“Keir Starmer is no longer really in charge of this government”; we are ruled by Ed Miliband, said Michael Gove in The Spectator. The man who “messed it up” as Labour leader a decade ago now has “real power and popularity” within the cabinet, the unions and the wider party membership, said Will Lloyd in The New Statesman.

The energy security and net zero secretary may be facing huge pressure as the Iran war sends price shocks through the global energy market but he seems to be doing so from an unassailable position in British politics.

‘Ventriloquist’s dummy’

“Almost everything terrible that could be said” about Miliband has been said already, said Lloyd in The New Statesman. Now I hear “the confidence of someone who had been torched so many times” he can no longer feel fire. “His beliefs have deepened, not changed” and they have “influenced his colleagues, too, perhaps without them realising”. If Andy Burnham or Angela Rayner were to become Labour leader, they wouldn’t “deviate from the script Miliband has written”. Nigel Farage has even “told friends privately” that he expects Miliband himself to become prime minister by 2027.

I have news for anyone who fears such a development, said Gove in The Spectator: this is already Miliband’s administration. Starmer’s foreign policy, economic policy, “political positioning” and “very quest for meaning” are “All. Ed. Miliband.” He has his hand up Starmer’s back “where a spine should be, controlling the ventriloquist’s dummy”.

We all know that in last autumn’s reshuffle, Starmer tried to move Miliband from his current brief, but Miliband said no “and that was that”, said Tom Harris in The Telegraph. Starmer “dare not even ask” Miliband about his role in “deciding whether to exploit new oil and gas fields in the North Sea”. Doesn’t he know his job is to lead the government, not to wait for Miliband to tell him what to do?

‘Clown prince of the soft left’

Miliband was the “leader who broke Labour – and in doing so, broke Britain”, said Sarah Ditum in The i Paper. “He entrenched” the party’s “worst habits of self-loathing and internal schism”, lost one general election, and “set the stage for even worse”. His “miserable tenure” promptly ushered in the Eurosceptic Jeremy Corbyn, and Labour put up “only a vague shrug” of opposition to Brexit.

But by appointing him to the cabinet, Starmer has “treated Miliband as an elder statesman, rather than the clown prince of the soft left”. Handing the energy brief “to a man whose history as leader is a catalogue of incompetence” may well ensure a “catastrophic swing back to fossil fuels under a Reform government”.

The departures of Peter Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney mean Miliband has “finally won” the tussle between New Labour/Blue Labour and the soft left, said Daniel Finkelstein in The Times. Starmer is “still quite likely to fall”, and any subsequent leadership battle “can only be held or won from the Ed Miliband position”. What Labour’s “lost leader” stands for is “irresistible within the party”. Miliband “will be its most important political force, whatever his formal job”.

Is Britain rethinking its big break with the EU? Will Banksy survive (another) unmasking? And is battery technology about to take a leap forward?

Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.

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The UK, Gibraltar and the EU are set to end “almost a decade of uncertainty for the British overseas territory since the Brexit referendum”, said London’s The Standard.

A draft treaty drawn up by the three governments aims to “protect British sovereignty, UK military autonomy and secure Gibraltar’s economic future”. Madrid will hope, however, that this deal drags the territory further towards Spanish control.

What is in the treaty?

Though not fully ratified, the draft treaty claims to tackle the “last major unresolved issue from Brexit”.

Under the new rules, the UK will allow Spanish border guards to check passports for those entering territory by air or sea. This means that these arrivals will present their passports to both British and Spanish authorities – in “dual border control checks” similar to those seen at Eurostar terminals at London’s St Pancras.

In effect, this “shifts the EU’s external border from the between Spain and Gibraltar to the Rock’s points of arrival”, said The Times. Gibraltar will not become part of the EU, but residents will be able to pass into Spain freely, and vice versa. The “barbed-wire fence” separating Gibraltar from Spain is “expected to be dismantled” after more than a century to create a “fluid border” for people and goods.

As a result, “the Rock effectively becomes part of the EU’s Schengen zone of passport-free movement”, said The Telegraph. By removing the land border, the “deal protects Gibraltar residents and Spaniards from post-Brexit rules”, meaning they are no longer subject to the visa-free travel limit of 90 days every 180 days.

In terms of customs, Gibraltar must now “align with EU single market rules” and be “subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice”. This means that “cigarettes and alcohol will no longer be as cheap on the Rock”. Gibraltar will keep its zero-VAT regime but a new “transaction tax” starting at 15% will apply to goods imported to the territory for sale.

Crucially, the draft agreement does not affect sovereignty of the territory. According to the treaty, the UK will “never enter into arrangements” where sovereignty would pass to another state against the “freely and democratically expressed wishes” of the Gibraltarian people.

Why now?

Gibraltar was ceded by Spain to the UK in 1713, under the Treaty of Utrecht, and the resident population is “heavily in favour of remaining a British overseas territory”, said The Independent. The last time Gibraltar voted on the issue of sharing sovereignty with Spain, in 2002, “almost 99% of Gibraltarians rejected the move”.

Spain had been due to apply the EU’s new automated “Entry/Exit” border system from April, which would include biometric checks on the border with Gibraltar, said the BBC. If no agreement had been reached, there would have been “mandatory passport checks” at air, land and sea borders, which would “devastate Gibraltar’s economy”, lead to “endless” entry queues and cost “hundreds of millions a year” to UK taxpayers, according to the proposed treaty.

Who will it affect?

Around 15,000 people – just under half of the territory’s 35,000 population – cross the border each day, mainly for work purposes. They will not need to have their passports checked and can pass through freely.

What has the reaction been?

The “safe and secure” proposals allow Gibraltar to “look to the future with confidence”, while “protecting our British way of life” and exploring “new opportunities for growth and prosperity”, said Fabian Picardo, the chief minister of Gibraltar.

British and Spanish diplomats hope “the treaty will improve bilateral relations”, said The Standard. However, Spain wants to “strengthen” its “legal claim on the Rock, leading the way for Madrid to wield greater influence over the territory”. Some in the UK, meanwhile, may see the deal as an “erosion of sovereignty”.

Any agreement that “hands Spain new powers over entry, residency, infrastructure or enforcement must be examined line by line by Parliament before it takes effect”, said shadow Foreign Office minister Wendy Morton.

What will happen next?

The treaty has been published in draft, so still needs to be reviewed by legal teams from all parties. Then it will have to be ratified by both the UK, Gibraltarian and European parliaments.

“Gibraltar’s government says it is hoping to provisionally apply the deal from 10 April,” said the BBC.

From Antony and Cleopatra to Burton and Taylor, history is filled with volatile relationships.

One might expect some circumspection from politicians about their personal ups and downs playing out in the public arena. But in an era of geopolitical instability and terminal online-ness, the rest of us can barely keep up.

Break-ups

Elon Musk and Donald Trump

It was “perhaps the most widely predicted break-up in American political history”, said Fortune. The “bromance” between Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and Donald Trump, one of the most powerful, ended in very public acrimony.

The Tesla and X boss was initially known as the US president’s “first buddy” for his seemingly unparalleled access. Musk helped bankroll Trump’s return to the White House, and claimed after his election victory that he loved Trump “as much as a straight man can love another man”. But after taking a chainsaw to the federal government with his “cost-cutting” initiative, DOGE, Musk left the administration in May. Just days later, he urged Republicans to reject Trump’s “massive, courageous, pork-filled” tax bill, which he called a “disgusting abomination”.

After that, the “speed of the fallout was breathtaking”, said The New York Times, and “every bit as lowdown, vindictive, personal, petty, operatic, childish, consequential, messy and public as many had always expected it would be”.

Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana

After leaving the Labour Party in high dudgeon in July, Zarah Sultana attempted to set up a new left-wing grassroots party with now-independent MP Jeremy Corbyn. But the duo couldn’t even decide on the name, much less anything else.

Corbyn claimed Sultana had set up a paid membership system that collected money and data without proper approval and authorisation. Sultana claimed she had been frozen out by a “sexist boys’ club” of Corbyn and four pro-Gaza independent MPs. The pair had a bitter falling out that saw Sultana claiming she had consulted libel lawyers. She later rescinded the threat, and told Sky News that they were like Liam and Noel Gallagher, the famously feuding Oasis brothers who patched things up for their reunion tour.

However, she neglected to invite Corbyn to a rally due to take place on the eve of the (what is now known as) Your Party conference. Don’t look back in anger, indeed.

Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner

Angela Rayner was once seen as the future of the Labour Party – and possibly its future leader. But this summer she became embroiled in controversy after admitting that she had mistakenly underpaid stamp duty on a flat in Hove. Keir Starmer initially stood by his deputy, but the noise grew louder and she was nicknamed “three pads” Rayner.

Rayner referred herself to the independent ethics adviser, and after being found to have breached the ministerial code, she handed in her resignation, plunging Labour into a chaotic deputy leadership race and cabinet reshuffle. Starmer’s response to her resignation letter was ostensibly warm: “You have been a trusted colleague and a true friend for many years.”

But now the rumour mill is once again stirring that Rayner might be gunning for his job. She declined to rule out running for the party leadership if Starmer finds himself defenestrated, telling the Daily Mirror in her first big post-resignation interview that she had “not gone away”. (Neither has her bill: she has reportedly not yet paid her £40,000 stamp duty as HMRC has not sent the bill out.)

Make-ups

UK and EU

One of the most acrimonious break-ups in recent history must surely be Brexit. But this year, there’s been something of a warming in relations between the EU and its erstwhile member, the UK. (The UK, after all, still benefits from EU funds.)

In May, the government and the bloc held their first joint summit since the UK left the EU, and the word on everyone’s lips was “reset”. The former foes agreed on a new deal; Starmer hailed it a “new era”. Not everyone was on board with this make-up: Tory leader Kemi Badenoch called the deal a “total sell-out”.

This month, Labour announced that a new agreement with Brussels to allows UK students to participate in the EU-wide university scheme Erasmus from 2027.

Emmanuel Macron and Sébastien Lecornu

Speaking of rapprochement, French President Emmanuel Macron asked Sébastien Lecornu to return as prime minister just four days after he stood down.

The Élysée Palace said the president had tasked Lecornu with “forming a government” – no easy task in France, given its grande debt problem – and Macron’s entourage “indicated he had been given ‘carte blanche’ to act”, said the BBC.

Lecornu is now aiming his ire elsewhere, blaming “partisan cynicism and presidential ambitions” for his struggle to get next year’s budget plans approved, said Politico. “Everyone wants to push their own agenda and fly their ideological flag,” he said, in remarks that “bore a distinct similarity to those after his surprise resignation”.

Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping

When Xi Jinping met Narendra Modi in September, the Chinese leader used “his favourite catchphrase for China-India relations”, said the BBC: “The dragon and the elephant should come together.”

The relationship between the two most populous countries has been strained for decades, but the Asian giants have taken huge steps to normalise relations. This year, that thawing was “turbocharged by decisions taken thousands of miles away in Washington DC”, when the Trump administration imposed 50% tariffs on Indian imports: a “stunning onslaught from a trusted ally”.

After the September meeting – Modi’s first trip to China in seven years – direct flights between the “dragon and the elephant” resumed, and the visa process was simplified. Their thousands of miles of shared borders are still tense, bristling with troops from both countries. But what relationship doesn’t have boundary issues?

The UK’s return to the EU’s Erasmus student-exchange programme has sparked hope among die-hard Remainers that this is a first step towards Britain rejoining the customs union – and even, ultimately, the European Union.

The new agreement with Brussels allows UK students to participate in the EU-wide university scheme from 2027, without any additional fees. And it has excited those who support a return to the customs union, even though Keir Starmer has repeatedly rejected any such plan. This is a “clear step towards repairing the disastrous Conservative Brexit deal”, said Lib Dem MP Ian Sollom.

What did the commentators say?

Starmer has declared Britain’s “need to get closer” to the EU bloc, and, as talks continue about a “reset” deal on food exports, energy markets and a youth mobility scheme, “the breakthrough on Erasmus will help” him “demonstrate progress”, said The Guardian’s Pippa Crerar.

Labour strategists believe there is “a growing political benefit” to ministers in “arguing more openly for a closer relationship with Europe”.

The party “is waking up to the damage done by Brexit” and signalling they’re “intent on doing something about it”, said Chris Blackhurst in The Independent. With repeated polls showing that a majority of voters believe leaving the EU was a mistake, there is an element of “political pragmatism” at play “for a party desperate to put distance” between themselves and Reform UK, as well as the Tories.

There are also “concerns” that, without stronger ties to the EU, “the measures announced in last month’s Budget will fail to secure sufficient economic growth for the UK”, said Amy Gibbons in The Telegraph.

Minouche Shafik, the PM’s chief economic adviser, reportedly recommended rejoining the customs union, arguing it would cut costs for businesses and increase exports, said Oliver Wright in The Times. Starmer has argued, however, that a return to a customs union would undo recent deals with Donald Trump, which were particularly beneficial to carmaker Jaguar Land Rover.

What next?

Until ministers stop maintaining that “a return to full EU membership remains off the table”, said Jon Stone and Dan Bloom on Politico, there will be “scepticism” in Brussels “as to how much room for manoeuvre the British PM actually has”.

There are ways that Labour’s “manifesto ‘red line’ commitments” not to rejoin the EU, the customs union or single market “could be bypassed”, said Starmer’s biographer Tom Baldwin in The Guardian. They could, for instance, “announce the start of negotiations now on a much bolder deal, for inclusion in the next manifesto, with implementation only if Labour won a fresh mandate”.

Even though I voted Remain, I’ve always thought the referendum must be respected but now “posh lefties” have “spotted their chance” to make “cuddling up to Brussels the big issue at the next election”, said former Labour MP Ian Austin in The Sun. The hope is that they can “pile up the pro-EU votes in a crazy coalition of Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens, the SNP and Uncle Tom Cobley to take on Nigel Farage” and “what remains of the Tory party” .

“The impact of Brexit is severe and long lasting,” said Chancellor Rachel Reeves yesterday. The economic fallout from Britain’s decision to leave the EU is, she indicated, one of the main reasons that tax rises and spending cuts are on the table for next month’s Budget.

This is a clear shift in strategy from a government that has long tiptoed round Brexit, for fear of losing its Red Wall supporters. Putting the issue front and centre of its economic analysis, and using it to attack Nigel Farage and Reform, has been welcomed by many in the Labour Party, including cabinet ministers. Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: “I’m glad Brexit is a problem whose name we now dare speak”.

What did the commentators say?

“Economically, Brexit has not been good for us,” Jonathan Brash, MP for Leave-voting Hartlepool told Kitty Donaldson in The i Paper. We should “look at the facts”. The Office for Budget Responsibility has said that Brexit has reduced “long-term productivity” in the UK economy by 4%.

As Reeves talks of “undoing some of that damage”, the marked shift in messaging from fellow government figures is “part of a larger Labour strategy to take on Reform” over Farage’s role in Brexit, said The Spectator’s Steerpike column. Keir Starmer wants to argue that “Farage used ‘easy sloganeering’” during the referendum campaign but “didn’t have a plan” for afterwards. With this “attack line”, he can say Reform offers “quick fixes rather than thought-through policy proposals” and, he hopes, “persuade voters to come back to the reds”.

“Farage is as guilty as fellow Leaver Boris Johnson,” said The Mirror’s associate editor Kevin Maguire. He and Reform “these days rarely talk about Brexit” because he “mis-sold” it “as El Dorado”, and “no Brexit champion, particularly Farage, is worthy of high office after proving so conclusively wrong on such a seismic issue”.

Blaming Farage is “effectively attacking the largest democratic decision ever made by the British electorate”, said former Tory MP and Reform supporter Jacob Rees-Mogg in The Telegraph. “Too scared to accuse the voters themselves of getting it wrong, Labour attacks one of Brexit’s main protagonists, implying that he gulled foolish voters into doing something that was not in their interest.”

Pointing the finger at Farage “also risks re-energising the two-fingers to Westminster attitude that swung the Leave vote in 2016”, said The i Paper’s Donaldson. Reform will say that Farage may have campaigned for Brexit “but it was the Tories who implemented it” and it’s now Labour seeking to undermine it. “I don’t think voters in places like mine see Brexit as a mistake at all; they see it as unfinished business,” Reform’s deputy leader of Durham County Council Darren Grimes told Donaldson.

What next?

“Brexit was only ever going to be a blank canvas,” said Ross Clark in The Sun. “Of itself, it promised neither economic success or failure” but simply gave Britain the chance to “make its own economic policies and negotiate its own trade deals”.

But the Brexit benefits are hard to see, and increased export costs and new EU border checks for travellers mean that even those without an “emotional connection” to the European project “experience a sense of irritation at barriers to their pleasures or their profits having been erected against their will”, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times.

The latest YouGov poll on Brexit shows that just 31% of the public now believe it was the right decision to leave the EU.

A Reform government would turn Britain into “Trump’s America”, Ed Davey has said, as he tried to tie the policies of Nigel Farage and Donald Trump together in voters’ minds.

“Imagine living in the Trump-inspired country Farage wants us to become,” said the Lib Dem leader in his keynote speech at his party’s conference in Bournemouth. Davey painted “a nightmarish vision”, said the BBC, of the end of the NHS, a countryside destroyed by fracking, lax gun laws, racism, misogyny and “a constant state of chaos”.

Farage duly rubbished those claims but Davey’s warning about the Trumpification of British politics should be taken seriously, said Peter Geoghegan in Prospect: the American president is a “lodestar, the harbinger of a populist revolution that could be emulated on this side of the pond”.

What did the commentators say?

The year is 2029, and Donald Trump “holds two titles”, said Politico’s Paul Dallison: “US President-for-Life and UK prime minister”.

That sentence “would have been firmly in the realm of science fiction even a couple of years ago. But now, it doesn’t sound quite so far-fetched.” After all, the US president, with his British mother, would be eligible for the UK premiership, as former Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg pointed out on GB News during Trump’s state visit.

For the past decade, “some of Trump’s biggest donors have been secretly funding a clutch of the most influential groups on the right of British politics”, said Prospect’s Geoghegan.

Former Conservative bigwigs Robert Jenrick, Priti Patel and Liz Truss have “all traipsed to Washington” and spoken at the Heritage Foundation, the “hugely influential” think tank behind Project 2025, the “blueprint for a state-eviscerating” second Trump administration.

But few UK politicians are “as close to Trump as Nigel Farage”. He is “plugged into the very top” of the Republican party and has recently claimed Trump “knows” that he will be Britain’s next prime minister. He told the Harry Cole Saves the West YouTube show that Trump’s team saw “similarities in what they’ve done and what we’ve done, and you know what, we speak the same language”.

Farage has “enjoyed a friendship with Trump for almost a decade”, said Dominic Penna in The Telegraph. He joined him on the US presidential campaign trail in 2016 and told his supporters that a Republican victory would be “Brexit plus, plus, plus”.

What next?

Regardless of Trump’s next political endeavour, it’s clear that the tech billionaires who have supported him are already having their own impact on politics abroad.

Palantir founder Peter Thiel and his fellow Silicon Valley “political kingmakers” are heavily influenced by far-right blogger Curtis Yarvin’s “dark enlightenment” ideas, said The Guardian’s Arwa Mahdawi. They believe “super-rich elites should have dictatorial powers” while the “hoi polloi should suck it all up”.

