Etias, how long can I stay?

The present right of free movement will be surrendered when the Brexit transition period ends.

Instead the 90/180 rule will apply. In any stretch of 180 days (almost six months) you can stay a maximum of 90 days (almost three months).

This will apply in any event from the start of 2021 – it is independent of Etias.

For an example of what it means: if you were to spend the first 90 days of 2021 (January, February and almost all of March) in the Schengen area, you would not be able to return until the very end of June.

Do I need to apply for an Etias every time I travel to Europe? 

No. The permit will be valid for three years, or until the passport runs out. It is not yet clear whether you will need to go online and announce your travel plans before each visit to the European Union.

Will I need an Etias to travel to Ireland?

No. The Common Travel Area involving the UK, Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands transcends European Union rules, and in any event Ireland is not in the Schengen Area.

What about people without internet access?

They will be expected to get a friend or family member to make the application for them, in the same way as the US Esta and similar schemes.

Is this all because of Brexit?

No. Work on strengthening the European Union’s external border was already under way before the UK referendum on membership in June 2016. Etias would not be relevant if the UK was still in the EU. But the decision to leave means that British travellers will be classified as “third country” citizens, which triggers extra red tape.

(Source: Independent)

Boris Johnson is the epitome of what’s worst about the English ruling class

In Brussels, people recall an amusing buffoon devoid of principle or political belief – but not a Eurosceptic hardliner

The scene, Cardiff. The date, 16 June 1998. The European summit of heads of state and government has just ended, rounding off the UK’s six-month EU presidency. Tony Blair, who has chaired the summit, is holding a press conference. The EU correspondent for the Daily Telegraph puts up his hand and launches into a tirade that is not so much question as full-blown editorial. Blair, a product of the same public-school system as the questioner, quips: “Boris, you should be prime minister!” Twenty-one years on, this prophecy looks likely to come true.

In Brussels, officials who remember Boris Johnson from his days there (from 1989 to 1994) are dumbfounded. Known to this day as a “buffoon”, he is the source of many painful memories. The son of a former Eurocrat and member of the European parliament, he made a lasting impression as the inventor of the “Euromyth”, a journalistic genre now termed fake news. With the backing of his editors it seems, he eagerly misrepresented events or even completely made up stories to portray the European commission as a bureaucratic monster making absurd proposals. As he once explained to me, aged 28 and dressed as ever in a rumpled jacket, his shirt spilling out in typically English manner: “You mustn’t let facts get in the way of a good story.” Among other yarns, he claimed there were plans to establish a “banana police force” to check the fruit was the right shape, that coffins would be standardised and prawn cocktail crisps would be outlawed. He was quick to highlight the purportedly extravagant lifestyle of overpaid, tax-exempted Eurocrats.

 ‘With the backing of his editors it seems, Johnson completely made up stories in order to portray the European commission as a bureaucratic monster.’ Photograph: Neville Elder/Corbis via Getty Images

 How can you counter someone who has no illusions about a profession he only practises to gain leverage?

For many on the continent, Johnson was then, and remains, the epitome of what is worst in the English (not British) elite: public school, Oxbridge, arrogant, cynical, mildly xenophobic and quite certain of their cultural superiority. On this last point – wholly at odds with the popular image Johnson seeks to promote – he came across as extremely sharp and well-read, and was the envy of many of his European colleagues. A Spanish journalist has a memory of him on a plane reading a book in ancient Greek. In the days when French was the only language authorised in the EU press operation, Johnson once asked a question in Latin. He wanted to know more about some directive supposedly intended to enforce the use of the Latin names of fish to facilitate the common fisheries policy. When Johnson was at a press conference there was never a dull moment.

In human terms, he made no secret of being a dilettante, a comradely guy, who enjoyed life and was always ready to lend a hand. Above all, he was perpetually on the lookout for a good story. In a booming voice he would repeatedly ask me: “What’s the story today, Jean?” You had to pick your words carefully, or run the risk of the Telegraph printing some daft, uncorroborated tale.

Yet he seemed completely guileless, never the hardline ideologue depicting the EU as a remake of the thousand-year Reich and the root of all evil. On the contrary: put simply, here was a man of little principle, amused by everything and not remotely bothered about the consequences of what he wrote or the damage he might be doing. Blessed with a great sense of humour he had no difficulty silencing even the most outspoken critics.

After all, how can you counter someone who owns up to his fibs and has no illusions about a profession he only practises to gain leverage? In this respect he was utterly successful. He managed to bring about a permanent shift in the British media, not just the conservative press, eager to copy his success with his Euromyths, a form of journalism that eventually paved the way for Brexit. I remember a Times correspondent – a paper that sacked Johnson early on in his career for making up a quote – on the verge of tears as he explained that his copy had been completely rehashed in London to match the growing Eurosceptic mood there. Of course the truth about the EU’s activities was always less spectacular, but not so likely to make the front page.

That this spoilt child of a man – who lies like a toddler and has only the vaguest of political convictions – should be closing in on power gives the UK’s partners overseas the impression that the end is nigh. This, it seems, will be the final act of a political drama launched by Johnson’s fellow old Etonian David Cameron when he chose to organise a referendum on British membership of the EU. The inability to implement the resulting leave vote and actually leave has made the UK an international laughing stock.

Ultimately Johnson is the epitome of the British ruling class, who in their quest for power are happy to gamble cynically with the future of their country and the livelihoods of their fellow citizens. But his lack of any real direction or belief may yet prove an asset, because he is completely unpredictable.

Many in Brussels believe he is capable of any move, even backtracking and shelving Brexit if he thinks it could be turned to his personal advantage. After all, before becoming one of the leading lights in the leave campaign, he was for a long time against the idea of the UK leaving the EU. A pragmatic buffoon, in other words, might be better than a fanatic. Watch out though: Johnson is also capable of taking Britain over the cliff. It would be totally at odds with the statesmanship of his political idol, Winston Churchill, but Boris Johnson might think it amusing.

(Source: The Guardian)

Farewell then Ms Maybot, you were almost human after all

Do not be surprised if, after the pressure valve is released and the inevitable moment of catharsis, surprisingly large reserves of public empathy will be discovered

“Boris has negotiated in Europe. I seem to remember last time he did a deal with the Germans, he came back with three nearly new water cannon.”

A great joke that, and well delivered too, by a woman looking decidedly happy with her lot in life, comfortable in a tartan Vivienne Westwood trouser suit and comfortable in her own skin. Two weeks later she became prime minister, and was never seen or heard from again.

Theresa May walked into 10 Downing Street because the Brexit wing of her party could not work out what they wanted. Three years later, she will walk out again for the same reason.