Elon Musk, Tesla boss and Trump’s former “first buddy” is “increasingly taking his political meddling worldwide”, from Canada and Germany to the UK. He “spent January posting about grooming gangs”, then, at the “Unite the Kingdom” rally, called for a “change of government”. Over a video link, he told the crowd, “Violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die.”

It feels as if Musk is increasingly trying to “destabilise democracies worldwide so he can accumulate more power”, said Mahdawi. It is “not inconceivable” that a tech mogul “could effect regime change in Britain”.

Emmanuel Macron has arrived in Britain for the first state visit by an EU leader since Brexit as the UK seeks to reset its ties with the bloc it left in 2020.

The French president and his wife Brigitte were welcomed by the Prince and Princess of Wales at RAF Northolt today, before meeting the King and Queen in Windsor.

A state banquet this evening is expected to be the "highlight of the trip", said the BBC, with a host of glamorous guests, a "showcase menu", and a message from the King about the "shared history and culture between our two peoples". He will urge the UK and France to stand together against a "multitude of complex threats" and warn of dangers in defence, technology and climate change. King Charles will also highlight risks "emanating from multiple directions" and challenges "that know no borders" from which "no fortress can protect us".

"Our two nations share not only values, but also the tireless determination to act on them in the world," the King is expected to say at the banquet, which will be held at Windsor Castle.

What did the commentators say?

"Few scenes convey British pomp and soft power more than the King and Queen in a carriage procession through the picturesque streets of Windsor," said the BBC.

With the Prince and Princess of Wales in attendance, a royal salute planned, and Macron set to inspect a guard of honour, there will be much pomp and ceremony. But at a time of "jeopardy" in Europe, this visit promises "much more than ceremony"; it brings "genuine hope" that it will strengthen both nations.

The UK and EU agreed less than two months ago to "reset" relations, and ties with France have warmed "considerably" since. The two countries have much in common: both are nuclear powers, permanent members of the UN Security Council, and keen to update the 15-year-old Lancaster House treaties, which established a 10,000-strong Combined Joint Expeditionary Force, which they now hope to expand with other Nato and European allies. It was not so long ago that Boris Johnson "accused France of wanting to punish the UK for Brexit". That "difficult chapter" now "appears to be over".

Defence cooperation "is the most significant aspect of this rapprochement", said Le Monde. Since Brexit, Europe has "shifted into a new era: that of large-scale war waged by Russia against Ukraine". It is Britain and France who are leading a "coalition of the willing" in Europe, "seen as capable of guaranteeing Ukraine's security in the still distant event of a peace agreement". And as the only two nation states with nuclear weapons and the two European permanent members of the UN Security Council, Keir Starmer and Macron have "a particular responsibility" – that of "taking a leading role in strengthening Europe in the face of an increasingly aggressive Russia and a decreasingly supportive US".

But while Starmer will play a role, the three-day visit is "very much the Charles and Macron show", said Politico. The King, a known Francophile with a "long-standing and close relationship" with Macron, shares the French president's passion for "climate diplomacy".

The full royal household is now being deployed to celebrate "how much Britain and France have in common", and the King's banquet speech will be "watched for hints about where he thinks the two allies have further to go".

Only a few years ago Boris Johnson sent Royal Navy frigates to Jersey during a dispute with France over fishing rights, and Liz Truss "declined to say whether she considered the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to be a friend or foe to Britain", said The Guardian. Now, at a time of "acute geopolitical instability" it is "overwhelmingly in the interests of both countries", as well as Europe, "that a fully functioning entente cordiale is restored".

What next?

Before tonight's state banquet Macron will address MPs in the Palace of Westminster's Royal Gallery, before taking part in a UK-France summit with Starmer on Thursday.

Defence, growth, security, migration and French tactics on tackling small boats are likely to be discussed, with the two leaders also expected to dial in to speak with other allied leaders looking to support any future peace deal in Ukraine.

Keir Starmer hailed a "new era" in relations with Europe this week after the UK and Brussels agreed a post-Brexit "reset". Under the deal, announced at a summit in London with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, the EU will lift checks on food produce crossing the Channel in return for the UK committing to abide by EU food standards.

As part of a new security pact, British defence firms will be able to participate in joint EU procurement programmes. Britons will be able to use border e-gates at more EU airports. The two sides also agreed, in principle, to establish a new youth exchange scheme and work towards a joint electricity market.

The PM said the deal was a "win-win" that would deliver cheaper food and electricity bills and boost the economy by £9 billion a year by 2040. But he faced claims that he had "surrendered" to Brussels by agreeing to let EU fleets enjoy their current level of access to British waters until 2038. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch called the deal a "total sell-out".

What a "stitch-up", said The Sun. Starmer has betrayed our fishing industry, brought part of our economy back under EU jurisdiction, and opened our borders to millions of workers, while agreeing to pay for the privilege. And all for what? The lifting of "vindictive checks" on our food exports, some possible contracts for our arms industry and the promise of shorter passport queues. The fisheries deal is particularly egregious, said The Daily Telegraph. The UK was due to regain full control of its waters in 2026. But it has now agreed to give EU boats access for 12 more years, more than double its original offer.

Ignore the talk of Brexit betrayal, said The Economist. This deal doesn't take us back into the single market or customs union. It just removes some of the trade frictions created by Brexit while sensibly opening the way to more defence cooperation. Starmer may have conceded more than he wished on fisheries, but given that we export around 70% of our catch to the EU, the deal will also bring benefits to our fishing industry. "As for being a rule-taker, that is merely the price that countries wishing to sell into the EU market must pay."

As he unveiled his much-touted "reset" deal with the EU, Keir Starmer said it is time to move on from "political fights" and "stale old debates" about Brexit.

Nearly 10 years on from the Brexit referendum, and more than five since the UK formally left the EU, the new agreement strengthens ties over areas including fishing, trade, defence and energy.

Starmer's appeal to "common sense" and "practical solutions" may strike a chord with the public, but his "big bet" is that "nobody really cares" about Brexit any more, said the BBC's chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman.

What did the commentators say?

"This was the day the Brexit dream died," said the Daily Mail in an editorial, while The Express called it "a betrayal dressed up as a policy".

Staunch Brexiteers will "blast" Starmer "on fisheries, rule taking and youth migration", while diehard Remainers "will argue it's a meek deal that hasn't gone far enough to repair the economic scars of Brexit", said Politico. But "this fight down the middle is one the prime minister's quite happy to pick", while the Conservatives and Reform UK, both of whom have described the deal as a "surrender", "risk sounding like broken records on Brexit".

With this deal – coming in the same month that trade agreements were announced with the US and India – Starmer has managed the "impossible", said The Independent: "to have his cake and eat it".

When Labour under Starmer "pivoted" in 2020, from campaigning for a second referendum to a policy of "make Brexit work", "nobody really took it seriously". But he has "succeeded where others failed and managed to break the Brexit conundrum".

Despite the "upbeat rhetoric", some of the "most difficult issues to resolve have been pushed back into future negotiations" – including the shape of a youth mobility scheme, said The Times. The deal also "leaves a number of difficult questions unanswered", such as how much Britain will have to pay to access the new EU defence fund and to align with the EU food standards and energy trading system.

But the government hopes that voters will warm to the tangible effects of a "reset" in relations with the EU, including cheaper food and energy, and a reduction of red tape for small businesses.

What next?

What will "prove revealing over the coming days, weeks, and months" is how much Reform and the Conservatives decide to campaign around the idea of a Brexit "betrayal", said the BBC's Zeffman.

If opposition to the deal becomes a "significant part of these parties' platforms, it will tell us that they believe there is in fact plenty of controversy yet in the decades-long debate over the UK's relationship with the EU".

If that's right, it could thrust questions about Brexit "right back to the centre of political life.

"But if Sir Keir is right that the bulk of the public simply wants as little friction with the EU as possible, then he could prove to be our first truly post-Brexit prime minister."

A centrepiece of today's UK-EU summit is a new defence and security pact that paves the way for British defence manufacturers to bid for contracts from the €150 billion (£126 billion) Security Action for Europe fund.

As part of this "reset" with the EU, Keir Starmer is thought to have made "significant concessions" on European fishing rights in British waters, said The Times. Even so, not everyone was so keen to let the UK in, with France, in particular, "pressing hard" for a "Europe-first policy" on defence contracts, one diplomat told the newspaper. The debate over how much access British companies should have to EU funds is part of the delicate ongoing process of defining the UK's relationship to Europe in the aftermath of Brexit.

What EU funding does the UK still get?

Under the EU's current spending framework, which runs until 2027, the UK is eligible for three major EU-run scientific programmes: Euratom (the European Atomic Energy Community); the Copernicus space and Earth observation programme, and the Horizon Europe scientific research and innovation project. But the UK can only participate on "associated" or "third country" terms. This means we pay "an operational contribution" to each programme, based on the ratio of the UK's GDP to the EU's GDP.

UK-based international NGOs are also still able to access some EU development funding streams – for humanitarian aid, for example – under "third country" rules and with some changes to eligibility.

The UK also participates in the Peace Plus investment programme: a €1.1 billion (£926 million) partnership between the UK, the EU, and the Northern Ireland Executive (which has its own post-Brexit arrangement with the EU), aimed at supporting peace and prosperity across Northern Ireland and the border region with Ireland.

How much money are we talking about?

British scientists received half a billion pounds in grants from the Horizon programme in 2024 – after being excluded for three years following "a bitter row over post-Brexit trade rules in Northern Ireland", said Politico.

After the UK negotiated re-entry to Horizon, it was "catapulted to the top of the league" of 19 non-EU participants, said The Guardian. According to EU data, the UK's 3,000 grants, worth €574.7 million (£500 million), are the most of any non-EU participant and the third highest by value. Overall, the UK was fifth biggest grant beneficiary, behind Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and France. British scientists are "over the moon" to be back in the programme.

What will happen after 2027, in the next EU funding cycle? Nobody knows. The bloc is "secretly" working on its strategy for future funding rounds.

Are we still paying the EU?

After leaving the customs union and single market, we negotiated a free-trade deal – the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement – with the bloc. That means no duties are levied on the import and export of goods but the "time-consuming and sometimes complicated new paperwork" businesses now have to fill out when exporting to or importing from the EU has had a significant "negative impact", said the BBC.

And we're still paying the "divorce bill" negotiated as part of our withdrawal agreement. There is no definitive cost to the settlement – that will depend on future exchange rates and EU budgets – but the latest Treasury estimate is that the net cost to the UK will be £30.2 billion, £23.8 billion of which had been paid, as of December 2023.

The withdrawal agreement also "covers obligations entered into while the UK was still a member state but for which final payment falls due after the end of 2020", said Ian Begg, a professor at the London School of Economics, on the LSE blog. The last payments, notably for pensions of former EU staff, may fall "decades hence".

British voters have heard many politicians over the past two decades vow to "take back control of our borders". Unveiling the government's long-awaited white paper on immigration on Monday, Keir Starmer became the latest PM to promise the UK's "broken system" will be fixed, enforcement will be "tougher than ever", and net migration numbers will tumble.

"It's a sign of the times," said Anne McElvoy in The i Paper, that a party led by human rights lawyers and confirmed centrists is "about to undertake a U-turn which is going to make it sound like it has adopted the Fortress Britain vision it once disdained as parochial or even subliminally racist".

What did the commentators say?

There's "just one problem" with the government's new approach, said Jonathan Walker in the Daily Express. "Labour and their lefty friends" have spent years branding opposition politicians who raised concerns about immigration as "horrible, xenophobic and racist". Starmer and his colleagues are "massive hypocrites".

British voters will be "sceptical" of Starmer's new-found hardline stance on immigration, said Martin Ivens on Bloomberg. "They've heard it all before when it comes to pledges to make the borders less porous." For two decades, "politicians of all stripes" have pledged to reduce net migration, only to produce "half-hearted, ineffective or muddled" measures, even when "promises to curb the influx played a large part in the pledges that got them elected in the first place".

Many proposals – training Britons rather than importing unskilled foreign workers, and raising education levels and standards of English for those applying for skilled work visas – sound "pretty familiar", said The Independent in an editorial. But a proposed change giving clearer guidance to judges on the application of human rights provisions "could have a quantifiable effect, as well as helping to reassure that doubting public".

Starmer's warning that "we risk becoming an island of strangers" has already resulted in the PM being accused of "pandering to the populist right", said The Guardian. Some MPs on the left claimed that his words echo Enoch Powell's notorious 1968 "rivers of blood" speech, which imagined a future multicultural Britain where the white population "found themselves made strangers in their own country". But while this rhetoric may put off some progressives, Labour HQ will be more than happy if this message cuts through to up-for-grabs voters in red wall constituencies.

What next?

With Reform UK surging ahead in the polls and surveys showing immigration emerging as the number one issue for voters, it is clear why Labour feels the need to talk tough. "Whether voters will believe Sir Keir really means what he's saying remains to be seen", said Walker in the Express.

"Fury with the failure of successive governments to honour their effusive promises to 'take control' will mean that nothing short of Trump-style mass deportations will be enough" to mollify some voters, said The Independent. But a "first impression" of the government's proposals is that "their bark may be worse than their bite, and deliberately so".

Starmer has avoided setting any targets, other than bringing about a "substantial reduction" in net migration. But successive governments' failure to tackle the issue has "turned the voters against the political class", said Ivens on Bloomberg. "Now Starmer needs to own the change – not just mouth the slogans."

"It was the day Britain finally put Brexit behind it and assumed its new role in Europe," said The Telegraph's Europe editor James Crisp.

On Sunday Keir Starmer hosted European leaders in London – with "nothing less than the security of the continent at stake". The prime minister proposed a "coalition of the willing", led by France and the UK, Europe's two nuclear and major military powers, and Germany, to protect Ukraine after a peace deal.

In the painful aftermath of Brexit, Britain "went missing from the world stage". Now in Europe a "new world order is being built before our eyes", and Britain is "leading the pack".

'Back in the international diplomacy game'

Starmer's first months in Downing Street have been "unsteady to say the least", said Politico's Esther Webber. Domestically, he has taken a "hammering in the polls". But internationally, Starmer has played an "increasingly visible and assured role in transatlantic diplomacy". One of his "supposed weaknesses" – a "lack of ideological conviction" – might make him "a suitable broker between players with wildly different outlooks".

Starmer's first meeting with Donald Trump actually "contained some wins" – "even if the biggest prize, American security guarantees for a Ukraine peace deal, remained elusive". Labour insiders and European allies are "asking if his moment has arrived".

Analysts agree that Starmer has "put the UK firmly back in the international diplomacy game", said Agence France-Presse. "Post-Brexit we've really struggled to find our identity," said Evie Aspinall, director of the British Foreign Policy Group think-tank. Starmer hasn't had much foreign policy experience – but he has shown that he can "really step up on the world stage", she told AFP.

"We are never going to be the big world power that we once were," she added. But this is a "sign of us finding our feet and finding where we potentially could lead".

'The purest wishful thinking'

Starmer deserves praise for "taking a leading role in Europe" after Trump's "betrayal", said The Independent's John Rentoul. Some Labour figures thought this could be his "Falklands moment": as when Margaret Thatcher reversed her unpopularity by being "resolute in an international crisis". But that was the "purest wishful thinking". Trump and J.D. Vance's "ambush" of Zelenskyy – a "televised punishment beating" the Brits didn't see coming – "wiped out" any "gains" from Starmer's meeting with Trump. If Starmer thought he was a "bridge between Trump and European leaders", Trump has "blown it up".

Let's not forget William Gladstone's dictum, said The Times: the first principle of foreign policy is "good government at home". Starmer should remember that voters have "more prosaic matters" on their minds than "international plaudits". He will be judged on his domestic agenda: growing the economy and improving public services. His pledge to "ramp up defence spending" leaves an already cash-strapped government facing "unpalatable choices".

International affairs are rightly consuming much of Starmer's attention, but the "risk remains that a prime minister ­distracted by Ukraine will fail to drive forward the change this country needs".

Donald Trump has said the UK is "way out of line" in its trading relationship with the US but could still avoid the crippling tariffs expected to be imposed on the EU.

Having announced 25% levies on goods coming from Canada and Mexico, as well as 10% on those from China, the US president has now turned his attention to Europe.

"Whitehall is watching anxiously," said The Telegraph, even though UK ministers are hoping that "a good dose of charm and sweet talk can keep British companies out of the firing line".

What did the commentators say?

Trump has described the US's $213 billion (£173 billion) trade deficit with the EU last year as "an atrocity", but "when it comes to the UK, things are slightly different", said the BBC. "The US doesn't run as high a trade deficit with Britain – in fact at one point last year it ran a surplus – and government ministers hope that this will persuade the president to spare the UK from tariffs."

It may be true that "the UK does not appear to be directly in Trump's sights", said The Guardian's economics editor, Heather Stewart, "but even if the UK can avoid being slapped with tariffs directly", our "open economy" means we are vulnerable to the knock-on effects of any "significant slowdown in international trade flows".

A 2022 risk analysis by the Office for Budget Responsibility estimated an all-out global trade war would depress UK GDP by 5% over a decade. Under 10% tariffs on all US imports, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research predicted the pound could lose 10-15% of its value against a resurgent dollar, leading to higher import costs and higher inflation. The subsequent rise in UK government bonds would push up borrowing costs for the Treasury – leaving less money to spend on public services.

The "risks for the UK's growth-starved and debt-bloated economy are significant – and they may be unavoidable, even if it is not a direct target", said The Telegraph.

What next?

With US tariffs on the EU looking increasingly likely, "Britain may face tough diplomatic choices", said Business Matters.

Keir Starmer, who today becomes the first UK prime minister since Brexit to attend an EU summit in Brussels, has vowed to "reset" relations with the bloc, including closer economic cooperation.

At the same time, senior figures in his cabinet have also been trying to mend bridges with the new US administration. Chancellor Rachel Reeves recently praised Trump's "optimism", "but locking in a stronger UK-EU agreement while placating Washington could become more difficult".

If the UK is forced to choose, the EU "remains our biggest trade partner and offers more trade policy certainty", said Adam Butlin on the London School of Economics blog. "But such polarisation of picking sides with one or another trade partner is not an ideal situation."

Downing Street has left the door open to the UK joining an EU trading scheme as part of its plans to "reset" ties with Europe and boost economic growth.

The EU's new trade chief Maros Sefcovic, who led post-Brexit negotiations for the bloc, said last week he would consider letting Britain join the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean Convention (PEM), which allows for tariff-free trade of goods across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

While the Labour government has ruled out rejoining the EU single market or customs union, it wants to improve what it has called Boris Johnson's "botched Brexit deal", and that the PEM could offer a straightforward way to do this without crossing so-called red lines.

What did the commentators say?

"It's easy to see why a self-professed growth-obsessed government might seek to be closer to the EU," said Anand Menon and Joël Reland from Changing Europe in The Observer. "It's less clear why it's seeking what it is, or whether achieving any of it will be easy."

Boxed in by pre-election commitments aimed at winning over Eurosceptic voters in Red Wall constituencies in the north and Midlands, "all that's left is tinkering around the margins of the existing deal". And with the EU "far happier than the UK with the status quo", the bloc holds the upper hand in negotiations.

The problem is that a lot has changed since that deal was agreed. Five years on, it is "clear" that Brexit has "imposed costs, particularly on goods exports, without any large offsetting benefits", said The Economist. At the same time the "geopolitical situation has deteriorated", with Russia's war in Ukraine, the rising influence of China and the return of Donald Trump as president all making "striking out alone in Europe less appealing".

Given all this there is "bafflement" in Brussels, "that the UK is not being more ambitious on trade", said The i Paper. However, the offer to join the PEM is "very much under consideration in Whitehall, where officials see no downside to entering the scheme".

What next?

Sefcovic has told the BBC that the "ball is in the UK's court". But the UK's post-Brexit relationship "comprises many strands", said The Observer, "any or all of which might interact with and derail reset negotiations – were these ever to formally begin".

A new deal with Europe will probably be an "amalgam", said The Independent, consisting of "some modest improvements on veterinary checks and phytosanitary rules; give and take on fisheries; some limited youth mobility schemes; plus an embryonic 'defence union', still secondary to Nato".

Starmer "will get 'Brexit 2.0' done, with the suggestion of more to follow in the 2028-29 manifesto." But this much-vaunted "reset" will end up being "messy and fail to satisfy anyone – disappointing to the rejoiners and infuriating the Brexiteers".

It is nearly a decade since the UK voted to leave the EU but Brexit is once again back on the political agenda, as Keir Starmer seeks a "reset" in relations and new terms for Britain's trading relationship with the bloc.

"We've been really clear from the get-go that this is not about re-entry to the EU," the PM told The Sun. But it's clear he does want a softening of trade barriers. "I want to make sure that we get a better deal for people," he said, so that "they feel better off, they get better public services".

Pushed on the possibility that he might agree, in return, to an EU demand for a free-travel agreement for under-30s, Starmer said that "freedom of movement is a red line for us, and [we have] no plans in relation to free movement on any level, but we're entering into discussions".

What did the commentators say?

The EU's negotiation "blueprint", leaked to The Times last week, included a plan "to make the UK accepting the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ)" a prerequisite "for a better trading relationship". Among other key concessions that EU leaders will demand are a new fishing deal and a youth mobility scheme, said the paper.

The quest for a reset is going to require Starmer "to do some politically difficult things, which will undoubtedly anger the Conservatives and Reform," Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, told The Times. But "if it can be negotiated", it could set up the stage for "much closer co-operation across a range of other areas, such as energy, that would be mutually beneficial".

The leaked EU documents reveal Brussels is preparing to "drive a hard bargain" and "name a high price", in exchange for granting the British PM improved terms on defence, security and trade, said Arj Singh, deputy political editor of the i news site.

According to the Financial Times, the EU's "tough red lines" include "an early deal on fishing rights" and sticking firmly to a "'no cherry-picking' mantra".

The UK government has repeatedly said it would not rejoin the EU's customs union or single market, or accept free movement, but a Number 10 spokesperson on Monday refused to rule out a role for the ECJ.

Politico citied a "senior EU official" back in May as saying oversight by the Luxembourg-based court would be a "prerequisite" to any new deal.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Sun has labelled the proposals a "fresh Brussels plot to have Britain surrender our sovereignty once again", and has launched its Don't Betray Brexit campaign to stop a "stealth attempt" to "bring Britain back into the EU fold forever".

Leavers may declare the Brexit debate forever closed, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian, but the new set of EU trade regulations that came into effect this month are "hammering Britain's smaller exporters" and "proof that it isn't over, but forever adding to our economic woes".

Labour has made the right noises about wanting to move towards greater EU alignment on trade "but sticking points stay stuck". Fishing rights will be an "early issue, emotive on both sides of the Channel".

What next?

The EU negotiating proposals are due to be presented to a council of European ministers this week, ahead of the formal negotiations with the UK, which are set to begin next year. The proposals are essentially "a wish list" before EU national governments agree to "give Brussels a mandate to actually start formal talks with London", reported Politico. Brussels certainly seems "unwilling to start talks with Starmer before these ground rules are agreed upon".

And the road ahead does not look easy for the UK. Starmer's recent attempts at "courting European leaders" suffered a "blow" this week, said The Independent, when the European Commission decided to take Britain to court over its alleged failure to comply with EU law on freedom of movement after Brexit.

This could be a sign of the mood in Brussels. While there may be some willingness to favour attempts to bring the UK closer to the EU on trade and security, most of the EU is content with the current status quo, according to the i news site.

"Many key countries are quite happy with how Brexit is going," one diplomat told the site. "So it is on the UK to tell us: what's the incentive?"

As Keir Starmer attempts a "reset" of post-Brexit relations with the EU, Donald Trump's re-election – and the trade war he risks with the tariffs he's threatened – looms over negotiations.

The prime minister has promised to improve Britain's relationship with Brussels. He is pursuing deals on security and defence, while still working with the US president-elect on improving trade with the US (the UK's biggest trade partner) – despite Labour's staunch support of the Democrats.

Trump could also spare Britain from a global trade war by offering the UK a preferential trade agreement, according to Peggy Grande, a political appointee in his last administration. Trump would target the EU with tariffs more than Britain because he wants to see a "successful Brexit", Grande told The Independent.

But any such deal could undermine Starmer's pursuit of closer ties with the EU. It "may be seen by the EU as a signal that the UK is limiting its reset ambitions", John Alty, a former government trade official, told the i news site.

Trump once called himself "Mr. Brexit", said Politico. "But eight years later, could he be about to wreck it?"

What did the commentators say?

"Once upon a time", the UK was "Washington's best friend in Brussels and Europe's hotline to the White House", said The Guardian's Rafael Behr. Now, Starmer is in an "invidious position". Decoupling from the US is "not a serious option", but to maintain that special relationship Trump will "demand vassalage, which will complicate Starmer's ambition for closer European ties".

"Britain could carry on pursuing a new security deal with the EU, while grovelling for special exemption from US tariffs." But, said Behr, "just the hint of alignment with Trump will sour any conversation about easing UK access to the single market." Trump's victory "reinfects the wound" of Brexit; effectively, Labour's foreign policy "blew up on 5 November".

But for many in Brussels, Trump's re-election actually means a desire for "stronger ties" between the EU and the UK, said Politico. The EU response to Trump's victory is to forge new security agreements with third countries; the UK is "top of the list", said an anonymous official.

Even Brexiteers in the UK are worried that Trump might "end up pushing Britain into Brussels' arms". But the scope of Britain's negotiations for a reset will be greatly influenced by Trump. His America First isolationist trade policies make Britain's attempted pivot away from Europe and towards global trade "that bit trickier".

Starmer needs to "review" his big red lines with the EU – keeping the UK out of the single market and customs union, and not reinstating freedom of movement – and "come up with a new plan", the anonymous diplomat said. "When circumstances change, one needs to rethink one's course of action."

Peter Mandelson, the frontrunner to be the UK's next ambassador to the US, has "hinted the UK can use Brexit to dodge" the tariffs Trump has threatened, said Mail Online. The Labour peer and leading Remainer suggested that Britain could "find a path between the US and the EU" if Trump does impose the severe import taxes he has threatened.

It is "wrong" to think that, in the event of a global trade war, the UK would have to choose between close collaboration with the EU's trade policy or a free-trade agreement with the US, Mandelson said on The Times's "How to win an election" podcast. The UK must "find a way to have our cake and eat it".

A recent ambassador to Washington thinks otherwise, however. "I don't see any special deal coming for the UK," Kim Darroch told The Times's political editor Steven Swinford. Trump will indeed "go big" on tariffs. And if the EU retaliates with tariffs on the US, said Swinford, the UK may have to choose a side.

What next?

When asked whether a free-trade agreement with the US could curb the attempted reset with the EU, the prime minister's spokesperson said: "No, the prime minister is clear that he wants to improve trade and investment relations with the EU, with the US and indeed with other partners around the world."

More talks are scheduled with EU leaders later this year and in the first half of next year, but Starmer is currently sticking to his three red lines. He also said he has no plans for a youth mobility scheme with the EU. However, the bloc views this policy as "an indispensable element" of negotiations, according to a leaked internal paper seen by Politico. The idea is "essential for our future relationship".

Keir Starmer said he hopes that an "ambitious" UK-Germany treaty will be agreed by the end of the year.

The PM was speaking after he met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin this morning.

"Growth is the number one priority for my government... and building relations with our partners here in Germany and across Europe is vital to achieving it," said Starmer.

The PM said that the countries had a "shared determination to harness the power of government for the service of working people, and that's what we are doing today: a new UK-Germany treaty, a once-in-a-generation chance to deliver for working people in Britain and in Germany".

But the problem for the PM is that "it is not yet clear how much improved bilateral relations with European nations can boost the UK economy", said the BBC's diplomatic correspondent James Landale, especially when "post-Brexit rules determine how and what we trade with the EU as a whole".

What did the commentators say?

Starmer kicked off his "two-day lovebomb" of European allies by opening negotiations on the UK's biggest-ever treaty with Germany, said London Playbook.

"No matter how many times" he "protests he won't reverse Brexit, return to free movement or join a youth mobility scheme", his "friendly language will be seized on with delight in Brussels", but the "real question" is how this "charmfest" translates into hard policy.

Downing Street said the proposed treaty will be about "increased collaboration" in a number of areas from "market access", to "innovation and tech", trade "across the North Sea", and "the environment".

Starmer's officials will be "trying to secure preferential access for British businesses to the German market", focused on certifications, tenders and legal hurdles, said Geraldine Scott in The Times.

But it's unclear "how comfortable Brussels would be with Germany striking a direct agreement with Britain", given that the country still belongs to the single market.

The PM will discuss a "landmark" economic and defence accord with Scholz, said Reuters, which they hope will "bring about an unprecedented degree of bilateral military cooperation".

The Nato allies, who are Western Europe's biggest defence spenders, are keen to make an agreement ahead of a "possible scaling back of US military support for Ukraine" if Donald Trump returns to the White House.

The partnership "could resemble the Lancaster House pact between Britain and France agreed in 2010", said the news agency, with pledges to "create a joint force and share equipment and nuclear missile research centres".

Starmer is also keen to "increase joint action" on illegal migration, including furthering intelligence sharing to intercept and shut down organised immigration crime rings, wrote Albert Toth for The Independent. He is "likely to find an ally" in Scholz, who is under pressure on the issue after three people were killed in an attack by an asylum seeker last week.

What next?

Overall, Starmer's approach "represents a departure from the previous government", which "remained less open to the prospect of greater collaboration with the EU", said The Independent.

He "has few hang-ups" over "dynamic alignment with EU standards", wrote Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at Eurasia Group, in the Financial Times, nor "the level playing field or the role of the European Court of Justice in policing new agreements". Things he is "ready to consider" include a visa scheme for EU nationals aged 18 to 30 – an early priority for Brussels.

But obvious obstacles remain. Germany is keen on a mobility scheme for young Europeans to live and work in Britain, the "very thing" that the UK government ruled out last week, said London Playbook.

An EU source told The Times that Starmer needs to realise "that any access to the EU's single market comes with obligations on mobility and alignment with European laws, on food safety for example".

From Berlin, Starmer will head to Paris for the Paralympics opening ceremony this evening, before meeting Emmanuel Macron and French business leaders tomorrow.

The UK government, devolved administrations and the civil service "failed" citizens during the pandemic, according to the damning first report from the Covid inquiry.

There were "several significant flaws" in the pandemic response, found retired judge Baroness Heather Hallett, chair of the public inquiry. The 83,000-word document, based on witness statements including from former health secretaries Matt Hancock and Jeremy Hunt, also highlighted the brutal effect of austerity. Cuts to public spending and resulting health inequalities, including high rates of disease and obesity, had overstretched the health system and made the UK "more vulnerable".

Some of the 235,000 deaths involving Covid-19 (one of Europe's highest death tolls), as well as "grief, untold misery and economic turmoil", could have been prevented, she concluded. But the human, societal and economic cost suffered "will have been in vain" if "radical reform" is not carried out before the next pandemic.

1. Brexit distraction

Resources were taken away from pandemic preparedness because of Brexit, said the report. This was especially so in 2018 and 2019, when officials "scrambled to draw up a contingency plan for medicine, food and fuel shortages" in the event of a "no-deal" Brexit, known as Operation Yellowhammer, said The New York Times.

Brexit was prioritised over implementing recommendations from Exercise Cygnus, the government's 2016 pandemic readiness exercises. The programme, which by 2019 was already running two years behind schedule, was further delayed by the demands of Operation Yellowhammer. Health officials in the devolved nations who should have been focused on pandemic preparedness were also "diverted" to deal with Yellowhammer, said the i news site. 

2. Wrong pandemic, outdated strategy

The UK "prepared for the wrong pandemic", said the report. The country had long assumed that an outbreak would involve influenza, preparing its plan in 2011 when Andrew Lansley was health secretary. But both subsequent health secretaries, Jeremy Hunt and then Matt Hancock, failed to update it. 

This led to "an over-reliance on vaccines and antivirals that would have no impact on the Covid virus", said the BBC.

Although there are similarities between Covid and flu viruses, there are differences in terms of infection periods, which "affects the feasibility of border screening, quarantining and contact tracing", said The Times. 

The strategy was "outdated and lacked adaptability", said the report. Even Hancock described it as "woefully inadequate".

In March 2020, when the government realised how lethal Covid was, it had to abandon the strategy. Ministers then took a "new, untested approach" and sent the country into lockdown, with "no idea how vast the economic and social damage would be", said The Times.

3. Not a 'black swan' event

The report rejected claims that the pandemic was unprecedented: an unforeseeable "black swan event". The scientific community had considered it a "reasonable bet" before 2020, "given there were four large coronavirus outbreaks that nearly became pandemics earlier in the 21st century", said The Guardian.

Asian countries, which had experienced outbreaks of Sars in 2003 and Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers) in 2016, suppressed initial waves with testing, tracing and quarantining, as well as border controls, while limiting the use of lockdowns.

After both outbreaks, pandemic planning exercises in the UK stressed the importance of PPE and testing. "Lessons that could and should have been learned were not learned," said Hallett.

4. Groupthink and spaghetti bureaucracy

In 2019, there was widespread hubris, partly resulting from government "groupthink", that the UK was "one of the best-prepared countries in the world to respond to a pandemic", said Hallett. 

But the "number of organisations across the UK with responsibility for pandemic preparedness had multiplied over time and become unnecessarily numerous", she wrote. It was a "labyrinthine" civil emergency system based on complex "spaghetti diagrams" of institutions that had "ultimately grown to become too complex and disjointed".

There was "constant reorganisation and rebranding" of the departments responsible – and it was not even apparent who was in charge. There was a "lack of adequate leadership" in rectifying contingency planning, including from the then prime minister Boris Johnson. 

5. Next pandemic: 'not if but when'

"The evidence is overwhelmingly to the effect that another pandemic – potentially one that is even more transmissible and lethal – is likely to occur in the near to medium future," Hallett said. "It is not a question of 'if' another pandemic will strike but 'when'."

She urged a "fundamental reform" of preparation for civil emergencies, adding that the changes made since the Covid pandemic had "fail[ed] on a number of grounds".

The report made 10 recommendations, including planning for a wider range of scenarios and creating a more coordinated response, as well as taking responsibility away from the Department of Health and Social Care. "Never again can a disease be allowed to lead to so many deaths and so much suffering," she said.

With just two weeks until the general election, the economy, the NHS, and immigration remain the main focal points of campaigning for Labour and the Conservatives. But the last general election's key issue, Brexit, has remained largely unmentioned by both.

It's clear that both leading parties have little "incentive to open what are seen as old wounds", said Greg Barradale in the Big Issue, but Britain's exit from the European Union remains a "major elephant in the room".

Yet, given that it is perhaps the "most momentous decision the UK has taken in a generation" it is still "very much a live issue" for voters, said Patience Wheatcroft in The New European. But Labour and the Tories have differing reasons for keeping it under wraps.

'A Brexit omertà'

For Rishi Sunak, the reluctance to discuss Brexit comes from a "diminishing number" of voters who believe it was a "good idea", as well as "repeated stories emphasising implementation problems", said Dan Sabbagh in The Guardian.

Moreover, while ministers have tried "to talk up the trade deals" they have signed since Brexit, "no normal voter cares about pork markets", said Helen Lewis in The Atlantic, and those who voted for Brexit to curb immigration will have been left "severely disappointed" given the rising numbers. Immigration numbers are a crucial issue for the Tories in this campaign, and they are reluctant to highlight how Brexit has "been a bust".

Labour leader Keir Starmer, who campaigned to remain, has made little commitment to "significant change" to Britain's "status outside the EU", added Sabbagh. There is a sense that the "topic has been suppressed" to win over Conservative voters, and Labour does not want to remind them of Starmer's former position in the referendum. 

Likewise, Labour does not want to hand the Tories the opportunity to "fight the entire campaign on defending Brexit", wrote Peter Hutchinson at AFP, and threaten its potential majority in parliament. There is a sense, however, that if Starmer wins a significant majority then he will push for "closer alliances with Europe" and eventually put "Brexit back on the agenda".

One thing both parties have in common is the perception that Brexit has become "too dreadful even to be mentioned", said Wheatcroft, and the collective silence has been described as a "Brexit omertà" by Anand Menon of the thinktank UK in a Changing Europe.

'Just because something is dull doesn't make it unimportant'

While the two leading parties are reluctant to dwell on Brexit, there is a feeling that the electorate is tired of talking about it. With Brexit having been the leading issue in 2019, voters are now "bored with" it, said Lewis, and many are "enjoying the respite" having suffered "Brexit fatigue".

Indeed, even the Liberal Democrats, "committed Europhiles" who want to rejoin the EU, now "seem nervous about appearing too enthusiastic", said Wheatcroft, and the issue has been bumped back to the "final section" of their manifesto and is now a "longer-term objective".

Nigel Farage, who led the populist campaign to leave the EU, would also rather "talk about small boats crossing the Channel or the perils of a cashless society", said Lewis.

But just because "something is dull doesn't make it unimportant", and Brexit will soon be back on the table as a leading issue, said Simon Usherwood at The Conversation. The decision to ignore the issues now will have significant "consequences" in the future, he argued, and politicians will find themselves "having to firefight situations in the coming years" which have been created through turning a blind eye to Brexit.

When the exit poll drops on general election night, Dominic Cummings wants to spring back to the centre of British politics at the head of a new political party.

Back in August, the former Downing Street svengali laid out a plan on his Substack blog describing next steps if Rishi Sunak suffers an election night knockout, including the need to "divert energy and money away from 'how to revive the Tories' to 'how to replace the Tories'" .

He has now revealed that he will do this by launching a new party, currently referred to as The Startup Party, which will be "completely different from the other parties", he told The ipaper.

What's the new party?

First, it's not actually going to be called The Startup Party. Cummings wrote that "a new party is a startup and it’s a good way to think about this project", but The Startup Party "isn’t an actual name, it’s a place holder". There is "plenty of time for horrific arguments about names if we make this real!", he added.

In his Substack post, he said he wanted a new party focused on cutting immigration, closing tax loopholes for "the 1 percent", investing in public services and dramatically reforming the civil service.

It will be "ruthlessly focused on the voters not on Westminster and the old media", he told the ipaper, and "friendly towards all the amazing talent in the country, people who build things in [the] private and public sector".

Cummings wants the party to be filled with entrepreneurs, NHS workers and military veterans, but "he has not released any details about important factors such as its funding, membership and governance", said the outlet.