It has been a premiership so badly mutated by self-inflicted injury, it is almost hard to see, now, that it was in any case doomed from the start. To become prime minister of the United Kingdom because the incumbent has decided of his own free will that the task ahead is one he cannot do is a historical one-off.

David Cameron’s view, by the way, as expressed in that rarefied dawn on 24 June 2016, was that only someone who believed in Brexit could lead the country forward. What Theresa May actually believes about Brexit is as mysterious as ever, even now. Does anyone know what she actually believes about anything? To hold an opinion risks someone prising it from you, after all. She is far too cautious for that.

But she voted Remain, we know that, a decision that all but compelled her to hand key jobs in her cabinet to prominent Brexiteers. But foreign secretary Boris Johnson would prove an international embarrassment, unable to prevent himself saying appalling things that no MP should say, and certainly not the country’s most senior diplomat.

David Davis and Liam Fox carried on making wild claims about Brexit that could never be delivered, except now they were holding executive positions. It was a farce that could never be sustained.

But from this impossible starting position, she condemned herself yet further, on a momentous night in June 2017, which we shall come on to later.

It has been a remarkable cameo in the highest office in the land. Like so many people in public life, Gordon Brown, being the most striking comparison, it was not until she stepped under the most piercing spotlight of all that her true character was revealed. It should be clear now that the usual high barrier to being PM – leading the opposition and winning a general election – is there for a reason. Those who have been least suited to the role are those who have come by it without facing these tough tests.

Just days after becoming prime minister, a military coup was attempted in Turkey, and she was required to record a simple TV clip for the news channels on what had happened. She winced down the lens like a deer in headlights. It was a countenance few had recalled seeing before. No one is a stranger to it now.

The telegenic and communicative aspects of the job that are so crucial in modern politics, for better or worse, were severely beyond her, and it would come to cost her everything.

Until the moment the general election exit polls came out at 10pm on 8 June 2017, it could be argued she had been a master political strategist. When she drove back from the palace having first become prime minister in July the year before, she stood outside 10 Downing Street in the bright summer sun and robbed the centre left of their policy agenda. She promised to reform the “burning injustices” of modern Britain, to build a country that does not just work for the privileged few.

At her first prime minister’s questions, she appeared possessed by the ghost of Margaret Thatcher, not so much defeating Jeremy Corbyn as vaporising him. Then, a few months later, she gave her first conference speech, in which the robes of Ukip were placed over the centre left ones she had not yet taken off.

Policies were announced that appeared to include companies publishing lists of foreign workers. Grammar schools were coming back. And, in words that were aimed principally at offshore-dwelling tax avoiders but were nonetheless received with great offence by millions of British-born, Britain-dwelling people, she said: “If you’re a citizen of the world you’re a citizen of nowhere.”

The outrage that followed did nothing to restrict her poll lead to anything less than 20 points for long months ahead. She spent a long time saying “Brexit means Brexit”, unbothered and unblemished by the ridicule she received for her almost admirable lack of subtlety in refusing to answer simple questions.

Eventually, she decided what Brexit meant. “Out of the customs union, out of the single market,” she said, in a speech at Lancaster House which, to anyone with a detailed understanding of the workings of the European Union, was immediately obvious as a huge strategic error. She laid down red lines which would have to be crossed, even in favourable circumstances. And when the time came, circumstances were not favourable.

Not that it mattered, for the time being. The Conservatives won a by-election in Copeland that appeared to undermine the Corbyn project so utterly that even Owen Jones lost faith.

And so, while walking in Snowdonia with her husband, she took what looked to be a wise and sensible decision.

It was to obtain the majority she would need to secure the passage of her Brexit deal through parliament (even if the vision of Brexit she was at this point pursuing, would never, ever have been tolerated by her European counterparts. Sir Ivan Rogers, the UK’s most senior EU diplomat, could have told her this, but he had already quit his post in protest at not being listened to. It was also to push back the date of the next general election far beyond the deadline of the Article 50 process, which she imagined would remove political leverage against her from both Labour and the EU.

The blame for what happened next is the subject of a row that will never end. But in the coming weeks, she allowed her advisers Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, and the party’s chief strategist Lynton Crosby, to build a personality cult around a woman who would come to reveal, day after agonising day, to have no personality at all.

The slogans she hoped would win that election (“strong and stable” or “coalition of chaos”) cut through to the extent that two years later they are still the subject of mickey-taking cards in novelty gift shops. And as she reinvented herself as a subject of ridicule, Jeremy Corbyn held his nerve against all odds, and became the candidate of choice for the huge constituency of people that hold huge sway over the outcome of elections – namely, the ones who care nothing for politics but decide in the days before votes which potential prime minister they would rather have a beer with. Nobody foresaw her losing that particular contest. She lost it hands down.

It would lead to her being in a sports hall in Maidenhead at 3am, wearing a mask of utter despair, and standing next to a dabbing space lord wearing a bucket. From that point on, her job and her life became impossible. The DUP was recruited to prop up her minority government. In the Brexit negotiations with the EU, the Northern Irish border question, which was meant to be one of the simple things to get out of the way before the real talks began, became intractable.

The bloc would not countenance any return to a customs border on the island of Ireland. She could not countenance remaining in the customs union. The DUP would not tolerate anything that altered the status of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland has had its own, different laws, for years, on abortion, on gay marriage. But it would not do so on this.

It is an unsquareable circle that has burnt the word “backstop” into the souls of the nation. It has become the stuff of sleep paralysis nightmares, month after month after month of trying to move on concrete legs.

The moments at which she had to save her premiership are so many it is almost impossible to recall them all. She was handed a P45 by a serial prankster in the middle of her conference speech. Then she lost her voice and the set fell down around her.

It was more than two years after the UK voted to leave the European Union before she was able to coerce her cabinet into an agreed position on the UK’s negotiating strategy. They finally agreed to it at a weekend summer summit at Chequers. Then her Brexit secretary and her foreign secretary resigned over it.

She shed cabinet ministers at an unprecedented rate. She lost more parliamentary votes, 28, than David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and John Major put together. One of those defeats was the largest in British political history. Another led to her government being found in contempt of parliament, for refusing to publish legal advice that was damaging to it. A historic first.

But she did win one crucial vote. At the end of last year, when she failed to put her withdrawal deal before the House of Commons, certain she would lose it, her tormentors in the European Research Group finally succeeded in bringing a vote of no confidence against her. That day, MPs ultimately decided that they did have confidence in her.