Although he believes that if Nigel Farage returns to frontline politics the Tories "could easily be driven down to double digit seats", making challenger movements like the Startup Party e a "very mainstream idea", Farage himself would not be welcome in Cummings' party because he is "basically the same as the MPs".

New parties generally fare better in nations with proportional representation, but Cummings insists his imagined party can be electorally successful despite the first-past-the-post system because history shows that big changes that "reshape states" can follow wars and pandemics.

What do commentators say?

Cummings "seems to believe that the start up party he envisages will magically arise like a phoenix from the ashes of the old Westminster parties", wrote Nigel Jones in The Spectator, but he forgets that "even with Farage's dynamic presence" it took Ukip "more than twenty years of patient work before it harvested enough support" to become an "existential threat" to the Tories.

Although "everything militates against the idea" of him succeeding, "right now there's a gap in the market", wrote Melanie McDonagh in the Evening Standard, so "just because it’s Dom, it doesn't mean it's wrong".

Although Cummings "may be too tarnished to upturn British politics again" as a public figure, wrote Will Lloyd for The Times, he "may also be the prophet who seeds these ideas among British conservatives", so his detractors "would be unwise to laugh too much" .

It's "hard to avoid the conclusion" that political success "isn't even his ambition", wrote Tom Harris in The Telegraph. So "if his ambition stretches, for now", no further than "contributing to the sense" that Sunak's government is "on its last legs", then "he can consider his latest intervention a success".

A Labour government would seek to strengthen ties with the European Union on common interests but would rule out rejoining the single market, customs union or adopting free movement, according to insiders.

Senior party officials told the Financial Times that Keir Starmer favours a "twin-track strategy" to build closer trade and security ties but will not cross the three Brexit "red lines". Debate is reportedly "raging" about what this new deal might involve.

At the moment, "Brexit barely figures on voters' lists of pressing concerns, with inflation and the economy at the top", said The Guardian. But with recent poll findings showing that 60% of Britons would now vote to rejoin the bloc, Brexit "is likely to be a recurring – and potentially fraught – feature of a Starmer premiership". 

What is Labour's position on Brexit?

In the run-up to the 2019 election, Starmer crafted Labour's pledge to offer a second Brexit referendum. But since taking over as party leader in April 2020, he has repeatedly ruled out rejoining the single market or the customs union or adopting free movement.

These three Brexit red lines will form the basis of Labour's manifesto pledge on Europe, said the FT, and give Starmer "political cover for a lower-profile pursuit of co-operation in a range of areas".

The party has left the "door ajar to moving towards a somewhat closer relationship with the single market", said the UK in a Changing Europe think tank. Possibilities raised include mutual recognition of professional qualifications, the introduction of a mobility scheme and minimising regulatory divergence.

Is Labour's position changing? 

Labour's top team have recently begun talking about improving the UK-EU relationship, with Starmer and shadow foreign secretary David Lammy making a series of visits to EU officials in recent months. They are "keen to create softer mood music", said The Guardian.

Russia's war in Ukraine is making the need for a security agreement between the UK and EU "more pressing", said Politico.

"It's absolutely fundamental that the United Kingdom and Europe have the closest of relationships and the Brexit era is over, the situation is settled," Lammy told the Munich Security Conference last month.

It is "bizarre" that the UK has "far less political contact with the EU than the Chinese or the Canadians", Anand Menon, director of UK in a Changing Europe, told The Guardian. "That is just weird. So I think that's a bit of a no-brainer."

Some Labour insiders are hopeful that regular discussions on security could embrace "broader issues", such as energy, supply chains and migration, said the paper.

What are the criticisms of Labour's position?

Starmer is facing a difficult balancing act. He needs to avoid scaring off Brexit-backing supporters in northern "Red Wall" seats by appearing to soften Labour's stance on rejoining the EU or freedom of movement. But he also has to contend with a significant proportion of voters who, as recent polls suggest, desire closer cooperation with and even re-entry to the EU. 

London's Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, said he found it "frustrating" that Labour had vowed to "respect" the referendum vote. The "bad news" is that it will take "at least a decade before we can even talk about another referendum", he told La Repubblica.

But Labour peer Peter Mandelson believes there is no desire from UK voters to relive the Brexit wars of the past decade. "I cannot see the British people running towards [a referendum] for love nor money after what we went through during the last one," the former EU trade commissioner told a British Chambers of Commerce event last month. 

Brussels also wants a more "stable, constructive relationship" with the UK but has no desire for wholesale negotiation of the country's return, he said. "Reopen a negotiation? You've got to be joking!" said The Guardian.

Ultimately, the "soft-Remainer view" that Starmer might be able to negotiate a "superior, closer deal with the EU while remaining outside the single market, is deluded", said Sherelle Jacobs, assistant comment editor of The Telegraph.

"When it comes to 'The B Word', British politics has become gripped by a kind of 'violence of silence'". Politicians and voters alike are "reluctant to confront the fallout from the country's mangled, halfway situation".

"At some point we need to be honest with ourselves," Jacobs concluded. "If, as a nation, we are unwilling to maximally benefit from Brexit by leveraging our freedom, then we should decisively minimise our losses and re-enter the security of the EU fold."

Since the Second World War, they have been "serving as the largely unmentioned glue holding middle-class families together", but now the au pair industry has "collapsed", according to a report.

A double blow of Brexit and a minimum wage ruling have "ruined the tradition of exchanging bed and board for help with the kids", said The Sunday Times, and a leading trade body has waved the white flag and shut its doors.

'Fatal setback'

The "mutually beneficial arrangement" has "existed in Europe since the end of the Second World War", said the paper, recalling when domestic servants had "all but disappeared" and a "newly liberated cohort of young women, keen to expand their cultural boundaries, rose to meet the demand".

Au pairs would work short stays of between three and 12 months, often attending a language school, with their board and lodgings covered by the host family, said the BBC. There were between 60,000 and 90,000 au pairs in Britain before it left the European Union, but that number had halved by 2022, said The Telegraph.

The arrangement was "dealt a crushing blow by Brexit and the barriers that came with it", said The Sunday Times. With the end of free movement of labour from the European Union, the UK government did not provide an entry route specifically for au pairs.

Then, earlier this month, there was another, "possibly fatal", setback, when the government announced that even live-in workers would "henceforth" be entitled to earn the minimum wage, it added.

Previously, the guidance from the Home Office suggested that au pairs should earn "pocket money" of about £90 a week in exchange for being treated as a member of the family and helping out around the house.

But now, anyone employing an au pair under 21 for the basic 25 weekly hours, even with a live-in allowance applied, will have to pay £145.07 a week, rising to £330.47 for an au pair aged over 21 working 35 hours a week.

The consequences could be wide ranging, because rising costs are "driving intelligent women out of the workplace and back into their homes", Jo Twumasi-Ankra, a fundraiser at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and mother to three girls, who has used au pairs, told the paper.

'New slavery'

In the wake of these developments, the British Au Pair Agencies Association (BAPAA) announced its closure on Facebook and there are fears that the longstanding arrangement has had its day.

Back in 2020, chairwoman Jamie Shackell told the BBC that "families have said they might have to give up work and claim benefits because they cannot afford to have a nanny". She said the group was "flummoxed by it all" because au pairs are "not a financial strain on the UK state".

A petition calling for a "new youth visa" has gathered 60,000 signatures and it's possible that the Treasury will look into a "fix" for au pairs, because the situation is "so dire", with Britain's childcare costs among the highest in the world, said The Sunday Times.

But not everyone sees such a halo above the head of the au pair arrangement. In 2002, it was described by The Guardian as the "dirty secret of Britain's middle classes".

Asking if au pairing was "the new slavery", it said "horror stories" are commonplace. Maggie Dyer, director of the London Au Pair and Nanny Agency, said au pairs are "so vulnerable" as "if they lose their job they have nowhere to live, so they often will be far too frightened to complain if they are being maltreated".

Jokes about husbands having affairs with au pairs and nannies have been around almost as long as au pairs themselves, and one scorned wife told the Daily Mail about the "heart shredding betrayal" of the experience.

Ukraine's colourful war slogan "Russian warship, go f**k yourself" is at the centre of a trademark spat between Ukraine's State Border Guard and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO).

The "expression of defiance" has become a symbol of "resistance" since it was "first uttered" in a "brave" response from a Ukrainian soldier to a Moscow warship as it prepared to attack Snake Island in the opening hours of the invasion, recalled Politico.

But the ruling from EU intellectual property enforcers that it does not meet the requirement to become a trademark has left Ukraine's border guards "baffled".

'Priggish and pompous'

The soldier who coined the phrase was captured by Russia and later freed in a prisoner swap, and two Brussels-based lawyers originally filed the trademark application in March 2022, under his name, with the approval of his family.

The duo argued that it was a "unique opportunity to do something bigger", to prevent someone else claiming the trademark and to avoid anyone else profiting from the phrase. A "variety of commercial products" featuring variations of the words are being sold on "multiple shopping platforms", said Politico.

The saying "quickly became hot merchandising property", said Andrew Tettenborn, professor of law at Swansea Law School, in The Spectator, and Andriy Demchenko, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Border Guard Service, warned in Politico that people with "insincere intentions" were seeking to cash in on the slogan's popularity.

After the initial filing, it "didn't take long" for the EU office to "dump cold water on Ukraine's case", said Politico. The EUIPO said the slogan would be perceived as "contrary to accepted principles of morality" as it sought financial gain from what is "universally accepted to be a tragic event".

When a second application was made in December 2022, this time in the name of the Ukrainian Border Guard, Europe rejected it again. It argued that the motto uses "vulgar language with an insulting sexual connotation" and "banalises the Russian invasion and uses the sign as merely a tool to sell merchandising goods such as jewels, toys, clothing, wallets, etc".

Andrej Bukovnik, one of the lawyers behind the claim, insisted that the slogan is a "freedom of expression", uttered in a "special moment" and that "you cannot censor people in situations like that". But an appeal filed in February 2023 was also dismissed, with examiners ruling that the phrase lacks "distinctive character".

The "priggish" and "pompous" arguments from "the cream of Europe's intellectual property lawyers" certainly "haven't lacked variety", said Tettenborn. The lawyers are determined to win the case and have filed a fresh appeal.

Supporters of their bid have noted that, in March 2022, the Ukrainian government chose an image commemorating the slogan for an official postage stamp as the "besieged country" tried to "keep morale high and win the PR battle against invading Russian forces", reported The Guardian.

'Eye-catching and exclusive'

Eleonora Rosati, professor of intellectual property law at Stockholm University, told Politico that the lawyers have little hope of winning as cases like this "rarely have happy endings". She cited several examples of failed trademark applications – from “Je suis Charlie” to “Black Lives Matter” – which faced similar obstacles.

But if the European lawyers have "taken to heart" the dangers of allowing commonplace political slogans to become anyone's exclusive property, it "seems odd", said Tettenborn, because this is not a "commonplace political phrase on everyone's lips", like "Black Lives Matter". It's "more like something eye-catching and exclusive", such as the 'England's Glory' motif that used to appear on Bryant & May matchboxes.

He suggested that this could be "an opportunity for London to score a post-Brexit trick", if the UK invited Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to apply to register the trademark here. After all, he argued, the slogan is "hardly more scabrous" than the French Connection UK trademark FCUK, which was registered in the UK nearly 20 years ago.

It would be a "nice showing of solidarity with the underdog", and sometimes, "even in the dry-as-dust area of trademark law", it's "the thought that counts".

The Conservatives face a "mauling" from "angry voters" in countryside constituencies, according to new research.

A Survation poll of the 100 most rural constituencies forecast that 51 will go to Labour at the election, with Jeremy Hunt and Jacob Rees-Mogg among the Conservative MPs forecast to lose their seats. The Tories currently hold all but four of the seats, so the predicted collapse could be the "2024 election equivalent of the red wall moment", said Politico's London Playbook.

With a total of 10 million rural votes up for grabs at the next election, for the Tories to lose the support of their traditional heartlands could undoubtedly prove disastrous for the party.

What did the commentators say?

The Tories will struggle to keep hold of their "blue hedge" seats in rural England if the results of the poll are replicated at the general election, said Farmers Weekly (FW).

The findings "will make grim reading at Tory HQ", said the Daily Mirror, and suggest the Tories face a "mauling" as they are "hammered by angry voters in the countryside".

But the writing has been on the wall for some time, with a poll last summer finding that just 36% of voters in rural seats agreed that the Conservatives "understand and respect rural communities and their way of life", said City A.M..

There is "mutiny in the countryside as farmers turn on the Tory government over trade deals, subsidies and more", said Politico. Other cited factors include the effect of rising energy prices on farmers, the cost-of-living crisis, a lack of affordable housing in rural areas, and additional costs linked to Brexit.

Opposition parties "smell blood" in rural constituencies, after "frustration which had simmered in the English countryside's rolling hills and fertile fields finally boiled over".

But the "real political threat to Tory rule in the English countryside" comes from the Liberal Democrats, Politico added. An official from the party told the site that they had noticed "just how angry the farmers were at the government" over being "short-changed on trade deals".

"Farmers have been left to cope with soaring inflation", said The Telegraph, and to "deal with the upheaval of the transition from EU subsidies to new green incentives in England",  a process that has been "beset by delays and confusion".

But a demographic shift could also be influencing the fall in Tory support, as a growing number of city residents move to more rural locations. In 2022, more than 80,000 Londoners purchased an "out-of-city house", said House and Garden, with 78% leaving the city permanently "in search of greener pastures in the British countryside". Since the Covid pandemic, this trend has been steadily growing, consistently rising by 16% each year between 2019 and 2023.

A day after the Survation poll was published, Tory MP Suella Braverman sang the praises of the countryside. Writing for The Telegraph, the former home secretary responded to a claim from wildlife charities that rural Britain is a "racist colonial" white space that is "dominated by white people".

She described this claim as "bonkers" and "one of the most ridiculous examples of left-wing identity politics", adding that the countryside was "a jewel in the crown of Britain".

What next?

Labour is "increasingly eyeing rural seats", said the i news site. "We plan to park our tanks on the Tories' country fields," a Labour source told the outlet.

Keir Starmer has claimed that farmers and rural communities were in his "DNA", having held his first job at the age of 14 on a farm.

How political parties might attract the rural vote has been laid out by the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), which commissioned the poll and represents nearly 27,000 farmers, landowners and rural businesses across England and Wales.

The CLA has published a blueprint on how to "unlock the full potential of the rural economy", said Farmers Weekly. The six documents, or missions, cover topics including profitable and sustainable farming, affordable housing, rural crime and delivering economic growth in countryside constituencies.

Among these missions is a call for an increased agricultural budget of at least £4 billion a year to invest in a "world-class agriculture policy" and help farmers deliver "meaningful improvements" to the environment.

The CLA found that a "large chunk of the electorate is still up for grabs", said FW. When asked which political party they most trusted to stimulate economic growth, the largest group of respondents (35%) said "don't know".

Today marks four years since the UK formally left the European Union. Back then, Boris Johnson, who had just won an 80-seat majority promising to "get Brexit done", hailed the date as the start of a new golden era for Britain.

Turning rhetoric into reality has proved much harder, however. Johnson is gone, as is his successor Liz Truss. Rishi Sunak has adopted a more pragmatic approach and sought to mend ties with Europe, but several issues remain as "divisive as ever", said The Times, "including the UK's ability to control its own borders, British economic interests, the Northern Ireland protocol and freedom of movement in Europe".

The impact of leaving the EU has "not perfectly matched initial perceptions", agreed Sanjay Vallabh, managing director of Vallabh Associates, on Insider Media. While some pro-Brexit supporters looked forward to a "smoother transition to new trade relationships, the reality has been marked by complexities and disruptions". At the same time, "some of the dire predictions of economic collapse did not materialise".

Economy

The economic impact of Brexit has been a "subject of much debate", said Vallabh.  But the Office for Budget Responsibility's own forecasts suggest the post-Brexit trading relationship between the UK and EU, as set out in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) that came into effect on 1 January 2021, "will reduce long-run productivity by 4% relative to remaining in the EU".

Brexit contributed to Britain's "particularly high inflation" by "introducing friction into the country's most important trading relationship, and hitting the value of the pound, which has made imports more expensive", said CNN. A study by the London School of Economics found that Brexit was responsible for about a third of UK food price inflation since 2019, adding nearly £7 billion to Britain's grocery bill.

In August, the government announced that it was delaying health and safety checks on food imports from the EU for the fifth time in three years. The latest "foot-dragging demonstrates that Britain is still struggling to come to terms with the painful consequences" of leaving the EU, which has "piled costs on UK businesses and weighed on trade, investment and, ultimately, economic growth", CNN added.

Taken together, said John Springford of the Centre for European Reform think tank, the missed growth in goods and services trade account for "about a £23 billion quarterly hit" to UK exports,  which is consistent with a GDP reduction of 4%-5% compared to a Britain that had remained.

But because the EU is still by far the UK's largest trading partner, "we must keep on making piecemeal repairs to the EU-UK relationship, while accepting that Brexit is a fact of life", said historian David Reynolds in The New Statesman. 

New trade deals

The UK has also struggled to secure much-vaunted free trade agreements with some of the world's biggest and fastest-growing economies – what Boris Johnson famously described as the "sunlit uplands" for Britain outside EU "bondage".

A deal with India, which Johnson vowed to conclude by October 2022, is still pending, while negotiations with the US have been shelved until after the presidential election in November.

The UK has now "signed trade deals and agreements in principle with about 70 countries and one with the EU", said the BBC, but "the majority of these are simply 'rollovers'". That means the terms are the same as they were before Brexit. "And some of them are with countries with which the UK does very little trade."

Immigration

Immigration was a key factor for many who voted to leave the EU, but since coronavirus restrictions lifted, Britain has recorded huge hikes in net legal migration – the number of people who arrived, minus those who left. The population was boosted by nearly 750,000 in 2022, more than double the number in the year before the Brexit referendum.

"Immigration is replenishing Britain's labour force and deepening the diversity of its cities – a deliberate, if largely unspoken, strategy that is perhaps Brexit's most tangible early legacy," said The New York Times. "But it has come as a shock to people who voted to leave to make the country's borders less porous."

The reality proved "very different", said Jonathan Portes in The Guardian. Yet the migration statistics "reflect something that is rare indeed in the UK right now – a successful policy implemented efficiently and effectively and, even rarer, the crystallisation of a genuine 'Brexit opportunity'."

Northern Ireland

The Irish dimension was "another blind spot in the mindset of most English Leavers", said Reynolds. While Johnson effectively put a trade border down the Irish Sea, Sunak's Windsor Framework, concluded in February 2023, established notional "green" and "red" lanes to ensure a lighter touch for goods from Britain that would stay in Northern Ireland, compared with the tighter controls and checks on goods intended for the Republic.

"Irish backstop. Max fac. Settled status. Windsor Framework. Over the years, Brexit has spawned its own wide and weird lexicon," wrote Joel Reland of the UK in a Changing Europe think tank. Looking ahead to 2024, "'trivergence' is the next new word which could be on the tips of Brexit-watchers' tongues", he added, referring to the scenario where Northern Ireland "diverges from the regulations of both the EU and UK – creating three separate sets of rules and leaving itself adrift of both".

Regulatory divergence also left Northern Ireland politically deadlocked, with the DUP refusing to return to power-sharing at Stormont in protest at what it saw as the deliberate undermining of the union – a boycott that may finally be coming to an end.