It set in motion a kind of political torture that this country has never seen. Her own MPs had chosen to keep her premiership going, but they deprived it of its only purpose. Three times she brought her withdrawal bill before the commons. Three times she lost. Each time she returned to Brussels to extract concessions that could not be extracted, like a beleaguered waitress, shuttling between a stubborn chef and an impossible customer.

It was a torture that ran through winter and spring. Seasons changed but nothing changed. It was punctuated by increasingly bizarre set-piece statements outside and inside Downing Street. No deal stopped being better than a bad deal. Brexit might no longer mean Brexit. The whole transparent edifice fell away.

In one of her final acts of desperation, she stood, late at night, behind a lectern in 10 Downing Street, and stared down the barrel of the television cameras, trying to appeal directly to the public, by blaming MPs for the intractable mess. It was nothing short of stunning. Within 24 hours she had all but apologised for it.

She began that notorious statement by saying that failing to deliver Brexit had been a “cause of profound personal regret”. It set in motion the inevitability of the UK having to take part in elections to the European parliament. Brexit has unleashed terrible populist demons upon the UK. The European elections have been a golden opportunity for them.

That she, the prime minister, and leader of the Conservative Party, gave them an entirely free run at them is quite possibly the most damaging thing she has done. The potential consequences do not bear thinking about. But the torture will not see out the summer. The show is over.

There is already a clamour to ask how history will judge her. We cannot possibly know. History will contextualise her against what comes next, the history we are yet to live through. It is possible, probable even, that the May premiership will be remembered as a calm and genteel time. She has made mistakes, but she has also been the lightning rod for problems that are all about Brexit, not about her, and that is likely to become clear very soon indeed.

In those chaotic days of 2016, she seemed like the sensible choice because she had been a reluctant, or at least not especially enthusiastic Remainer. She was a bridge between troubled worlds. She steps down from leading a party fighting a furious civil war with itself. The precise circumstances that made her the right choice in 2016 have not gone away, they have intensified. Her replacement faces a terrible crisis from day one. There is precious little reason to imagine they will be better placed to manage it than her.

It is possible history will note a quite staggering amount of bad luck. It was her choice to ride the impossible bronco of Brexit. President Trump is a crisis she could not have seen coming. And surely no one has ever paid so high a price for a sore throat.

The intricacies of who blames who for misery the country and its prime minister have been through together are too complex to chart. Whoever has tortured who, there is nobody who hasn’t suffered. Do not be surprised if, after the pressure valve is released and the inevitable moment of catharsis, surprisingly large reserves of empathy will be discovered. There will never be a cry of “Come back Theresa!” but it may nevertheless be that all will be very quickly forgiven.

(Source: Independent)

With a guttural sob, she turned away as if desperate to avoid eye contact with the country

This was the speech she should have given in 2016, but she turned to compromise only after her determination never to do so had failed 

It wasn’t the tears that did it but the speed of the turn. A flash of humanity had been allowed to break through and now it had to be shut down. There had been a crack in the voice and that would be the end of the drama thank you very much.

Other prime ministers to live through this dire moment are adjusted enough to the glare of the spotlight to find themselves able to pause, to take it in. Others have allowed themselves a moment’s daydream in the sunshine, to reflect on their achievements, all packed up into boxes now and loaded into the removal van.

Not this one. She turned away from the nation as if it were a work colleague with whom eye contact is best avoided. As she went on her short staccato steps back into 10 Downing Street, her shoulders were as tense as the rest of us are for what comes next.

She spoke of compromise. She made as clear as any politician who is as certain an enemy of clarity as she has been that whoever comes next will face the same challenges she has. But if the single tear that never quite emerged was for anything, it will be for her own personal failings as much as the impossibility of the task.

If she had given this speech three years ago things would be very different. If she had stood in the sunshine outside 10 Downing Street and said then that the only way forward is compromise, there is a slim chance Britain might be out of the European Union by now. But the urge to compromise only came after the abject failure of her utter determination not to.

When she spoke of her legacy it lasted barely 20 seconds. One of her three self-proclaimed achievements was an independent inquiry into Grenfell. Is there any prime minister, any human being, who would not have managed this?

Really, it was a speech that peaked at its opening sentence. “Ever since I first stepped through the door behind me as prime minister, I have strived to make the United Kingdom a country that works not just for a privileged few but for everyone.”

And yet, three years on here she was making way for the grandest charlatan of them all. A man who has been sacked twice for lying, and who, but for the most unimaginable privilege, would fail to hold down a job at Carphone Warehouse. The worst foreign secretary in the country’s history, and a personal, political and professional degenerate.

This, in some ways, is the best she can hope for. History will be kind to her, for no reason other than it is about to get whole orders of magnitude worse.

(Source: Independent)

Boris Johnson: The most infamous lies and untruths by the Conservative leadership candidate

Prominent Tory's falsehoods range from incorrect 14th century history to the EU banana police

Boris Johnson’s flirtation with dishonesty has cost him at least three jobs and damaged his standing with the people of Liverpool and London.

The Conservative frontrunner is now facing a possible private prosecution for intentionally misleading voters during the EU referendum campaign.

And while he once told The Independent that his mistakes “are too numerous to list in full”, here is our roundup of his seven most notorius untruths.

The made-up quote
Boris Johnson was sacked from his job at The Times newspaper over allegations he fabricated a quote from his godfather, the historian Colin Lucas, for a front-page article about the discovery of Edward II’s Rose Palace.

“The trouble was that somewhere in my copy I managed to attribute to Colin the view that Edward II and Piers Gaveston would have been cavorting together in the Rose Palace,” he claimed.

Alas, Gaveston was executed 13 years before the palace was built. “It was very nasty,” Mr Johnson added, before attempting to downplay it as nothing more than a schoolboy blunder.

Fake news from Brussels
After leaving the Times, Mr Johnson moved to The Daily Telegraph, working as the publication's Brussels correspondent between 1989 and 1994.

His articles, like those in several other Eurosceptic newspapers, contained many of the claims widely described as “Euromyths”, including plans to introduce same-size “eurocoffins”, establish a “banana police force” to regulate the shape of the curved yellow fruit, and ban prawn cocktail crisps.

When questioned about them in parliament, he denied suggestions they were a figment of his imagination.

“There is a great deal of effort being made to deprecate those who think we should leave the EU and everything we say is somehow mythical”, he replied.

Misrepresenting the people of Liverpool
Mr Johnson became editor of the Spectator in 1999 after telling owner Conrad Black, who was later convicted of fraud, that he would not pursue a political career. This promise was broken in 2001 when he won election as Conservative MP for Henley in Oxfordshire.

Three years later he was forced to apologise for an article in the magazine which blamed drunken Liverpool fans for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster and suggested that the people of the city were wallowing in their victim status.

“Anyone, journalist or politician, should say sorry to the people of Liverpool – as I do – for misrepresenting what happened at Hillsborough,” he said.

The extramarital affair
Michael Howard gave Boris Johnson two new jobs after becoming leader of the Conservatives in 2003 – party vice-chairman and shadow arts minister.

He was sacked from both positions in November 2004 after assuring Mr Howard that tabloid reports of his affair with Spectator columnist Petronella Wyatt were false and an “inverted pyramid of piffle”. When the story was found to be true, he refused to resign.

Broken promises
Mr Johnson's fondness for fallacy continued as London Mayor. Having promised in his 2008 manifesto to ensure there would be manned ticket offices at every train station, he agreed to widespread closures to pay for a 24-hour tube.

He promised to eradicate rough sleeping by 2012, only for it to double during his leadership. He was also accused of telling “barefaced lies” after he stated that police numbers would increase in London despite government cuts.

The lies on the bus go...
Launching the Vote Leave bus tour, Mr Johnson returned to the scene of his earlier falsehoods by repeating his old allegations that the EU was setting rules on the shape of bananas.

He also backed the infamous claim on the side of the bus that the UK was sending £350m a week to the EU, followed by “let’s fund our NHS instead”.

The UK Statistics Authority issued an official statement in May 2016 describing the claim as “misleading”, but Mr Johnson repeated it in an article in the Telegraph in September 2017.

The article has since been taken down and Mr Johnson is facing a private prosecution over claims he deliberately lied during the campaign.

The MP's lawyer told a court: “I should make it clear that because of the interest in this case that it is absolutely denied by Mr Johnson that he acted in an improper or dishonest manner at any time.”

‘I didn’t say anything about Turkey’
In January Boris Johnson claimed he did not mention Turkey during the referendum after it was suggested he falsely claimed 80 million Turks would come to Britain unless the UK left the EU.

In fact, he co-signed a letter stating that “the only way to avoid having common borders with Turkey is to vote Leave and take back control”. The Vote Leave campaign also produced a poster reading: “Turkey (population 76 million) is joining the EU”, adding “David Cameron wants Turkey to join the EU. How will our NHS cope?”.

Mr Johnson, whose great-grandfather was the Ottoman politican Ali Kemal, was also quoted as saying “I am very pro-Turkish but what I certainly can’t imagine is a situation in which 77 million of my fellow Turks and those of Turkish origin can come here without any checks at all. That is mad – that won’t work.”

Mr Johnson’s Turkish cousin commented: “He doesn’t strike me as being very honest about his views.”

(Source: Independent)

Theresa May was a bad PM – but her resignation will do nothing to arrest Britain’s long-term decline

Her strategic ineptitude and tunnel vision led her to the cliff edge. Yet the country’s crisis runs far deeper than her deficiencies as a leader

There is a story about an enthusiastic American who took a phlegmatic English friend to see the Niagara Falls.

“Isn’t that amazing?” exclaimed the American. “Look at that vast mass of water dashing over that enormous cliff!”

“But what,” asked the Englishman, “is to stop it?”

My father, Claud Cockburn, used to tell this fable to illustrate what, as a reporter in New York on the first day of the Wall Street Crash on 24 October 1929, it was like to watch a great and unstoppable disaster taking place.

I thought about my father’s account of the mood on that day in New York as Theresa May announced her departure as prime minister, the latest milestone – but an important one – in the implosion of British politics in the age of Brexit. Everybody with their feet on the ground has a sense of unavoidable disaster up ahead but no idea of how to avert it; least of all May’s likely successors with their buckets of snake oil about defying the EU and uniting the nation.

It is a mistake to put all the blame on the politicians. I have spent the last six months travelling around Britain, visiting places from Dover to Belfast, where it is clear that parliament is only reflecting real fault lines in British society. Brexit may have envenomed and widened these divisions, but it did not create them and it is tens of millions of people who differ radically in their opinions, not just an incompetent and malign elite.

Even so, May was precisely the wrong political personality to try to cope with the Brexit crisis: not stupid herself, she has a single-minded determination amounting to tunnel vision that is akin to stupidity. Her lauding of consensus in her valedictory speech announcing her resignation was a bit rich after three years of rejecting compromise until faced with imminent defeat.

Charging ahead regardless only works for those who are stronger than all obstacles, which was certainly not the case in Westminster and Brussels. Only those holding all the trump cards can ignore the other players at the table. This should have been blindingly clear from the day May moved into Downing Street after a referendum that showed British voters to be split down the middle, something made even more obvious when she lost her parliamentary majority in 2017. But, for all her tributes to the virtues of compromise today, she relied on the votes of MPs from the sectarian Protestant DUP in Northern Ireland, a place which had strongly voted to remain in the EU.

Her miscalculations in negotiating with the EU were equally gross. The belief that Britain could cherry pick what it wanted from its relationship with Europe was always wishful thinking unless the other 27 EU states were disunited. It is always in the interests of the members of a club to make sure that those who leave have a worse time outside than in.

The balance of power was against Britain and this is not going to change, though Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab might pretend that what has been lacking is sufficient willpower or belief in Brexit as a sort of religious faith. These are dangerous delusions, enabling Nigel Farage to sell the idea of “betrayal” and being “stabbed in the back” just like German right-wing politicians after 1918.

Accusations of treachery might be an easy sell in Britain because it is so steeped in myths of self-sufficiency, fostered by self-congratulatory films and books about British prowess in the Second World War. More recent British military failures in Iraq and Afghanistan either never made it on to the national news agenda or are treated as irrelevant bits of ancient history. The devastating Chilcot report on Britain in the Iraq War received insufficient notice because its publication coincided with the referendum in 2016.

Brexiters who claim to be leading Britain on to a global stage are extraordinarily parochial in their views of the outside world. The only realistic role for Britain in a post-Brexit world will be, as ever, a more humble spear carrier for Trump’s America. In this sense, it is appropriate that the Trump state visit should so neatly coincide with May’s departure and the triumphant emergence of Trump’s favourite British politicians, Johnson and Farage.

Just how decisive is the current success of the Brexiters likely to be? Their opponents say encouragingly that they have promised what they cannot deliver in terms of greater prosperity so they are bound to come unstuck. But belief in such a comforting scenario is the height of naivety because the world is full of politicians who have failed to deliver the promises that got them elected, but find some other unsavoury gambit to keep power by exacerbating foreign threats, as in India, or locking up critics, as in Turkey.