What next?

Polls conducted over the past four years have shown a slow but steady move towards supporting a closer alignment with the EU. A recent YouGov survey found that around half of Britons (51%) now favour rejoining the EU, followed by 42% who said they would support joining the EU Single Market. By comparison, just three in 10 (31%) would support maintaining Britain's current relationship with its largest trading partner.

Keir Starmer has promised to seek a major renegotiation of Britain's TCA trade deal with the EU in 2025 if the Labour Party wins the next general election. He has, though, ruled out both rejoining as a full member or even returning to the Single Market.

As the Financial Times journalist Peter Foster observed in his 2023 book "What Went Wrong with Brexit", for whoever wins the next election, "fixing Brexit" will not be primarily about the exit itself, but about "putting the UK's house in order" – an imperative from which leaving the EU has "proved a colossal distraction at a crucial juncture".

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has agreed to restore power-sharing in Northern Ireland, ending two years of political deadlock.

In a press conference in the early hours of this morning, the DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said his party's executive had voted to end its boycott at Stormont after agreeing a legislative package with the Westminster government that addresses unionists' core complaints about the Windsor framework.

The DUP collapsed the Northern Ireland Assembly in February 2022 in protest at post-Brexit trading arrangements that it said undermined Northern Ireland's position in the UK. The impasse left civil servants to run the country "on a form of auto-pilot amid a fiscal crisis, crumbling public services, strikes and doubts about whether devolved government would ever return", said The Guardian.

Tuesday morning's breakthrough paves the way for Sinn Féin's Michelle O'Neill to become first minister (the first Irish republican to hold the top position), with a DUP member appointed to the less prestigious post of deputy first minister.

'About 10 things that could still go wrong'

Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris, who presided over months of tense negotiations with the DUP aimed at restoring power-sharing, called the move "a welcome and significant step".

But for others in London, Donaldson's statement was viewed with a "touch of caution", reported Politico. "This is obviously good news, but this is only one step and there are about 10 things that could still go wrong," one UK official told the news site. "Put it this way, we were expecting a statement at 10.30pm and it didn't come until nearly 1am. That says something about what the people in the room think about the deal."

What looks to have finally swayed the DUP executive was not the issue of Brexit but rather the damage continued obstruction of democracy was doing to the unionist cause. "We must not allow republicans to perpetuate the myth that Northern Ireland is a failed and ungovernable political entity," Donaldson said, arguing that an empty Stormont fuels republicans' demands for a referendum on unification.

'DUP sellout'

There remains "deep divisions" within unionism, said the Belfast Telegraph. Donaldson's victory, "and possibly his leadership", said The Guardian, will "be tested in the coming days by hardliners who consider the deal a betrayal that will weaken the union, raising the prospect of a party split".

Around 50 protesters waving Union Jacks picketed Monday's meeting with signs reading "Stop DUP Sellout".

Mel Lucas, from the Traditional Unionist Voice party, told the Belfast-based News Letter that Jeffrey "seemed to be very angry in Westminster last week about other unionists holding him to account". 

"But he really needs to be angry with the British government for betraying unionist people and not having the unionist people as equal citizens in the UK," Lucas said.

Another prominent loyalist, Jamie Bryson, appeared to have had sources at the supposedly confidential gathering of the executive, during which he live-tweeted: "There's only one betrayal, and it is of the mandate given to the DUP."

Debate over the British government's controversial Rwanda bill has once again raised the question of whether a written constitution would help or hinder the process to allow the deportation of illegal migrants.

A written constitution is a "comprehensive" and "codified" document that "serves as the supreme law of the land, establishing the rights and responsibilities of the government", said The Lawyer Portal. An unwritten constitution "serves the same purpose, but is based on a collection of laws, customs and precedents" that have evolved over time.

The vast majority of countries in the world have some form of written constitution, with notable exceptions including New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Israel and, of course, the United Kingdom.

Pro: clarity

The late Lord Chief Justice, Lord Bingham, said of the UK that "constitutionally speaking, we now find ourselves in a trackless desert without map or compass". This is the "precise problem codification addresses", said Gopal Subramanium in Prospect. "When a constitution is codified, we know what it says. Each organ of the state – the legislature, the executive and the judiciary – has a clearer idea of the breadth of its powers" and the relations these organs have with each other and with citizens are "more easily discernible".

By contrast, unwritten constitutions are "open to ambiguity and can be subject to numerous interpretations", said the BBC. This lack of clarity has "exacerbated recent political crises in the UK", said Sionaidh Douglas-Scott on the UCL's Constitution Unit blog. The legal status of referendums, for example, has never been properly set out, leading to the seemingly endless constitutional crises in the years following the vote to leave the EU.

Con: inflexibility   

Supporters of an unwritten system like the UK's, which is made up of a vast array of different laws, customs and conventions developed over centuries, claim it offers "greater flexibility" and can "evolve and adapt to reflect changes in society", said the BBC.

Walter Bagehot, in his book The English Constitution that was first published in 1867, argued it was the very provisional nature of our constitutional arrangements that made them fit for purpose compared, for example, to the strict codification of the US constitution.

In the UK, the flexibility afforded by an unwritten constitution has come to be seen as an "advantage", agreed UCL's Constitution Unit, enabling the removal of hereditary peers from the House of Lords, the introduction of the Human Rights Act, devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the creation of the Supreme Court.

Pro: educative function

One "commonly cited benefit" to states possessing written constitutions is that such devices perform an "educative function, because citizens can easily consult and reference the documents", said Brian Christopher Jones in The Atlantic. Jones' recent book, "Constitutional Idolatry and Democracy", compares the respective merits of the UK and US systems. 

The American constitution is easier for lawmakers, judges and perhaps most importantly citizens to understand. US schoolchildren grow up learning parts of it by heart. It is widely available online and its physical form consistently lands on best-seller lists.

Being able to point to a constitution and assert its values is "empowering", agreed Subramanium, citing his own experience in India in which generations "understand the workings of its constitution, learning their rights and asserting them against successive governments".

Con: judiciary over parliament

Parliamentary sovereignty is commonly regarded as the "defining principle" of the British constitution, claimed UCL's Constitution Unit, and without a written constitution in place, statutes are the UK's "highest form of law", said Jones in The Atlantic.

In his 2019 Reith lecture series on the state of democracy in the UK, the former head of the Supreme Court and opponent of a written constitution, Lord Sumption, argued that calls for a single codified document are the wrong answers to the right question. All a written constitution would do, he said, was move the UK further towards legal constitutionalism, abrogating the powers of our democratic bodies in favour of an "increase (in the powers) of judges".

Jones' conclusion is that unwritten constitutions can perform "just as well as written ones", and that, for "all their grandeur, written constitutions do not produce better democratic outcomes and can sometimes entrench significant mistakes, rather than help facilitate resolutions to complex problems".

Pro: protecting rights

Perhaps the "most significant advantage of a written constitution is its benefit to the citizen", said Subramanium. The document represents the "embodiment of the contract citizens enter with their government" in which they agree to be governed in exchange for assurances their freedoms will be protected and their equality guaranteed.

Rights guaranteed by a written constitution are "usually beyond parliament's power to amend with a simple majority", said Subramanium, meaning "individuals and minority groups are thus protected from majoritarian and populist influence".

As the British philosopher AC Grayling noted, "a constitution not at the whim of any current administration is a sterner guardian of rights and liberties than a constitution malleable to partisan and passing interests".

Con: writing a written constitution

For countries like the US the constitution is a sacred document. But in the UK, which has survived for centuries without one, the formalising of a single written constitution would prove hugely complicated and controversial. It would likely take years, if not decades, of political wrangling and lobbying and would make debates around the primacy of EU law look small by comparison.

Setting out the arguments for and against, a report by the Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in 2015 noted that "any study of written constitutions around the world shows that they only come into existence after a successful invasion, after a revolution, or some appalling failure in the polity and breakdown in the way government and politics were operating".

Brexit-regretting ex-pats are ready to punish the Tories

Paul Waugh in The i Paper

A recent move by the UK government means "British expats will now have a 'vote for life', no matter how long they live overseas", writes Paul Waugh in The i Paper. "Unlike the traditional image of expats being typical Tories, the Brexit referendum radicalised many of them against the party." It means that in "giving expats votes for life" Rishi Sunak "could end up fuelling a backlash against his Government at the next election".

Read more

Is Emmanuel Macron secretly hoping for a Trump victory?

Gavin Mortimer in The Spectator

A Donald Trump victory in November "would hasten Emmanuel Macron's ambition for a United States of Europe", writes Gavin Mortimer in The Spectator. "So reviled is Trump by the European elite that they would regard a 'disengagement' from his America as a merciful release." When they need to elect a president for a federal Europe "there will be only one contender: the globalists' golden boy, the darling of the Davos set" – Macron, of course. 

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From bot reporters to the loss of a legendary editor, the Daily Mirror is hanging by a thread

Jane Martinson in The Guardian

"The decline of newspapers is not new, but it will still feel bleak until a reliable source of funding for proper reporting is more readily found," writes Jane Martinson in The Guardian. After swingeing cuts at many papers in recent years, it's "hard not to worry about the future of mass market news that isn't from just one plutocratic viewpoint and local news that isn't provided by a machine". 

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From Windrush to the Post Office, I find a Britain losing its faith in fair play

Anoosh Chakelian in The New Statesman 

A "murmur is rumbling across the country", with "angry beads sweat gathering on the nation’s stiff upper lip", writes Anoosh Chakelian in The New Statesman. "Suspect Covid contracts, the hypocrisy of partygate and poor conduct in public office" are compounding a sense of a loss of faith in fairness. Even a change of government "risks simply running the same machine – stuck in its centralised-globalised muddle of shoddy outsourcing, false economies and groupthink". 

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The NHS is experiencing "unprecedented" medicines shortages, with the number of drugs in short supply doubling in two years.

In December, 96 drugs were on a shortage list, according to unpublished figures from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) seen by The Guardian. That number (down from a record 111 in October) has nearly doubled since January 2022, and includes treatments for cancer and diabetes. 

The DHSC has since issued supply notifications for 10 more products, including drugs for schizophrenia and, most recently, for epilepsy. Pharmacists claim that some patients' conditions are deteriorating as a result of the "unprecedented shortage", said the paper. A DHSC spokesperson said they did not recognise the figures provided to The Guardian by the British Generic Manufacturers Association (BGMA). 

What the papers said

The Ukraine-Russia war has affected many countries' supply chains, said the London Evening Standard. More recently, Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea – "a key shipping corridor for vital ingredients" – and retaliation by US and UK forces have raised concerns about "fresh market instability". But in the UK, it has become "worryingly normal" for hundreds of medicines to be affected by "pricing and other issues every month", said Janet Morrison, who leads Community Pharmacy England. The problem "is now worse than ever".

But shortages are not a new development, said The Guardian's chief reporter Daniel Boffey. About 92% of pharmacies experienced daily supply issues in 2022, according to a survey by Community Pharmacy England published last August – up from 67% the year before. The report found that 87% of teams believed "patient health was being put at risk". 

Nor is it "just a UK phenomenon", said Boffey. The most recent European Association of Hospital Pharmacists survey found that 95% of hospital pharmacists across 36 European countries experienced shortages last year. 

"Manufacturing issues are the most commonly cited cause of drug shortages," said three health experts from the University of Bradford on The Conversation. In 2022, these caused 60% of global medicine shortages. The UK relies on only one manufacturer for many drugs, "which can be a risky strategy".

Several shortages "made headlines" last year thanks to increased demand, said Forbes, including the type 2 diabetes treatment Ozempic for use as a weight-loss drug. This had "serious implications for many people with type 2 diabetes" in the UK, Douglas Twenefour, from the charity Diabetes UK, told the Financial Times.

Similarly, rising demand for ADHD medication and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to treat menopause symptoms also led to shortages.

Every country was "hit by supply chain disruptions" during the Covid-19 pandemic, Martin McKee, European public health professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told the British Medical Journal. However, "as with most other walks of life, Brexit adds to the problems". 

Pressures on drug prices since 2016 have "exacerbated" the UK's shortages, Mark Dayan, Brexit programme lead at the Nuffield Trust, told The Guardian. This was "probably associated with the Brexit referendum pulling down the value of sterling". Being outside the single market has "added costs at the border", he said, resulting in "a drop in products passing into this country".

There are "problems peculiar to Britain" other than Brexit, said Boffey, including "a lack of joined-up planning and communication" between health service guidance, manufacturers and the government. 

Above all, a government scheme that caps the annual increase in NHS spending on branded medicines to 2% has "acted as a drag on investment". That cap goes up to 4% this year, but still amounts to "penny pinching". 

It is "perhaps little wonder", concluded Boffey, that patience with the system is "running out fast".

What next?

UK shortages of diabetes drugs will last until at least the end of 2024, the DHSC said this month. The government has advised that patients should not be prescribed Ozempic for weight loss, and approved Wegovy as an alternative. 

"Action is being taken to manage drug disruptions," said Breen, Silcock and Edwards. The European Commission has put initiatives in place requiring suppliers to report shortages earlier, and stock sharing between countries. This "should be positive for the global drug supply" – but "it's not clear if this will benefit the UK".

Strategic stockpiles "will also help mitigate possible shortages", especially for drugs that see seasonal spikes in demand, such as antibiotics. 

"Hopefully," they concluded, "with the measures the government and suppliers have already taken, this will mean fewer shortages in 2024."

Reform UK leader Richard Tice has promised to "punish" the Conservative Party at the ballot box.

Tice criticised the Conservatives and Labour as being "two sides of the same socialist coin" and teased a possible return to frontline politics by former party leader Nigel Farage.

“I think you can be very confident that Nigel is committed," Tice said. "He's already our president. I mean, you could just take away the honorary title and call him President Farage alongside a possible President Trump."

According to recent surveys, the message may be getting through. Reform UK is polling just shy of 10% – only two points behind the Liberal Democrats. Yet for many people, the messenger – Tice himself – remains an unknown quantity.

The background

Born in Farnham, Surrey, Tice was a member of the Conservative Party and a donor. But his frustrations with the party over Europe led to him co-founding first, in 2015, the Leave.EU campaign and then, in late 2018, the Brexit Party, before expanding that party's remit into Reform UK.

On his own website, Tice describes himself as "a no-nonsense, can-do type of person who gets things done".

If Reform UK is to be a success, these are the "credentials the party's former chairman will need in spades", the BBC said in a 2021 profile after Tice had been installed as the party's leader.

On a "self-styled mission to offer somewhere to go for those who feel politically homeless", the BBC said, Tice characterises his party as "the change the country needs" and has laid out an agenda to overhaul the economy, public services and public institutions. 

His efforts have turned Reform UK into "the great enigma of right-wing British politics", said The Spectator's James Heale. The party has gathered considerable support, "despite lacking a memorable name, leader, policy platform or record of electoral success".

Away from politics, Tice "has done pretty well", said The New European. He was CEO of CLS Holdings from 2010-14, and was involved in the development of The Shard, the London skyscraper. Since 2018, Tice has been in a relationship with the political journalist Isabel Oakeshott and the pair have since formed "one of the right wing's most prominent power couples", added the paper. 

The latest

Tice's success in leading Reform UK to respectable polling numbers hasn't gone unnoticed by the Tories. Lee Anderson, deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, called Tice a "pound shop Nigel Farage" and urged him to "pipe down" after his stinging criticism of the government at a press conference on Wednesday.

Speaking on GB News, Anderson expressed concern about the impact Reform UK might have in splitting the Conservative vote, potentially helping Labour to victory at the next general election.

"If the unthinkable happens and next year, we do get a Labour government and Richard Tice is on his media platforms saying what a disaster 'Starmergeddon' and what a disaster the Labour Party are, I shall be reminding Mr Tice it was him that helped them get elected," Anderson said.

The reaction

Attempting to understand what's going on with Reform UK is "a frankly unsettling exercise in working out who it is that's gone through the looking glass – them, the rest of us, or both", said The Times's Tom Peck.

True enough, there are "a great many people out there who share Tice's view that the Tory party has broken Britain", Peck added, "but they tend to think that Brexit may have had something to do with it".

Some have speculated that Tice may find himself pushed aside ahead of the general election as Farage makes his "political comeback", said Sky News. According to Tice, his party's former leader is still "assessing" what role he will play in the next election.

"Nigel is the master of political timing but I'm very clear the job at hand is so big to save Britain, the more help that Nigel is able to give in the election campaign, frankly, the better," Tice said. 

Regardless of who is in charge, Reform UK "wields a disproportionate influence on the right of British politics", said The New European. What Tice does with that influence remains to be seen.

I've got news for those who say Brexit is a disaster: it isn't. That's why rejoining is just a pipe dream

Larry Elliott in The Guardian 

Rejoiners pushing to re-enter the EU must prove the UK economy has "become a basket case since Brexit" and that life "in the club" is "so much better", says Larry Elliott in The Guardian. But "neither criterion has been met". The "doomsday scenario" of "crashing house prices" and "mass unemployment" never happened. Instead, the "worrying" state of EU politics confirms the UK is right to "let sleeping dogs lie".

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The King's Royal Blue Tie Speaks Volumes to Greeks

Howard Chua-Eoan in Bloomberg 

King Charles has triggered "flurries of speculation" by wearing a tie of a colour and pattern that was a "definite allusion to the Greek flag", writes Howard Chua-Eoan for Bloomberg. Coming in the wake of Rishi Sunak's refusal to be "drawn into the debate" over the Elgin Marbles, the monarch's subtle move is "genius", allowing him to "reflect publicly on what he personally feels about the issue". But "he'll never tell, of course". 

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Can realpolitik be ethical?

Adrian Pabst in The New Statesman

It's time to "rescue" foreign policy from "naked national interest", argues Adrian Pabst in The New Statesman following Henry Kissinger's death. For decades, our world order has resulted in "chaos and conflict", with the West "stuck in a clash between moralistic liberalism and amoral realism". The "path out of the impasse" is an "ethical realist" approach that aims to "restrain power at home and abroad, based on reciprocity and responsibility".

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It's okay that winter isn't all Christmas cheer

Karen Adam in The National

Beneath the "festive veneer", many people are grappling with the "profound struggle" that Christmas can bring, writes MSP Karen Adam for The National. While adults "work hard" to keep the holiday "as magical as possible for the kids", the "expectation to be merry can feel like an overwhelming burden", especially for those facing "loss, strained relationships, or financial hardship". It is "crucial" that we recognise "mental health doesn't adhere to a seasonal calendar", and that it's "okay to feel off" whatever the time of year.

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The cost of bananas, which has not gone up at all in the UK in the last three decades, could now be about to fall in a controversial move made possible by Brexit.

The banana is "one of the few British supermarket staples to have bucked the trend during the cost of living crisis", said The Guardian. In fact, the price today, around 115p per kilo, is the same as it was in 1990.

The UK's banana market is dominated by the "dollar banana" producers of Latin America, who can sell their product cheaply due to rolled-over European Union-negotiated free trade deals that have significantly reduced import taxes.

In 2019, the EU promised not to cut tariffs imposed on big producers any further "in recognition of the impact on the smaller African competitors". But the UK's exit from the European Union has "freed it from that pledge to the world's poorest", said the paper.

The latest

As part of its trade deal with Andean countries – Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru – the UK government is currently conducting a review of banana tariffs. 