Britain is entering a period of permanent crisis not seen since the 17th century. Brexit was a symptom as well as a cause of divisions. The gap between the rich and the poor, the householder and the tenant, the educated and the uneducated, the old and the young, has grown wider and wider. Brexit became the great vent through which grievances that had nothing to with Brussels bubbled. The EU is blamed for all the sins of de-industrialisation, privatisation and globalisation and, if it did not create them, then it did not do enough to alleviate their impact.

The proponents of Leave show no sign of having learned anything over the last three years, but they do not have to because they can say that the rewards of Brexit lie in a sun-lit future. Remainers have done worse because they are claiming that the rewards of the membership of the EU are plenteous and already with us. “If you wish to see its monument, look around you,” they seem to say. This is a dangerous argument: why should anybody from ex-miners in the Welsh Valleys to former car workers in Birmingham or men who once worked on Dover docks endorse what has happened to them while Britain has been in the EU? Why should they worry about a rise or fall in the GDP when they never felt it was their GDP in the first place?

May is getting a sympathy vote for her final lachrymose performance, but it is undeserved. Right up to the end there was a startling gap between her words and deeds. The most obvious contradiction was her proclaimed belief that “life depends on compromise”. But it also turns out that “proper funding for mental health” was at the heart of her NHS long term plan, though hospital wards for the mentally ill continue to close and patients deep in psychosis are dispatched to the other end of the country.

The Wall Street Crash in 1929 exposed the fragility and rottenness of much in the United States. Brexit may do the same in Britain. In New York 90 years ago, my father only truly appreciated how bad the situation really was when his boss said to him in a low voice: “Remember, when we are writing this story, the word ‘panic’ is not to be used.”

(Source: Independent)

Mike Pompeo spells it out: When it comes to trade, Britain is basically a tramp waiting at America’s bins

There is something almost edifying about the Trump administration. At least they don’t bother to pretend that Britain’s role is anything other than to do as it is told

Three years and roughly eight million political lifetimes ago, a man called Barack Obama stood in a room in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and told Britain that if it voted for Brexit it would go “to the back of the queue” for a trade deal with the USA.

Britain, you may know, ignored that advice, and yet, for some mystifying reason, it appears to find itself not to at the front of the queue, and not even at the back of the queue. But rather, its role is now that of a tramp, waiting hopefully at closing time by the bins out the back of America.

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo is in town this week, taking his turn to stand in a room in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Pompeo is a kind of Trump-lite yoghurt in a 19-stone carton. The job became vacant, you might recall, after the last guy called the president an idiot, and in a rare moment of shrewdness in the Oval Office, Trump replaced him with one of the few people on planet Earth who would be in no position to do the same.

And here was Pompeo, standing next to Former Charterhouse Head Boy Jeremy Hunt, while the two pretended to be great mates, carrying all the while the kind of interpersonal chemistry that does not require a huge leap of the imagination to see Hunt hiding in the toilets at a summer garden party just to avoid him.

Indeed, Hunt began things with reference to the imminent the 75th D-Day commemorations, and a certain state visit that will overshadow them entirely.

“We look forward to welcoming President Trump,” he said, lying with about the same level of conviction that stops four-year-olds believing in Father Christmas. Only a small fib, of course, and a necessary one, but I have clean forgotten the last time I heard a frontline politician say anything they actually believed. It corrodes, this stuff, and the corrosion is not cosmetic anymore, it’s into the engine, the country well on its way to insurance write-off status.

And more to the point, here was Pompeo, outlining the “special relationship” as he sees it, which is to say that if Britain wants the trade deal which it wrongly imagines will salvage its economy and international reputation, it will do precisely what it’s told.

Does the UK government’s contract with Huawei for its 5G network pose a problem for the special relationship, Pompeo was asked. “I’m sure the UK would never do anything to jeopardise the special relationship,” came the answer. That’s a yes, then.

Would it pose a risk to intelligence sharing, he was also asked. “We will make sure our intelligence is held within secure networks,” came the answer. Another yes.

There is something almost bizarrely edifying about the Trump administration. Ruthless self-interest has always been the American way. It’s just that previous administrations have had the oratorical skills to conceal it within global, aspirational values. Freedom. Democracy. Stuff like that. That these guys just don’t have the bullshitting skills is refreshing in its way.

As the event began, rumours emerged that US trade officials have been referring to the forthcoming trade deal as the United States United Kingdom Agreement, USUKA for short, pronounced “you sucker”. Such rumours may not be true. But the truth within is held to be self-evident.

Moments later, Pompeo would be asking another audience within the same building, “Would the Iron Lady have allowed China to control the internet of the future?”

This is not the first time the “special relationship” has turned out to be so special that one half of it comes to visit the other half and mercilessly criticises it while it does so. The word “special” has a dubious status in the modern lexicon. Not everything described as special is done so in a good way.

Britain, in other words, will do what it’s told and wait to see what it gets. Still, what do you expect when you’re dealing with a comedy act? Not so much at the front of the queue as sat in the front row, a place for the vain, the masochistic, the desperate or the downright stupid. Or, occasionally, all four.

(Source: Independent)

These people complaining about switching miles to kilometres in 1978 sound suspiciously like Brexiteers

If there's one thing we've discovered throughout our time writing about the carbuncle that otherwise goes by the name Brexit, it's that quite often, a lot of arguments for Brexit are somewhat half-baked.

There are plenty of examples of this, and sadly, it's not just from the Brexit-voting public. Often, it's from those who actually orchestrated the entire thing.

Take Nigel Farage. Just days ago, he was left red-faced when he failed to answer basic questions about Ireland and the European Union while being interviewed on Channel 4 news.

Likewise, Boris Johnson was shown to be completely 'deluded' on live television, when it was revealed to him that the EU refused to renegotiate the back-stop.

And, who could forget the Tory Brexiteer MP for Shrewsbury Daniel Kawczynski asking the Polish government to block the Article 50 extension.

Now, a video has been unearthed from the BBC archives, that shows people complaining about switching miles to kilometres on this day in 1978 sound suspiciously like Brexiteers.

Picture: @BBCArchive / Twitter

When asked about what they thought about the change, they didn't sound impressed.
One woman said:

It's rubbish, why don't they leave everything alone?

Another said:

Well I travel abroad alot, well when we go abroad, you don't get as much milage to it.

And therefore, you're going to use more petrol, and then they say... so many miles, but you're not going to do that. You're not going to do that because the kilomet... are not the same as the milage.

Ah, yes, an excellent point.

A third added:

It's the treaties of Rome, as my husband would say.

Everything's being decimalised, it's horrible, I can't stand it.

Great, point well made.

Watch the entire video below:

#OnThisDay 1978: The British public were not impressed at the prospect of switching from miles to kilometres. pic.twitter.com/ubieUxCuuJ

— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) 3 February 2019

(Source: Independent) 

In the Brexit era, Britain is more Mr Bean than James Bond

If there’s any film character Tory Brexiteers identify with it’s tool of empire Bond. In reality, they’re more slapstick than sexy

We spend far too much time getting down about the state of the country – the whole international laughing-stock, spinning manically out of control and generally going nowhere thing is pretty draining. Yet hardly any effort is spent crudely shoehorning in film references to explain our political plight. This is a real shame, because for the Tory Brexiteers who valiantly yelled “Charge!”, then promptly led us off a cliff, the story of the past three years has fundamentally been a clash between self-perception and reality.

 Our macho superhero will gloriously defend a country whose government has wet itself while everyone else was watching
If there’s any film character with whom they identify, I’d plump for James Bond. Tough, no-nonsense, doesn’t play by the rules – he’s menaced by sinister European foes but always takes them down in the end against all the odds. A chauvinist who belongs to another era but considers that a plus, because moving with the times is for wimps. The tragedy for them – and, I feel, at this point, for the nation as a whole – is that they’re more like Mr Bean, a petulant, self-absorbed slapstick caricature who excels in screwing up the most basic of tasks.

Rowan Atkinson in The Story of Bean … ‘a petulant, self-absorbed caricature who excels in screwing up the most basic of tasks’. Photograph: taken from picture library

Bond 25 (there’s still no name announced, just the rumoured Shatterhand, which sounds like an unpleasant toilet-related accident) will be the first 007 film of the Brexit era. Our macho superhero will be sent out to gloriously defend a country whose government has wet itself while everyone else was watching. His boss will be Gavin Williamson, a man whose idea of tackling Russian malfeasance was to tell them in his big-boy voice to “go away and shut up”. How is anyone going to take it seriously?

To be a po-faced leftie, James Bond was traditionally cold war propaganda, basically a misogynist trying to make British imperialism look sexy, although it’s more recently taken some interesting detours. In Quantum of Solace, comrade Bond joins the anti-imperialist resistance and tries to stop a multinational corporation in alliance with the CIA from staging a coup d’etat to privatise Bolivia’s water supply. Under pressure from the Bourne franchise, he’s even shown hints of emotional vulnerability.

Indeed, for those who saw Brexit as a cultural counter-revolution – basically to tell those PC lefties, the party’s over, we’re bringing back blue passports and unapologetic racism – there are signs that they’re even losing James Bond to the culture war. The decision to hire Phoebe Waller-Bridge, one of the funniest people on Earth and also a proud feminist, has sent insecure rightwing men into paroxysms of rage: one viral YouTube video screeches, “Feminist Attack on James Bond – MeToo Takes Down 007”, while alt-right Twitter claims that James Bond has been “cucked”.

Perhaps it is for the best that James Bond is not to be updated to represent the spirit of our times. Nobody wants to watch a dribbling, embarrassing mess ordering a martini.

(Source: The Guardian)

The Roundup row: Is the world’s most popular weedkiller carcinogenic?

Producer Monsanto is facing thousands of lawsuits from customers who now have cancer. But not all experts are convinced of a link…

As a third-generation cotton farmer in Bakersfield, California, John Barton estimates that he sprayed thousands of gallons of the herbicide Roundup over the course of his 30-year working life.

“My family were farming 1,000 acres of cotton, so we’d be out in the fields spraying it, and we’d get our pants wet, our shoes wet, our socks wet, and if the wind changed it would blow in our face,” Barton tells me. “We did that spring, summer and fall for most of my life. There was really no regulation at the time that we were spraying Roundup; no one was offered any protection. But I didn’t think anything of it, as they kept telling us how safe it was.”

Concern is growing over glyphosate, the active chemical in Roundup
and other weedkillers. Photograph: Jong-Won Heo/Getty Images

By ‘they’, Barton is referring to Monsanto, the corporation that produces Roundup. Monsanto, which was acquired by the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer last year, is currently facing more than 9,000 lawsuits across the US from plaintiffs, mostly former gardeners and agricultural workers who believe that Roundup exposure caused their cancer.

Last summer, former school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson, who is terminally ill with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, won a landmark victory against the company when jurors ruled that Monsanto had failed to warn him of the health risks posed by Roundup. In the latest trial, which recently got under way in San Francisco, Edwin Hardeman, who suffers from an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, is pursuing a similar verdict. Like Johnson and Hardeman, Barton has also developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma and is preparing to take legal action.

 Dewayne Johnson won a landmark trial against Monsanto in 2018, after developing
non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Photograph: Reuters

“There’s not really a lot of history of cancer in my family,” he says. “I’ve been healthy all my life, so when I was diagnosed in 2015 it surprised me that all of a sudden I had this disease. Now, as a father, I’m worried that I’ve exposed my sons, who are also farmers, to the same cancer.”

But while Johnson’s legal triumph sent reverberations across the world last year, the very question of whether a weedkiller could be responsible for a person’s cancer remains a divisive and highly charged topic across both the scientific and political worlds.

In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) ruled that glyphosate – the active chemical within Roundup and many other popular weedkillers – was “probably carcinogenic”. However, numerous other international agencies, including the European Chemical Agency and European Food Safety Authority (Efsa), continue to declare glyphosate as safe, and there are many scientific studies which have found no association with cancer.

An estimated 6.1 billion kilos of glyphosate-based weedkillers were sprayed across gardens and fields worldwide between 2005 and 2014 (the most recent point at which data has been collected). That is more than any other herbicide, so understanding the true impact on human health is vital.

So, what do we know, and why is there so much uncertainty?

‘Where are all the bodies?’ The inconclusive data
The reason glyphosate was thought to be completely safe for many years is that it works by inhibiting an enzyme pathway behind plant growth, which does not exist in humans. Since the introduction of Roundup-resistant GM food crops – genetically engineered to resist glyphosate – in the mid-1990s, farmers in the US have been able to use it in large quantities to get rid of weeds selectively, while in the UK it is used as the weedkiller of choice, outside of the growing season.

But in the past two decades, some research has suggested that glyphosate may not be as benign as once thought. Last month, a high-profile collaborative study by three US universities reported that individuals with particularly high exposures to glyphosate-based herbicides, for instance those spraying it, could have a 41% increased relative risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

“The lifetime risk of developing NHL is usually around 1 in 50, so what this means is that in populations who are exposed to the very highest levels of glyphosate, it moves to around 1 in 35,” explains Michael Davoren, a molecular toxicology researcher at the University of California. “But the bulk of the risk, as with any cancer, is still going to be due to other factors, including in part strings of ‘bad luck’ mutations in a given set of cells.”