Afruibana, the Pan-African association of banana producers and exporters, has said the move to diverge from the EU commitment would amount to a "betrayal" by the UK. 

While it means that banana prices are likely to come down even further in UK supermarkets, it will come "at the cost of the livelihoods of thousands of workers on small plantations in some of Africa's poorest countries", said The Guardian, with potentially severe consequences for businesses in Ghana, Cameroon, and Ivory Coast. 

In the past year, the UK has granted tariff concessions on bananas to Mexico and Peru as it joined the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Another trade agreement with Australia aims to eliminate all tariffs within eight years.

The background

The UK's burgeoning banana habit has been bad news for growers for some time. When confronted by discount supermarkets such as Aldi and Lidl in the mid-1990s, Tesco, Asda and other major supermarkets "slashed the price of bananas to entice customers", said The Times.

“All major retailers except the Co-op have been selling loose bananas at unsustainably low prices, preventing any investment in social and environmental improvements by producers,” Alistair Smith, founder of Banana Link, a campaign group that champions sustainability, told the paper.

To keep prices low, bananas are grown on huge monoculture plantations, which are more susceptible to diseases such as TR4 that are "slowly destroying swathes of plantations in Asia", said The Times,

“It is the Irish potato famine phenomenon all over again," said Smith. "You could potentially get global wipeout, as there's no diversity to stop the disease taking hold." Supermarkets need to look at "alternative ways of producing on a commercial scale before it's too late", he said. 

Bananas became a symbol of excessive EU red tape during the Brexit debate after The Sun newspaper brought to light obscure EU legislation stating that bananas must be "free from malformation or abnormal curvature".

In the British media and the public imagination, the rule appeared to suggest that the EU had banned bananas that were too "bendy". Indeed, according to an Ipsos-Mori poll taken in June 2016, before the Brexit vote, 24% of British people thought bananas that are "too bendy" were banned from being imported into the UK.

Keir Starmer has been accused of a "Brexit betrayal" after promising to rewrite the UK's deal with Brussels.

Before holding talks with French president Emmanuel Macron, the Labour leader said he wanted to secure "much better" arrangements with the EU. This prompted accusations from one former Tory minister that he is "cosying up to the EU" and "unpicking Brexit", said the Daily Mail.

Starmer believes the existing deal is "far too thin" and thinks Brexit is "not the electorally toxic issue it was". Changing Boris Johnson's Brexit agreement could now be a "vote winner", said The Times. 

But Brussels has "played down the prospect" of a significantly improved trade agreement with the UK, so there are question marks over how much change is even possible.

What did the papers say?

Senior figures in Brussels have warned that the forthcoming review of the Trade and Co-operation Agreement is more about "housekeeping" than changing the UK and EU’s relationship, said The Times. Any move to renegotiate the deal would not be easy as it would need the backing of both the European Commission and the 27 member states.

Starmer has ruled out rejoining the EU single market or customs union and therefore has a "Brexit delusion", wrote Wolfgang Münchau for The New Statesman. His claim that a better deal is achievable in such circumstances is a "political lie" that will "almost certainly be exposed as such", he added.

The two "big" issues – Northern Ireland, and Britain’s associate membership of the EU’s Horizon science programme – have been "resolved", added the director of Eurointelligence, so "if your bottom line is that you do not wish to rejoin the single market and the customs union", there "really is not a lot more out there".

Starmer's self-imposed "red lines" have "limited" how far the UK's trading relationship with EU can be improved, experts told the Financial Times. "In most European capitals Brexit is yesterday's problem," the paper said, after a senior EU official told it: "There's little appetite to reopen the Brexit psychodrama in Brussels."

Anxiety over the domestic fallout could also hamper Starmer, who "shudders with fear" at any accusation that he might favour returning to Europe's customs union or single market, said The Guardian's Simon Jenkins. The Labour leader "quails at the thought of what a Brexit voter in a 'red wall' seat might say", he wrote.

What next?

The meeting with Macron in Paris is less about direct negotiations and more the latest stop on Starmer's "grip-and grin world tour", said the BBC's political editor, Chris Mason. "I am told by Labour folk that it is a 'getting to know each other session' rather than much else," added Mason. Nevertheless, it is a milestone in Starmer's ambition to renegotiate the Brexit deal.

But given the difficulties and seemingly limited wriggle room, said the FT, the UK side will have to "think carefully about a quid pro quo to unlock more flexibility from the European Commission on trade issues". To charm Brussels, London could pay into EU programmes, like the Erasmus student exchange scheme, or offer easier work visas for Europe's young people and students, it suggested.

Other "potential areas for deeper co-operation" include "diplomacy and security", it continued. London and Brussels could also work on "deeper cyber security and intelligence co-operation", as well as more agreement on renewable energy and carbon-pricing systems.

Britain could also try to negotiate some "improvements for individual sectors of the economy", such as a veterinary agreement to reduce checks on animal and plant products, which would benefit food and drink exporters.

However, no one believes any of this will be straightforward. The UK in a Changing Europe research group said Starmer risks "demanding more than the EU is willing to give", said The Independent.

Some experts warn that Starmer's aspirations will "quickly get bogged down in negotiations in Brussels" and cause political problems for him at home. But Mujtaba Rahman, head of European analysis at the Eurasia Group think-tank, told the FT that if Starmer "delivers consistent British engagement with the EU", based "more on shared values and less on domestic politics", that will "create goodwill, which will then underpin the dynamic between the two sides across the board".

Sales of tampons in the UK have fallen by 12% in the past five years, raising questions over the long-term viability of the menstrual product.

Growing concerns over their health and environmental impact are “turning women off the tampon”, said The Times, and with “talking about your time of the month more socially acceptable than ever”, women now have “other options”.

Why are sales down?

The trend became official in March, when the Office for National Statistics made changes to its “inflation basket” to reflect the changing habits of British shoppers. Tampons were replaced by sanitary towels because the latter are “attracting greater expenditure and are currently more representative of feminine hygiene products”, said the ONS.

There are several reasons for the decline, including concern over the impact they have on nature. “There’s no getting away from the fact that sanitary products are bad for the environment,” said The Times. Tampons and pads are the fifth most common product found in oceans, according to the European Commission.

On average a woman will dispose of 15,000 menstrual items during her lifetime that will end up in landfill, added The Times. Around 2.5 million tampons and 1.4 million pads are flushed down UK toilets every day – a figure that “doesn’t fit well with Gen Z’s priorities”, the paper said.

Are there health concerns?

Yes. Researchers discovered “forever chemicals” in the lining of period underwear, the wrappers of tampons and in other menstrual products, The Washington Post reported. The chemicals can “accumulate in the body over time” and “have been implicated in a number of serious health effects, including some cancers”, it said.

“The skin lining the vagina is one of the body’s most sensitive parts,” said The Times, “and chemicals can pass into the bloodstream without being metabolised.” Leaving a tampon in for too long be dangerous. It can lead to toxic shock syndrome, a bacterial infection that in severe cases can prove fatal.

Earlier this month, a Californian model had both of her legs amputated after becoming gravely ill with toxic shock syndrome caused by a tampon, reported The Mirror. However, such cases are rare.

What are the alternatives?

The Mooncup is a silicone device that is inserted into the vagina and can collect three times more blood than a tampon, said its British manufacturer. It should be rinsed with water after emptying it and put in boiled water between periods to sterilise it. “I would say that the biggest killer of the tampon is the menstrual cup,” Lisa Payne, head of beauty trends at the forecaster Stylus, told The Times.

There are also period pants, which are underwear with an absorbent lining that can go in the wash. Thanks to an absorbent black gusset “you don’t see red blood like you do on a pad”, a woman told The New York Times.

However, noted the paper, period underwear is “not for everyone” because of the cost, which ranges from $12 to $38 in the US, depending on the brand. In the UK, a pack of three period pants at M&S costs £20. Prices could fall if campaigners convince the government to cut VAT on them.

What about the price of tampons?

Questions were raised earlier this year over whether the removal of the so-called tampon tax – “trumpeted… by Rishi Sunak as one of the benefits of Brexit” – has “helped lower prices at all, amid concerns the saving is not being passed on by retailers to women”, said The Guardian.

Supermarket own-brand period products increased in price by as much as 57% last year, according to research carried out by The Grocer. Asda put the price of its non-applicator tampons up from 70p to £1.10 in August 2022, the same price as Sainsbury’s own-label tampons (up from £1). As a comparison, a multi-use Mooncup costs about £24.

Are there any innovations in tampons?

The tampon design, “a bullet-shaped cotton and rayon bundle”, has been “largely unchanged for almost 90 years”, said The Times. But now, the US has approved a new design that could “change the appearance of a product that’s looked the same for decades”, said The Guardian.

The design, patented by an independent company called Sequel, has “diagonal grooves that spiral down the product”. The makers say the product’s “helical shape better absorbs fluid”, which “leads to less leakage and a more reliable experience”.

The inventors believe that the new take on a familiar product could prove popular. “People don’t necessarily love their tampons”, they said. “They just have a system they’ve used since they first got their period.”

But ultimately “it all comes down to trust”, said The Times, “which, in the tampon’s case, could be hanging by a thread”.

An agreement between Britain and the European Union over the future of Gibraltar is reportedly "getting closer".

Despite "significant progress" made on issues related to the economy, trade and the environment, the nature of the relationship between the Mediterranean territory and the EU "remains unresolved after Brexit", said The Independent. Rules governing Gibraltar's border with Spain are understood to have been the "major sticking point".

Eurosceptic Conservative MPs have said that proposals for EU border guards to be posted at Gibraltar's airport represent a threat to British sovereignty and set a precedent for other British overseas territories.

 What is the status of Gibraltar since Brexit? 

Since the UK opted to leave the EU in 2016, Gibraltar – which voted 96% to remain – has been "in a state of nervous limbo", said The New European.

Eight years on from the referendum, the 35,000 or so inhabitants of "the Rock", the majority of whom identify as British and who vehemently rejected a joint sovereignty plan with Spain in 2002, "still have no idea what their future relationship with the EU will be", said the newspaper.

The territory was not included in the UK-EU post-Brexit trade deal and had been left outside the EU's customs union by the leave vote. A temporary "pre-deal" arrangement was introduced in 2020, which effectively allowed freedom of movement at the Spain-Gibraltar border to avoid disruption, while letting Gibraltar remain a British territory.

This is vital for Gibraltar's economy, said the Financial Times. The Rock is "as wealthy as it is cramped": a "freakishly overdeveloped tiny place not even 3 square miles in size" that relies on more than 15,000 cross-border commuters from Spain to "double the size of its workforce every day". Without the workers, the economy "would grind to a halt".

No agreement would mean a hard border between Gibraltar and Spain, which could subject commuters to long delays along a frontier just over a mile long. It would also wreak havoc on trade, as Gibraltar imports almost all of its goods.

 Why has progress been so slow? 

In principle, Spain and Gibraltar agree on a need for smooth cross-border relations, said the FT. But "bigger matters are at play".

Spain refuses to recognise British sovereignty over the territory, which was originally ceded to the UK "in perpetuity" in the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. Spain's official position, both on the left and right, has always been that the British overseas territory belongs to Spain. Successive conservative governments have attempted to take at least partial control of the Rock, and the Spanish right has long used Gibraltar as a "whack-a-mole for energizing a nationalist audience", said US socialist magazine Jacobin.

What is the border plan? 

Talks have been ongoing for nearly two years to establish a common travel area between Gibraltar and the EU's Schengen zone, effectively making it a de facto Schengen member, which would remove the need for most controls at the border.

However, some Conservative MPs have talked of a "sellout" by the UK government, with Bill Cash, chair of the Commons' European Scrutiny Committee, recently warning that allowing checks by EU border guards at the airport would "erode British sovereignty to the point of meaninglessness".

EU immigration checks at the airport would be "utterly unacceptable", said The Telegraph in an editorial, "partly because the airport is a joint civil-military facility that doubles as a RAF station", making this "not just a matter of sovereignty, but also of control of a strategically significant British defence asset".

The fear, said The Independent, is that this "will see EU Frontex border guards decide who can enter the British overseas territory – and will give them the power to turn away British citizens".

There are also "wider concerns" about this treaty with the EU, said the news site. These include "implications of a dilution of British sovereignty in areas such as Northern Ireland and even potentially the UK bases in Cyprus, where pressure is mounting over land that is British sovereign territory".

Joe Biden has snubbed Britain and threatened the special relationship between the US and UK by blocking Ben Wallace’s bid to become Nato secretary-general, government sources claim.

The UK defence secretary had been among the favourites to succeed Jens Stoltenberg, whose tenure as chief of the Western military alliance is due to end in September after nine years at the helm.

But a “visibly deflated” Wallace told The Economist this week that “it’s not going to happen” – and some are blaming the US president. Allies of Wallace reportedly told The Telegraph that they believed Biden had torpedoed his bid, and potentially damaged relations between the two allies, by refusing to endorse him.

What the papers say

“Former soldier Ben Wallace would have made an ideal candidate” for Nato chief, wrote Mark Almond, director of the Crisis Research Institute in Oxford, for the Daily Mail. So Biden’s “snub” to Wallace is “clearly symptomatic of a wider vendetta against the UK”, Almond argued.

The US president’s “ageing and increasingly unpredictable mind is gripped by a sentimental Irish nationalism nurtured as a child during World War Two, when Eire was neutral to Hitler’s threat”.

Biden’s wife Jill may also have “lobbied her husband to block Wallace’s Nato bid because she wanted to put a woman in charge”, suggested Almond. Alternatively, the alleged obstruction may be “simply another of Biden’s many gaffes”.

The Nato role is decided “behind the scenes”, said The Guardian. “Some EU leaders, including the French president, Emmanuel Macron, were reportedly reluctant to accept a non-EU candidate.”

Britain’s withdrawal from the EU has been cited by some as the reason for Wallace’s lack of support for the post. Some leaders have “little appetite to hand the plum job to a Brit after Brexit”, said Politico.

Brexit is “not to blame” for Wallace “throwing in the towel”, insisted Europe editor James Crisp in The Telegraph. There are ���other more influential factors at stake”.

One is that “there is always a preference for a prime minister”, he added, and most of the other possible candidates, such as Mark Rutte, PM of the Netherlands, fulfil that requirement.

There have also been calls for a female leader, or someone from Eastern Europe. The choice of a prime minister or president from a country such as Poland would “send a strong message of defiance to Vladimir Putin”, wrote Crisp.

Biden has “torpedoed” Wallace’s chances, said the Daily Mirror, because he wants former Norwegian prime minister Stoltenberg to stay in the post.

However, added the paper, Biden has previously described Wallace as “very qualified” for the role.

Earlier this month, Biden was asked whether “in the light of the warm words right now about UK/US defence collaboration, particularly in Ukraine”, he thought “it is time for the first UK Nato Secretary General in two decades”. The US president replied: “Maybe, that remains to be seen,” said Sky News.

Nevertheless, said The Guardian, Washington is “thought to have had doubts about Wallace”, with some in the military “resenting the way he has forced the pace over Ukraine”.

What next?

Biden is thought to have persuaded top European allies, including France and Germany, to agree to postpone a decision on Stoltenberg’s replacement for a year.

There are murmurings in Westminster that this could have diplomatic consequences. Government sources told The Telegraph there are fears the snub may damage the special relationship between London and Washington.

Delaying the Nato leadership question until 2024 would also “push the decision into an EU election year”, pointed out Politico, allowing it to “become part of the political jostling over who will run the EU’s main institutions for the next five years”.

This would permit countries to “back a candidate at NATO, for instance, in exchange for getting their preferred candidate installed atop the European Commission”, it added, but “it’s not a solution everyone loves”.

Whoever eventually takes over from Stoltenberg at Nato will have a tough task, Wallace told The Economist, because that person “is going to have to please both Macron and Biden”.

They will also have to deal with “a lot of unresolved issues in Nato”, said the newspaper, including unrest over the target of member countries spending 2% of GDP on defence and the question of the alliance’s role beyond Europe.

Who will the successor ultimately be? Kaja Kallas, Estonia’s PM and a “fierce Putin critic”, has been mooted although some allies feel she may be “too confrontational towards Russia”, wrote Crisp. Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, the former president of Croatia, is another possibility, but “Mette Frederickson, Denmark’s Prime Minister, ruled herself out of the running after meeting with Joe Biden earlier this month”, Crisp added.

Beano comics are among a shipment of British goods to be sent to Australia and New Zealand to mark the start of two new post-Brexit trade deals, noted Sky News. After the agreements between the UK and Australia, and the UK and New Zealand, came into force at midnight, the Business and Trade Secretary, Kemi Badenoch, said Beano comics signed by the comic'’s editor, Penderyn single malt Welsh whisky, Brighton Gin, The Cambridge Satchel Co. bags and Fever-Tree mixers will be sent as goodwill gestures.

Medieval stand-up comedy script discovered

A study of medieval comedy has shown that audiences were “entertained with edgy satire, bawdy nonsense and a story involving an absurd killer rabbit that wouldn’t look out of place in a Monty Python sketch”, said The Times. A manuscript, dating from about 1480, appears to show how an “anonymous minstrel dared to mock kings, religion, himself and — perhaps most bravely — his audiences”, as he “performed on the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border, probably at alehouses, baronial halls and boozy village fairs”, it said.

Vast plume suggests life beyond Earth

A huge plume has been seen emerging from Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, has raised hopes of life outside our own planet. The satellite has has salty water and other conditions that leave scientists to believe that it could support alien life. “Enceladus is one of the most dynamic objects in the solar system and is a prime target in humanity’s search for life beyond Earth,” expert Dr Christopher Glein, told Earth.com.

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Teesside is at the centre of a growing political row between Labour and Conservatives over the regeneration of a former steelworks site.

The Teesworks project is the renovation of the largest brownfield site in Europe – 4,500 acres near Middlesbrough in northeast England. It has been seen as a major part of the Conservative government’s levelling up agenda, but has been marred in recent months by allegations of “cronyism and backroom deals”, Sky News reported.

What is the regeneration process?

The Teesworks project has been touted by the government as an ambitious plan to transform a former industrial site into a net zero manufacturing hub as part of the government’s pledge to create up to ten freeports around the UK.

After the old steelworks closed in 2015 – leaving “a toxic wasteland” that is “the size of Gibraltar”, said The Telegraph – £250 million in government grants was made available to rejuvenate the site. “Thereafter the private sector would step in,” said the paper.

Work has begun on a new factory on the site in which South Korean firm SeAH will manufacture offshore wind turbine monopiles. The £450 million project is expected to create 750 jobs at the site. But, said The Telegraph, “the problem was and remains that until a colossal cleanup is completed, the entire development is effectively worthless”. That “cleanup” will cost an estimated £500 million, according to a report seen by The Telegraph.

What are the allegations?

Ben Houchen, the Conservative mayor of Tees Valley, has overseen the regeneration project in his capacity as chair of the South Tees Development Corporation. But Houchen, 36, a rising star of the Tory party, has come in for criticism over the way the public-private partnership he promised has panned out.

“The mayor’s political opponents have accused him of cronyism,” said the Financial Times, “after a 90 per cent stake in the company operating the vacant steel site was transferred to two local developers… without any public tender process”.

Companies owned by the two developers, Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney, “have earned at least £45mn in dividends from the project in the past three years”, said the FT. But “there is no evidence they have invested in it to date”.

According to The Yorkshire Post, Musgrave and Corney not only profit from lease agreements, they “also get half the money made from scrap metal sale – more than £93m so far”.

What has the Labour Party said?

Shadow Levelling Up Secretary Lisa Nandy has called for an official inquiry by the National Audit Office (NAO) to answer “important questions about the transfer of a vital public asset into private ownership”, said Sky News.

And fellow Labour MP Meg Hillier, who chairs the Public Accounts Committee, urged Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove to order an investigation, telling the FT “that the existing financial oversight system for England’s directly elected mayors was not ‘robust’”.

However, the matter reached a head when Labour MP for Middlesbrough Andy McDonald used parliamentary privilege in the House of Commons to allege “truly shocking, industrial-scale corruption” within the regeneration project.

A Teesworks spokesperson told Teesside Live that McDonald should contact the police if he believed offences had been committed.

What has the Conservative Party said?

Houchen strongly refuted the allegations of “sweetheart deals” and hit hit back at McDonald’s comments in Parliament, “daring the Labour MP to repeat his claims in public and face being sued for defamation”, reported the Express.

Speaking to BBC Newsnight, Houchen argued the Labour Party has manufactured the row, maintaining it is “embarrassed” at the progress being made under the Tories in what is traditionally a Labour stronghold.

But while the mayor dismissed the criticism, he has now backed calls for a review, said LGC Plus, writing to the NAO to request a “full investigation” into the project. He describes this as an attempt to provide a “swift, decisive conclusion” in the interest of transparency.

His statements have been backed by Musgrave, one of the project’s developers, who said such a review would establish the truth of the matter “once and for all”.

Previously, the NAO has reviewed the business case for the taxpayer-funded project, but has been unable to commence a detailed audit without the process being approved by Gove, the secretary of state. This is because the project is being run by the Tees Valley Combined Authority, rather than central government.

The government has said it has seen “no evidence of corruption, wrongdoing or illegality” and is “carefully considering” requests for an NAO review.

The first UK National Conservatism Conference was briefly disrupted this morning as a protester acting on behalf of Extinction Rebellion took to the stage during a speech by Jacob Rees-Mogg.

The three-day event at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster, hosted by the Edmund Burke Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, brings together right-leaning public figures, journalists and academics.

Some see national conservatism as “a movement that could help shape the future of the Tory party”, a “philosophical shot in the arm for post-Brexit, family-oriented conservatism”, said Peter Walker, deputy political editor at The Guardian. Others fear its focus on “defiantly traditional social values could be an electoral cul-de-sac for a party already struggling to engage with a younger, increasingly liberal-minded UK”.

What do national conservatives stand for?

In a joint article for The Telegraph last month, Rees-Mogg and the former UK chief Brexit negotiator David Frost said that “at its heart” the movement “is a belief in the nation state and the principle of national independence”.

The state must “end mass migration so that all may integrate into our nation; maintain law, order and justice; support those who need help, not those who don’t; protect our institutions; and build effective armed forces in a dangerous world”, they said.

The event’s website echoes that it brings together those “who understand that the past and future of conservatism are inextricably tied to the idea of the nation, to the principle of national independence, and to the revival of the unique national traditions”.

Claiming the “democratic world” is “confronted by a rising China abroad and a powerful new Marxism at home”, it says its “rich tradition of national conservative thought” is “intellectually serious”.

Andrew Gamble described NatCon in The New Statesman as “a new project for restoring the political hegemony of the Conservative Party in a way that [Margaret] Thatcher might have understood”.

“Taking their inspiration from Enoch Powell, Keith Joseph, Thatcher and [Liz] Truss, they answer the question about Conservatism’s future in a very different way to those on the centre-right,” he wrote, by putting “the nation-state, its sovereignty and independence, at the heart of Conservative politics”.

Who else will speak at the conference?

Speakers include Tory MPs Michael Gove, Lee Anderson and Suella Braverman; commentators Douglas Murray, Melanie Phillips and David Starkey; Trump-endorsed Republican senator JD Vance; and Catholic priest Father Benedict Kiely.

It is a “striking line-up, considering demagogues such as Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, and Josh Hawley, the senator for Missouri, have spoken at equivalent meetings in Rome and Miami”, said Ryan Bourne in The Times.

The movement “is doing more to police its Rightward borders”, said Peter Franklin at UnHerd. But there might be another reason why Gove and his fellow Conservative MPs are willing to participate: “they’re going to be called extremists anyway”, particularly on plans to limit illegal immigration.

Home Secretary Braverman will insist today that “it’s not xenophobic to say that mass and rapid migration is unsustainable” as she delivers her keynote speech.

Indeed, the unnamed “stage invader” during Rees-Mogg’s address said he wanted to draw the audience’s attention to “a few characteristics of fascism”, said The Telegraph. The former business secretary replied that he valued free speech and that the activist could “have his national loony convention next week and see how many people show up”.

What does it mean for the Tory party?

The conference is potentially uncomfortable for Rishi Sunak as he tries to maintain his authority in the face of poor local election results and disquiet over his abandonment of a “bonfire” of EU laws.

“Unfortunately for the Prime Minister, his MPs have plenty of views on how he should govern,” wrote Katy Balls, political editor of The Spectator. As a result the conference will see “various colleagues” of the prime minister “waxing lyrical on the future of conservatism”.

“The ideas they float are likely to offer a preview of the sort of leadership challenge that could be offered by the likes of Braverman in a post-Rishi Sunak era,” added Walker in The Guardian.

If national conservatism is about “turning your back on hyper-globalisation, liberalism, the world run by the big banks and the big financial institutions and George Soros”, said Andrew Marr in a video for The New Statesman, “then isn’t Rishi Sunak more or less an embodiment of everything they’re going to try and turn their back on?”

Keir Starmer has been accused of trying to drag the UK back into the European Union through the back door after it was revealed that Labour is considering plans to enfranchise millions of EU citizens.

The proposals, which would allow EU nationals who live permanently in the UK and pay tax to vote in general elections, “are seen as highly likely to benefit Sir Keir’s party at future elections by expanding the electorate by some 3.4 million EU nationals”, reported The Telegraph.

This would effectively be “laying the groundwork to drag the UK back into the EU by stealth”, Conservative Party chair Greg Hands claimed, arguing it was “an attempt to rig the electorate to rejoin the EU”.

Rejoining the EU ‘by stealth’

Hands stressed that “the right to vote in parliamentary elections and choose the next UK government is rightly restricted to British citizens and those with the closest historical links to our country”. He pointed out that “no other EU country allows EU citizens who are not their nationals to vote in parliamentary elections”.

Labour has sought to downplay claims the proposals amount to “gerrymandering”, with allies of Starmer saying the details of the policy were still being worked out and would only apply to EU nationals who had paid tax in Britain for a number of years.

Yet “even the idea of a limited extension of the franchise to longstanding UK residents from the EU would be controversial”, said the Financial Times, “given migrants are considered more likely to support Labour than the Conservatives”.

Tory peer and polling expert Lord Hayward “warned the move could backfire by deterring former Labour supporters in the party’s traditional heartlands from returning to the fold”, said The Telegraph.

“I think this would be an unwise move if they are going to attempt to recapture Leave voters in what are essentially Red Wall or traditional marginal constituencies,” he said.

Bregret but not Brejoin

While Brexit was once viewed by Tory strategists as “Starmer’s achilles heel”, the Labour leader has found a middle-ground that “frustrates many in Labour’s pro-Remain membership but is in tune with public opinion”, said Andrew Grice in The Independent.

With the much-trailed “Brexit dividends” failing to materialise, the most recent opinion polls show a solid majority now think Brexit was a bad idea, with an average of 58% of people wanting to be in the EU compared to 42% who are keen to be outside the bloc.

“But doing something different back then is not the same as wanting to undo things now,” said the UK in a Changing Europe think tank. “Polling on what should happen now is much more ambivalent: when given more than a simple ‘in/out’ choice, people think positively about having a closer relationship, but the appetite for returning to EU membership is much more of a push.”

There may be “growing Bregret”, said Luke Tryl, director of More in Common, but there is “little appetite for Brejoin”. At least not at the moment.

The bunting has only just come down from last week’s coronation festivities but Britain is already preparing for another big party: the Eurovision Song Contest 2023.

Liverpool is hosting this year’s competition on behalf of last year’s winner, Ukraine, which won with an entry from hip-hop stars Kalush Orchestra. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked to deliver a video message during the Eurovision final at Liverpool Arena on Saturday, to appeal to the world to continue supporting his country in the war with Russia.

But the Ukrainian leader was rebuffed by the contest’s organisers, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), over fears that the address would politicise the event.

Over on the political stage at Westminster, Tory Brexiteers are up in arms about a government U-turn on plans to remove all EU-era laws from the UK’s statute books by the end of the year. Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch confirmed this week that the Retained EU Laws Bill currently going through Parliament will no longer include a “sunset clause” that required Whitehall officials to choose which laws to save by the end of 2023.

Criticising Rishi Sunak for breaking his pledge to review or repeal all EU laws in his first 100 days in office, Jacob Rees-Mogg said: “Regrettably, ‘the blob’ has triumphed and the prime minister has abandoned his promise.”

To find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest developments in the news and other global events, put your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week.

1. Which Hollywood star has become a father again at the age of 79?

• Harrison Ford
• Al Pacino
• Robert De Niro
• Morgan Freeman

2. Experts estimate that how many of around two million Britons with long Covid are in need of specialist care?

• 20,000
• 200,000
• 400,000
• 500,000

3. A mysterious upcoming book that became a bestseller amid rumours that it was Taylor Swift’s memoir was actually written by which other music stars?

• BTS
• Jonas Brothers
• The Wanted
• O-Town

4. A new study found that which UK city is the “gloomiest” in the UK?

• Glasgow
• Bradford
• Blackpool
• Swansea

5. Polling suggests that what percentage of Americans think Joe Biden does not have the “mental sharpness” to serve a second term as president?

• 22%
• 45%
• 63%
• 80%

6. Newly released figures show that which UK airport was the worst for delays last year?

• London City
• Birmingham
• Heathrow
• Bristol

7. On what grounds has Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism of Antiquities criticised new Netflix docuseries Queen Cleopatra?

• The series was filmed in Spain
• The lead actor’s race
• Historically inaccurate costumes
• Too many episodes

8. Scientists in the Alps and the Arctic have discovered microbes that can eat what at cool temperatures?

• Sewage
• Pesticides
• Plastic
• Spilled petroleum

9. Who was named sportswoman of the year at the 2023 Laureus World Sports Awards?

• Iga Świątek
• Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce
• Katie Ledecky
• Alexia Putellas

10. Pupils at an independent school in North London have voted to make what change to their lunches?

• New option to order fast food
• Only vegan or vegetarian lunches
• Sixth-form pupils can have a glass of wine
• Adding dishes that include insects

1. Robert De Niro

The actor revealed this week that he and his girlfriend, martial arts instructor Tiffany Chen, were celebrating the birth of their daughter, Gia Virginia Chen-De Niro. He has six other children, whose ages range in age from 11 to 51.

2. 400,000

According to The Mirror, experts at the UK’s first long Covid clinic, at University College Hospital London, estimate that hundreds of thousands of patients are in need of specialist care for ailments ranging from severe fatigue to brain fog. But “so far only 100,000 have been offered treatment”, the paper reported.

3. BTS

The guessing game began last week when the book appeared on multiple bookseller websites under the name 4C Untitled Flatiron Nonfiction Summer 2023. But publishing house Flatiron Books has solved the mystery by revealing that the eagerly anticipated release is about the K-pop boyband and will be published in July under the title Beyond the Story: 10-Year Record of BTS.

4. Bradford

Research by Betway found that the West Yorkshire city was the least sunny in the UK, followed by. Blackpool and Aberdeen.

5. 63%

The Washington Post/ABC poll of more than 1,000 people found that 43% believed that 80-year-old Biden and Donald Trump, 76, are both too old to serve another term. If Biden is re-elected in 2024, he would be 82 when he takes office and 86 when his second term ends.

6. Birmingham

The airport was the worst for a second year in a row, with flights in 2022 leaving half an hour behind schedule on average. East Midlands Airport was the top performer, with average delays of just 13 minutes, while the UK average was 23 minutes, according to data from the Civil Aviation Authority.

7. The lead actor’s race

Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities released a statement emphasising that “Queen Cleopatra had light skin and Hellenistic (Greek) features”, and criticising Netflix for casting British actor Adele James, who “possesses African features and dark skin”. Find out more on the latest episode of The Week Unwrapped podcast.

8. Plastic

Many microorganisms can digest plastic at temperatures above 30C, but the discovery by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute paves the way for a much more energy-efficient method of recycling.

9. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce

The 36-year-old Jamaican sprinter beat a field that included swimmer Katie Ledecky, tennis star Iga Świątek and 400m hurdles record-holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. Lionel Messi was named sportsman of the year at the awards in Paris on Monday.

10. Lunches that include insects

North London Collegiate School will trial dishes such as Chinese-style noodles with teriyaki grasshopper, sweet chilli and lime crickets, and Mexican rice topped with buffalo worms.

The government has announced a U-turn on its plans to remove all EU laws from British statute books by the end of the year in a move that has been criticised by Tory Brexiteers.

The Retained EU Law Bill, which is currently going through Parliament and recently passed its Commons stages, included a “sunset clause” that would require Whitehall officials to select which laws to save.

But on Wednesday, the government confirmed that this clause will be ditched in a written ministerial statement from Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch.

“This provides certainty for business by making it clear which regulations will be removed from our statute book, instead of highlighting only the [EU law] that would be saved,” she said.

The move means that “only EU laws specifically chosen to be repealed will be scrapped”, said The Independent, “with the rest automatically becoming UK law at the end of the year”.

What did the papers say?

The government U-turn on the Retained EU Law Bill not only “turns the logic of the bill on its head”, added The Independent, but it has “enraged” some of the Conservative Party’s hardcore Brexiteers, who are “keen to expunge the influence of Brussels from the statute books” as soon as possible.

Brexiteer Tory MPs were “muttering darkly” about Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s leadership campaign video last night, in which boxes of EU regulations were dumped into a shredder, said Politico’s London Playbook. The Conservative leader pledged to repeal all EU-era laws and regulations in his first 100 days in office – but since then civil servants have found “more than 2,000 new ones”.

Speaking to the Press Association, arch-Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg criticised Sunak and said the U-turn “breaks the prime minister’s clear promise to review or appeal all EU laws in his first hundred days”.

Rees-Mogg called the watered-down pledge an “admission of administrative failure, an inability of Whitehall to do the necessary work and an incapability of ministers to push this through their own departments”. He added: “Regrettably, ‘the blob’ has triumphed and the prime minister has abandoned his promise.”

But speaking to GB News, Home Office minister Sarah Dines insisted the decision was “not quite a U-turn”. She defended the plan as a “more calculated, calm way of getting rid of some of these laws”.

The move is another “capitulation” for Sunak, in what is a “fifth climbdown in almost as many months”, said Richard Vaughan for the i news site.

But Sunak may have “burned through yet more political capital for little gain”, having angered the right of his party but also doing little to “quell the discontent” in the House of Lords.

“Coming just days after his party suffered a woeful set of results at the local elections, and with more Lords battles looming over the highly controversial small boats bill, the PM can ill afford such political missteps”, added Vaughan.

Making Badenoch responsible for “implementing, or more accurately, abandoning” his pledge to repeal EU laws before the end of the year is an “intriguing subplot” in the whole saga, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times.

Badenoch has a “good chance” of becoming the next Conservative leader, but while her position is strong, she is “also highly vulnerable”. And being “saddled” with the difficult job of explaining why Sunak’s pledge to scrap EU laws by the end of the year should be ditched opens her up to being seen as “nobody’s candidate: neither rightwing enough for the party’s right or establishment enough for the party’s elders”.

What next?

According to the FT, the government will publish a list of the approximately 600 EU laws that will be revoked by the end of 2023.

Around 1,000 EU regulations have already been repealed, and an additional 500 will be removed via the Financial Services and Markets Bill and the Procurement Bill, both of which are currently being considered in Parliament, said Badenoch in her statement to MPs.

“We will retain the vitally important powers in the Bill that allow us to continue to amend EU laws, so more complex regulation can still be revoked or reformed after proper assessment and consultation,” she told MPs, indicating that more laws could be revoked in future.

One source speaking to The Times suggested that Tory rebels may try to restore the original legislation when it returns to the Commons later in the summer.

But as things stand, the move “means that around 2,800 EU laws could remain in force in the UK into 2024”, said the FT.

The government is to drastically reduce the number of EU laws it had planned to scrap by the end of the year as part of Rishi Sunak’s bonfire of Brussels rules and regulations.

In January, the prime minister publicly backed the Retained EU Law Bill that set out to abolish more than 4,000 EU laws by 31 December.

However, Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch has now admitted to Conservative Brexiters that the majority of these laws will remain on the statute book. Only about 800 are now expected to be repealed by the end of the year.

What the papers say

The change of heart is the “latest Brexit betrayal”, said The Telegraph. A Tory MP told the paper that Badenoch is “a lame minister who is having rings run around her by ‘Remainer’ officials”.

“After the No. 10 games over the Windsor Framework”, this “just rubs further salt in the wounds,” a source from the pro-Brexit European Research Group told GB News. They added that “it sadly seems like the PM’s pledges are becoming increasingly meaningless.”

By contrast, the former British diplomat Alexandra Hall Hall welcomed the “common sense” decision. “Truly the revolution continues to devour its own,” she said on Twitter.

The “new approach” will be “welcomed by business and civil servants” who have been given the “huge task” of earmarking EU rules for repeal, said the Financial Times. The decision “will be seen as another sign of Sunak’s practical approach to EU issues”.

What next?

Under the Retained EU Law Bill – also known as the Brexit freedom bill – introduced during Liz Truss’s short reign as prime minister, the government had committed to repealing or replacing around 4,000 pieces of legislation tied to the UK’s membership of the EU, many to do with employment and environmental laws.

It was a mammoth task with a tight deadline – the government had given itself until the end of 2023 to decide which laws they wanted to scrap, retain or replace. Unless reinstated or replaced by the end of December, many of these EU laws would automatically lapse, a process known as “sunsetting”. However, Badenoch’s allies do not deny that ministers are planning to abandon that “sunset clause”.

The government is “expected to commit to retaining the most high-profile EU-derived laws, including the working-time directive and environmental legislation”, said The Times.

It is also likely that safety standards laws will be retained. Allies of Badenoch said she had asked the European Research Group to give examples of undesirable EU laws that they thought should be removed that were not already on the list of 800.

“The only thing they could come up with was product standards,” said a source. “She told them that as business secretary and as a mother that she thought that product standards were important.”

The consequences of the sunset clause could have been significant. Key employment laws could have been impacted or abolished, including the working time directive, which limits the average weekly working time to 48 hours. Concerns were also raised over what the bill could have meant for environmental protections.

However, Sunak had claimed that the scrapping of EU regulations would have unleashed an “£80 billion science funding boom”, said The Telegraph, and in a move that would have “delighted” former prime minister Winston Churchill, according to the Daily Express, champagne could once again have been sold in a pint bottle.

Nevertheless, the bill was never short of critics. A cross-party group of MPs has sought to rein in the powers of the bill.