Multiple theories have been voiced as to why this increased risk might arise, such as the idea that glyphosate may mimic the behaviour of certain hormones. One study, by researchers in Thailand, suggested that by doing so, even low levels of glyphosate could increase the rate of breast cancer cell growth in petri dishes.

Edwin Hardeman, who has non-Hodgkin lymphoma, is suing Monsanto for
failing to warn him about the risk of Roundup.
Photograph: Courtesy Andrus Wagstaff PC

However, the trouble is, for every research paper that purports to show a link between glyphosate-based herbicides and cancer, there is another which finds the exact opposite. This hasn’t been helped by the fact that many of the studies may not have been entirely objective. “A lot of the studies backing glyphosate have been funded by entities in a position to profit from the continuing sales,” Davoren says. “And many of those which point towards significant risks are funded by groups who are either engaged in lawsuits against the makers of glyphosate, or are in the position to benefit from sales of glyphosate alternatives. So it gets very, very tricky.”

But even some of the largest independent population-based studies have failed to find any sort of definitive proof. Last year, a two-decade-long analysis of data of nearly 45,000 farmworkers who applied glyphosate-based herbicides to their crops, conducted by the US National Institute of Health, showed no association with non-Hodgkin lymphoma or overall cancer risk.

“This is the strongest argument that Monsanto has,” says Deborah Kurrasch, a neuroscientist at the University of Calgary who has been researching glyphosate for several years. “If it’s so damn bad, then where are all the bodies? The scientific evidence, as it stands right now, is not at all conclusive.”

But one of the factors that have left commentators suspicious of the potential toxicity of these herbicides has been incidents of combative corporate behaviour. In the latest trial, Monsanto has caused eyebrows to raise by obtaining a ban preventing attorneys for the plaintiffs from presenting information regarding its alleged influence on research.

The regulators versus the politicians
There is no question that the glyphosate debate has become highly politicised in recent years. Despite the limited evidence linking glyphosate to health risks, a European Citizens Initiative petition against its use in agriculture still garnered 1.3 million signatures, with the European Union’s 2017 decision to license it for another five years sparking mass protests across the continent.

 An Avaaz protest in Brussels, at the EU’s plans to relicense glyphosate – the licence
was extended in 2017 for five years. Photograph: John Thys/AFP/Getty Images

In addition to cancer, environmental activists have claimed links between herbicide exposure and everything from coeliac disease to autism, while on the other side of the fence, regulatory agencies blame an ongoing anti-GM agenda for driving public sentiment against this small molecule. If glyphosate is banned, campaigners will have struck another severe blow against GM crop production.

“My personal perception is that glyphosate has become a symbol for the use of chemicals in agriculture and the way we produce food in Europe,” says Dr Bernhard Url, executive director of Efsa. “When science meets values, things become complicated. So when politicians are confronted with the opinion of Efsa that glyphosate is safe, they say, ‘No, I don’t want to hear that glyphosate is not carcinogenic because it doesn’t fit into my world view. I want a world without agrochemicals and if you, Efsa, tell us that glyphosate is safe to be used, you must be corrupt.’”

A 2016 study which found a 1,000% rise in the levels of glyphosate in our urine in the past two decades – suggesting that increasing amounts of glyphosate is passing through our diet – provoked further outrage. Except it isn’t really clear whether that has any consequences at all for our health. An Efsa letter, published in the journal Nature, pointed out that glyphosate residues found in Italian pasta or German beer would only exceed known risk thresholds if someone were to consume their entire body weight’s worth of those products in a single day.

To try to understand any potential mechanisms for how glyphosate could be doing something untoward in our bodies, increasing numbers of studies have been conducted in cell lines, rodents, zebrafish and even worms, some of which have suggested that it could have the potential to disrupt basic biological processes such as mitochondrial function. “If anything needs to be looked at, it’s whether glyphosate has some toxicity at a metabolic level,” Kurrasch says. “If you look at a variety of central nervous system (CNS) disorders, all of those have been linked to mitochondrial dysfunction.”

However, so far no link has been found between glyphosate exposure and CNS disorders in humans. The same is true for theories which speculate as to whether glyphosate passing through our gut may perturb the microbiome, inhibiting beneficial bacteria, and so promoting the growth of inflammation-inducing pathogenic bacteria. These theories link glyphosate to inflammatory disorders such as intestinal cancer, yet to date, no such associations have been found in population studies.

The glyphosate debate has even moved to the insect world. While glyphosate has been known for many years to pose health risks to fish, and as such, its use near water is strictly regulated, a paper last year claimed that it could pose a risk to bees. The study found that glyphosate levels in flowers could affect the bee microbiome, potentially affecting their health. However, given that the study examined just 15 bees, this also remains somewhat tenuous.

The backlash
With the legal battles over glyphosate’s alleged link to non-Hodgkin lymphoma set to continue over the coming years, scientists and regulatory bodies alike agree that the only way to try to come to a common consensus about whether it poses a genuine threat is to transparently share their data.

According to Davoren, “The only way this debate is going to be settled is with a large amount of further research built on a philosophy of open data, where everyone says, ‘OK, this is what we found, here is the exact way we did it, here is our raw data, and everybody take a look to be sure that you see there’s no bias.’”

However, such is the political pressure surrounding the use of glyphosate that many strongly suspect it will begin to be phased out, regardless of the scientific conclusions, in the near future. French authorities banned the sale of a form of Roundup earlier this year. President Macron has vowed to outlaw glyphosate-based herbicides altogether by 2021, and both Germany and Italy are reportedly considering following suit.

A crop sprayer in Doebern, Germany: Germany, Italy and France are keen to
ban glyphosate-based herbicides. Photograph: Florian
Gaertner/Photothek via Getty Images

Following Brexit, there is also the potential that the UK, too, will change its current stance on the use of glyphosate in agriculture. A 2017 House of Commons briefing paper on glyphosate suggested that ministers at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs may well take a different approach from the EU.

Efsa is pressing for further discussions about the potential consequences on farming and the food industry of banning glyphosate before drastic measures are taken, but whether its call is heeded remains to be seen.

“There needs to be meaningful discussions about this on a political stage,” Url says. “Do we want to use agrochemicals in Europe or not, and if so, under which conditions? What would a world without glyphosate and herbicides mean for agriculture and biodiversity, food prices, consumers? And what are the risks and benefits?”

But for Barton and the many plaintiffs, there remains no doubt in their minds that the high levels of glyphosate exposure, which they encountered throughout their working lives, have contributed to their illnesses.

“There was never a warning on that product to be careful when you use it, that you need to be protected, because there could be a danger,” Barton says. “I believe Monsanto put profit above people, and they’ve got away with it for all these years.”

Everyday dangers
International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is funded by the World Health Organization and its research is regarded as the benchmark for determining what agents may be cancer-causing. Some examples of its classifications below…

Group 1 carcinogens
Carcinogenic to humans. 120 agents, including:

• alcoholic drinks
• asbestos
• diesel engine exhaust emissions
• indoor tanning
• tobacco
• x-rays

Group 2A
Probably carcinogenic to humans. 82 agents, including:

• red meat
• indoor emissions from wood-burning stoves
• glyphosate
• shiftwork that involves circadian disruption
• petroleum refining (occupational exposures in)
• frying – emissions from high temperature

Group 2B
Possibly carcinogenic to humans. 311 agents, including:

• dry cleaning (occupational exposures in)
• firefighting (occupational exposures in)
• aloe vera
• bracken fern
• ginkgo biloba extract
• lead

(Source: The Guardian)

Why Brexit is bad news for the UK and the rest of the world

Economic uncertainty aside, Brexit has made the UK seem increasingly intolerant and inward-looking. No wonder crucial events in Kashmir have not evoked much thought from its leadership today, writes Gina Miller on Daily O. Read on: 

On the face of it, Brexit is great news for India, if not for my country. Win-win for you, lose-lose for us.

It gives me no pleasure to write that as although my family heritage is Indian, the United Kingdom is my home and my country and I will always want what is best for it.

I have lived here since the age of 11 and my children were all born here. It was for them and their whole generation that I  fought so hard to ensure all the citizens of the United Kingdom know the facts about Brexit — and why, in 2016, I successfully took the British Government to court over its attempt to put itself above the law and bypass Parliament by denying our MPs a vote on invoking Article 50, the process by which we leave the European Union.

That case — billed as the most important British constitutional legal action undertaken in 400 years — meant the world to me as it struck at the heart of our Parliament’s sovereignty. 

So much of what Brexit is about is fundamentally reframing our values and principles and it’s changing, too, the way we operate as a country, internally and across the world where we have, until now, always been looked upon as a beacon of hope and a bastion of common sense, reason and decency.

Great Britain and India have of course had a long and sometimes painful history, but what always strikes me is how the love our two countries have for each other has conquered all. Brexit may well benefit India financially, but I sense no obvious rejoicing on the subcontinent about what is happening here.

It is hard not to think of an old and valued friend looking upon us now with quiet despair. India, like many other countries, respected us because of our rule of law, seemingly incorruptible institutions, unemotional calm and ability to compromise and convene.

Brexit may benefit India financially — but there is no rejoicing
about what is happening. (Photo: Reuters)

Those who voted for Brexit in the UK have underestimated our powerbase and exactly where it comes from. It has not been about economic or military power but much harder to measure, less tangible sources of power that has held the UK in high global esteem and regard for much of the last 70 years. But for the last 40 of those 70 years, it has been largely derived from the UK being at the EU top table with a seat at the continental political entity. This has allowed us to punch well above our weight on the international stage. 

We were seen as a source of order and stability in a world that needs both more than ever. If this were not a time when we were fixated about ourselves, our eyes looking inwards and not outwards, we would, I am sure, have a prime minister now fully engaged with the profoundly worrying situation in Kashmir, not to mention other flashpoints such as Myanmar and Yemen.

In the event, theses crises have hardly been mentioned at all by our most senior politicians — and they are being kept off our front pages by the endless twists and turns in the Brexit saga. 

Sadly, along with Donald Trump in the United States and Vladimir Putin in Russia, my country can now reasonably be said to be a destabilising rather than a stabilising influence.

What is worse, the strident tone of some of the Brexit politicians and their supporters in the tabloid press have put out a message that Britain is becoming an intolerant country.

Much of the language we heard leading up to and since the 2016 Referendum vote to leave the European Union has conjured up a kind of imperialistic vision of Britain and Britishness that evokes memories of writers such as Rudyard Kipling at their absolute worst.

Still, the benefits of Brexit to India are now obvious.

The weak pound means it is now significantly less expensive for Indians to holiday, study or even buy property here. Our departure from the European Union — especially if we leave without an agreement — will give a real sense of urgency to trade negotiations between our two countries. And while it will no doubt be easier to pull one off without having to factor in the needs of other EU member states, we will no longer be negotiating from a position of strength.

Ironically, given that for many British voters, Brexit was about clamping down on immigration, it will almost certainly result in the relaxation of UK immigration policies that would favour skilled and professional workers from India coming here. Already we are well aware of the shortage of EU workers who are either leaving or not coming here because Brexit means their futures are uncertain — a study from the Migration Observatory at Oxford University shows EU net migration down an astonishing 70 per cent since the referendum, the lowest it has been since 2009.

The tragedy is that before Brexit, my country and India enjoyed a brilliant relationship.

Trade between our two countries had been growing rapidly in the last 10 years — it was £18 billion in 2017 alone — but now, a great many Indian companies based in the UK are pondering shifting their operations across the English Channel as they recognise we are no longer a springboard to the European market.

I have attempted through my Lead Not Leave organisation to bring clarity to the arguments now raging around the issues in Westminster and have gone so far as to set out some common sense proposals to the British government, based on a promising dialogue that Theresa May’s predecessor, David Cameron, had begun with Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, some months before he chose to call the EU referendum.

However, one of the biggest problems is that the wave of populism in the UK, across Europe and America, is about emotion, rather than reason — so it is hard to engage in this argument on the basis of facts and common sense. Talking to leading Indian businessmen and women, it is hard not to detect a barely disguised note of exasperation in their voices now, as they talk about the UK.

Ralf Speth, the CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, owned by the mighty Indian conglomerate Tata, warned last Autumn that a "no-deal" Brexit and a lack of clarity over Britain's post-Brexit plans were threatening the UK-based luxury car maker's entire operational set-up. In January, JLR confirmed it was cutting 4,500 jobs, with the majority coming from its 40,000 strong UK workforce. The cuts come on top of last year's 1,500 job losses.

Nationalism and isolationism are all very well — but ultimately, the threats we face, not least tackling the huge social impact of globalisation on our work forces, climate change, the digital revolution and terrorism, can only be addressed internationally. 

The words of John Donne’s poem No Man’s an Island ring through my head often these days.

No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as any manner of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.