“There has been concern about the way that the government is using Brexit as political cover to transfer power over thousands of areas of vital regulation from Parliament to Ministers from across Parliament – whether Labour, Tory, Leaver or Remainer, Lord or MP, we all agree it’s a terrible piece of legislation,” one of the MPs, Stella Creasy, told The New European.

Predicting a climbdown, earlier this month The Observer reported that “the extent of opposition to it from business, environmental groups, unions and Brussels” had “left ministers with no option but to consider delay, and moving to a scaled-down and less hurried version”.

“If we’re honest,” said London Playbook, “it was obvious to lots of people that a Brexit bonfire by 2024 was a highly unrealistic proposition” and Bloomberg reported in July that Lucy Frazer (then a Treasury minister) had recommended a deadline of 2026.

The Bank of England’s chief economist has come under fire for urging British people to accept they are poorer.

Warning that inflation risks remaining doggedly high, Huw Pill told a Columbia Law School podcast that “somehow in the UK, someone needs to accept that they’re worse off” and “stop trying to maintain their real spending power by bidding up prices whether through higher wages or passing energy costs on to customers”.

He added: “What we’re facing now is that reluctance to accept that, yes, we’re all worse off and we all have to take our share.”

His remarks have been condemned as a “red rag to the bull” and “absolutely outrageous”, said the BBC. But was he right?

What did the papers say?

The interview will “surely go down as one of the most tin-eared”, wrote Ben Marlow, chief city commentator for The Telegraph, and has “rightly” provoked a “backlash from across the political divide”.

“Almost everyone in some form, and through no fault of their own, is markedly worse off than they were 18 months ago,” said Marlow, so “why shouldn’t people demand more pay if their cost of living has gone through the roof?” To ask for a pay rise is “an entirely normal reaction to seeing everyday life become so eye-wateringly expensive”, he said.

Writing for The Independent, Ryan Coogan, who was brought up by a single mother in “one of the most deprived areas of the UK”, said that “for me, for my family, and for the people I grew up around, ‘accepting’ that we’re poor has never been an option”.

“Throwing our hands up and saying ‘you got me, Huw, I guess this is just my life now’ is unacceptable,” he said. “Even if you can’t improve your lot in any meaningful way, you have to fight like hell to. Because if you don’t, what’s the alternative?”

Reporting from a community centre in Wolverhampton, the local authority with the highest fuel poverty rate in England, Jessica Murray of The Guardian said the economist’s “choice of language has riled those who come face to face with the reality of the cost-of-living crisis on a daily basis”.

Pill “isn’t going to win a popularity contest”, but he is right, said Ross Clark for The Spectator. “In an economy which is stagnant, where productivity is flat”, it “ought to be obvious that we can’t all have a real-terms pay rise”, he argued.

Clark added that “certain groups of workers” can have a pay rise “at the expense of others”, or “we can all have a nominal pay rise”, but inflation “ensures we cannot have the economic equivalent of a perpetual motion machine” because “if wages go up in a stagnant economy, prices will rise to match”.

What next?

Behind Pill’s remarks is a fear that inflation, rather than falling this year as previously predicted, might remain at its current level. Economists at the Bank of England are “worried” that “as workers try to bid up their wages to protect their finances from inflation and businesses raise prices to shield profit margins”, high inflation will “become a permanent fixture of the UK economy”, explained City A.M..

In March, inflation in the UK dropped by less than expected, to 10.1%. In contrast, annual price growth in the eurozone is 6.9%, and 5% in the US. This “extra stickiness” in the UK’s inflation is “linked to a few factors”, said the Financial Times. Energy prices have been “the driving force behind European inflation” and “the plunge in wholesale natural gas prices, and thus the decline in inflation, is filtering through faster in some EU countries compared with the UK” partly due to differences in how consumer energy prices are set.

Britain’s underlying inflation is higher than in many advanced economies, it added, “in part down to a unique set of factors causing labour shortages, including early retirement, sickness and a change in immigration rules post-Brexit”. Nevertheless, predicted the paper in a leader comment, “prior interest rate increases will increasingly filter through, weigh down demand, raise unemployment, and ease price pressures”.

“Barring another big energy price shock”, the UK’s cost-of-living pressures “should be easing over the coming year,” agreed Mehreen Khan, economics editor, and Oliver Wright, policy editor, in The Times. Inflation will “automatically drop from March” as “the rate of annual price increases will no longer include the sharp spikes in gas and oil prices recorded last year”.

However, they added, “even on current trends”, the Office for Budget Responsibility does not expect incomes to have recovered to 2019 levels until 2028 at the earliest.

“Pill’s comments about the UK being poorer are indisputably true,” they said, but the idea of accepting this is “out of step” with the Bank’s own analysis that “wage pressures will subside from the second half of the year”.

The Government struck a deal to join an 11-member Asia-Pacific trade bloc last week, a step hailed by No. 10 as an example of Britain seizing its “post-Brexit freedoms”.

The deal, secured following two years of talks, will make the UK the first nation to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) since its launch in 2018.

Downing Street said that under its terms, 99% of UK goods exported to the bloc’s member states – Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, Peru and Vietnam – would be eligible for zero tariffs.

Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch described the deal as the most significant commercial agreement signed by the UK since Brexit, and a “gateway to the wider Indo-Pacific region”. Labour welcomed the agreement, but noted that the Government’s own analysis suggested that it will only increase UK GDP by 0.08% in a decade.

What did the papers say?

This deal is “exactly what Brexit was meant to be about”, said the Daily Mail – a major shift away from the low-growth eurozone towards some of the world’s most dynamic economies.

Between them, the CPTPP nations currently generate 13% of global GDP and have a population of half a billion. By 2030, the Indo-Pacific region will be home to half the world’s middle-class consumers – “2.3 billion potential customers”.

British businesses will now have privileged access to this rapidly-growing market, said The Daily Telegraph, so we should take forecasts that the deal will have only a negligible impact on long-term economic growth with a generous “pinch of salt”.

Maybe so, but the immediate economic benefits of the deal are likely to be limited, said The Times. Exports to CPTPP nations were worth about £60bn in 2021-22 (compared with exports of £161bn to the US and £330bn to the EU), and Britain already has free trade agreements with all but two of the group’s members.

That said, the deal gives Britain more influence in a crucial region, and should cut costs and red tape for businesses.

“Rishi Sunak is on a roll,” said Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Daily Telegraph. Fresh from putting UK-EU trade relations on a workable foundation by signing off on the Windsor Framework, the PM has now secured a deal that could be even more transformative.

Once it includes the UK, the CPTPP will account for more than 15% of global GDP – a bigger share than the EU. And if more states from Latin America and east Asia join (and many want to), it could become “the world’s largest trading system”.

In short, Britain is now part of a group of economies that are set to dominate the coming decades. But this deal is about more than tariffs and imports, said Cristina Gallardo in Politico. “It’s about post-Brexit Britain’s place in a 21st century dominated by the rise of China.”

It puts meat on the bones of the UK’s Indo-Pacific foreign policy tilt; and, crucially, it gives the UK a veto over other countries’ applications to join the group – meaning it could step in to thwart China’s efforts to do so. But at what cost, asked Nick Dearden in The Guardian.

Britain made big concessions to secure this deal. It was forced to “lower environmental standards”, including by cutting tariffs on exports of palm oil, plantations of which drive deforestation in Malaysia.

And the bloc’s focus on accepting imports, even when standards diverge, means that Britain will now face pressure to accept “hormone-treated beef” and food treated with pesticides that are banned here, thereby undermining British farmers.

Now we’ve “taken back control”, you’d hope MPs would be able to scrutinise such deals. But the parliamentary committee that examined treaties like the CPTPP was quietly abolished last month.

Frankly, it’s absurd to sell the deal as a Brexit bonus, said Paul Waugh in The i Paper. The 0.08% boost to GDP it’s forecast to give us pales in comparison to the 4% hit to GDP we’re taking as a result of Brexit; and with Britain facing stagnant wages and years of limp growth, it comes across as “tone-deaf” too. Time for “a dollop of honesty”.

What’s next?

The agreement reached by the Government paves the way for formal accession to the CPTPP next year, The Times reports.

Ministers hope the group will then continue to grow: Costa Rica, Uruguay and Ecuador are among the nations interested in joining. There are also hopes that the US could join.

It was due to be a founder member, but pulled out during the Trump administration. The dairy, car and spirits sectors were tipped as potential winners from the deal. Ministers also hope that the agreement could act as a spur for finalising a UK-India trade deal.

Jeremy Hunt’s newly unveiled Budget highlighted the growing resemblance between Britain’s two main parties as Keir Starmer was “left to complain that the Conservatives had stolen Labour’s policies”, said a leading commentator.

Our nation’s politics appears to be entering an era of “quiet consensus”, according to The New Statesman’s George Eaton. Even as the “rhetoric escalates” ahead of the next general election, a “more banal reality is revealing itself: convergence between the Conservatives and Labour”.

‘Common ground’

The “free flow of policies” between Starmer’s Labour and Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives is “not only true of tax and spending”, wrote Eaton. Both parties are also “committed to making Brexit ‘work’ rather than reversing or radicalising it”. And “both favour higher defence spending, Trident retention and are almost indistinguishable on Ukraine policy”.

Since ditching Liz Truss and Jeremy Corbyn as their leaders, the two parties also appear to be uniting in their mutual backing for stricter controls on illegal migration and in adopting more authoritarian stances on crime and civil liberties.

Sunak and Starmer “agree on an awful lot”, wrote Bloomberg’s Therese Raphael in November, after the duo each made pitches to the business community during Prime Minister’s Questions. “In some ways, this marks a new economic consensus in British politics”, Raphael said. In “harking back to the era of Tony Blair”, Starmer has “positioned his party squarely in the political centre”.

This apparent rightwards shift was also noted by Mark Littlewood, the director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs. Littlewood told GB News that he was “finding it really difficult to work out what the actual policy differences are between the Labour front bench and the Conservative government”.

“In some areas, you might argue that the Labour Party is actually more pro-market,” he added.

Bloomberg columnist Martin Ivens said that after “six years of turbulent, shouty politics and extravagant promises of future greatness”, it was now “easy to imagine” Sunak and Starmer “sitting down together over an alcohol-free beer” and “finding common ground – just as the dull but effective German politicians do”.

‘Poison pills’

The Tories and Labour do still diverge on some key issues, however. The £28bn a year promised by Labour to tackle the climate crisis “quadruples the government’s pledge” to spend about £7.5bn on green policies for the duration of this parliament, noted The Times’s political reporter Eleni Courea.

Starmer’s plan to replace the House of Lords with a smaller, democratically elected upper chamber is unlikely to find much favour on the Tory benches either.

And while both sides favour crackdowns on illegal immigration, Starmer’s criticism of Sunak’s plan to stop migrants crossing the Channel in small boats saw the two leaders clashing in the Commons earlier this month, with the prime minister describing the Labour leader as a “lefty lawyer”.

But such clashes aren’t necessarily a bad thing, argued Eaton in The New Statesman. “It is often when bipartisan consensus is at its strongest that the greatest mistakes are made”, he wrote, pointing to the Iraq War and “the pre-crash mania for financial deregulation”.

The Guardian columnist Andy Beckett warned that if Starmer wins the next election, his “acceptance of reckless Tory stances, for example on Brexit”, may “undermine his government”.

“Ideas inherited from other parties”, added Beckett, “can be poison pills.”

Rishi Sunak has hailed his Brexit deal with the EU as a “new way forward”, claiming the so-called “Windsor framework” unveiled yesterday represents a “decisive breakthrough” on the rules governing trade in Northern Ireland.

The widely expected backlash from Tory Eurosceptics has so far “failed to materialise”, said The Telegraph, with even Steve Baker, a diehard Brexiteer and member of the hardline European Research Group of Tory MPs, congratulating Sunak and claiming: “He’s done it.”

But does this deal really represent the end of seven long years of negotiations between the UK and EU and the promise made by multiple prime ministers during that time to “get Brexit done”?

What did the papers say?

“Yes, there may still be a devil in the details,” said The Sun, “but his new deal on Northern Ireland looks a big win.”

The paper congratulated Sunak, adding that “he may just have got Brexit done at last”.

Asking whether the deal represented a “light at the end of the (now-infamous) tunnel”, Politico said: “There are hopes stretching from the press pack of political journalists to Conservatives scarred from the Brexit battles of the past half decade that within a few weeks Westminster will never have to talk about ongoing Brexit negotiations again. Maybe.”

“We’ve been here before,” warned John Crace in The Guardian. First there was Theresa May’s Chequers agreement, then Boris Johnson’s “oven-ready” deal. Now Rishi Sunak’s Windsor framework, “the likeliest contender yet”, he said. “Not least because everyone is so fed up with Brexit – no one wants reminding of what a disaster it has been – that even the hardest of hardliners can’t be bothered to oppose it.”

The Windsor framework is “an acknowledgement of a central reality of Brexit”, said BBC political editor Chris Mason. “Northern Ireland continues to have a different relationship with the EU than the rest of the UK and for as long as governments at Westminster say ‘no’ to closer economic ties with Brussels, that different relationship is guaranteed.

“It is a relationship destined to be bespoke, challenging and awkward – juggling a project about borders, Brexit, with an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic,” he said. “While many in Northern Ireland are comfortable with that, some unionists will probably never be.”

What next?

No. 10 will now wait for the all-important backing for the deal from the Democratic Unionist Party. Sunak has said he is “confident” his new arrangement addresses the DUP’s concerns as he travelled to Belfast this morning to sell it to the people of Northern Ireland.

Reports in The Irish News that the DUP is expected to back the deal and return to power sharing at Stormont were quickly shot down by party leader Jeffrey Donaldson. He has said that his party will not be rushed into making a final decision on whether to support or oppose the deal – “we will take our time” – but he did hail “significant progress” yesterday.

Nevertheless, the mood music appears, for now, to be overwhelmingly positive. Paul Waugh, chief political commentator for the i newspaper, said the deal announced yesterday prompted “the biggest outbreak of UK-EU harmony since the Leave vote seven long years ago”.

US President Joe Biden, meanwhile, described it as “an essential step”, raising the prospect he could make a historic visit to Northern Ireland to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in a few months.

The deal could also have serious political implications for the prime minister. If the DUP eventually approves this deal, “Sunak will be able to boast that not only is he a better dealmaker than Johnson, he is a better guarantor of the Union than the man who effectively threw Unionists under a bus for his own ends”, said Waugh.

If finally ending the Conservatives’ long love affair with Johnson is not enough, “the bigger prize for the PM is that this breakthrough can revive his own premiership, but that’s a much tougher ask”, he added.

“Rishi Sunak has so far been a disappointing prime minister but if he pulls off this Brexit breakthrough on Northern Ireland, he will be more than a caretaker for a government limping to the end of its days,” said Alice Thomson in The Times. “He will have given his party back some dignity and made them look more credible, constructive and competent after an atrocious 2022 in which it mislaid two prime ministers.”

Ultimately when assessing the future of Brexit, though, the Windsor framework can be celebrated as “an agreement which redresses some of the most egregious imbalances in the original protocol”, said UnHerd political editor Tom McTague. But it essentially deems Northern Ireland as “both a source of permanent tension – and a kind of permanent forced friendship”.

“The solution Britain and the EU have arrived at does not mean Brexit is done,” said McTague. “It means both sides have agreed it never can be.”

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has agreed a new “Windsor framework” Brexit deal with the European Union over trading arrangements in Northern Ireland.

Sunak met European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Windsor on Monday and held a press conference to announce their agreement, which the prime minister said marked a “new chapter” in UK-EU relations.

The hope on both sides is that the deal will settle the long-running dispute over the Northern Ireland Protocol. The UK government has sought to change the original protocol negotiated by Boris Johnson in 2019, arguing that since the UK left the single market in 2021, it has created unacceptable economic barriers in trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

“Nobody will get everything they want but everybody will get something,” a source close to the negotiations told the Daily Express. “The issue will be whether it is enough for people to grudgingly accept it or not.”

“Big chunks” of the deal had “already spilled out through unofficial channels”, said the BBC, and Sunak will face an enormous political challenge in getting Northern Ireland’s largest unionist party, the DUP, to back it.

While the agreement is yet to be published in full, here are five key points the deal is hoping to address.

Frictionless trade between GB and Northern Ireland

The first element of Sunak’s deal is “designed to tackle the most practical and obviously disruptive element of the Northern Ireland protocol”, namely that it has effectively created a customs border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reported The Times.

To address this issue, Sunak plans to introduce a “trusted trader scheme” that allows businesses to avoid all checks when moving goods from mainland UK to Northern Ireland, said the paper. Businesses will need to declare whether the goods are for sale in Northern Ireland or then being exported on to the Republic of Ireland.

Those sending goods to Northern Ireland will use a “green lane” system, while those exporting onwards will go through a “red lane” with full EU customs clearance in Northern Irish ports. Sunak said that “burdensome customs bureaucracy will be scrapped” for green-lane goods and that the deal has “removed any sense of a border in the Irish Sea”.

Northern Ireland’s place in the UK

The second element of the deal aims to address the issues within the Northern Ireland Protocol, which restrict Westminster from legislating on some Northern Irish matters.

Under the current agreement, Northern Ireland must follow EU single market rules on VAT, state aid and alcohol duty. Sunak has now said that under the new deal UK VAT and excise changes will apply in Northern Ireland. This means “British products such as trees, plants and seed potatoes will be available in NI and pet travel requirements have been removed”, said Sky News.

A “landmark” settlement on medicines also means drugs approved for use by the UK regulator will be available in Northern Ireland.

European Court of Justice jurisdiction

The protocol negotiated by Johnson meant that Northern Ireland would accept all future EU laws and regulations and be under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), a state of affairs that was “hugely problematic” for arch-Brexiteers and for unionists, including those in the DUP, “who prize Northern Ireland’s place in the UK above all”, said The Times.

A new “Stormont brake” will allow the Northern Ireland Assembly to pull an “emergency brake” on changes to EU single market rules that might apply to the region, Sunak announced. He said it will help correct “the democratic deficit” and provide “reassurance to everyone in Northern Ireland that they are in control of their own destiny”.

Getting the DUP onside

Sunak still faces the “daunting task” of selling the deal to the DUP, who have said they will not back it unless it met its “red lines” – the “seven tests” that the party outlined in July 2021, said The Guardian.

The DUP said it will only give a verdict on the deal once it has read the final and full text. It has left Downing Street “braced for a response that is at best suspicious and potentially hostile”. The unionist party warned over the weekend that an insufficient deal could leave Stormont in a “permanent state of collapse if they refuse to re-enter power-sharing”, said The Telegraph.

The problem for the DUP is that “accepting that Sunak has reached a good deal” will lead to them having to “restore power-sharing and facilitate the first Sinn Féin first minister”, said the Financial Times’s Stephen Bush.

“So my underlying assumption is that whatever Sunak agrees will not be good enough for the DUP, or the Tories,” he added. “Some of the Conservative party’s Brexit ultras will take their lead from the DUP, while others just want an excuse to do harm to Sunak politically.”

Johnson waiting in the wings

The new deal is one designed to effectively scrap Johnson’s Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which gave the UK government powers in domestic law to unilaterally override the Brexit treaty with the EU.

Sunak believes his deal has “fixed fundamental legal changes that render the Bill no longer necessary as a bargaining chip”, reported The Telegraph.

But the i news site said that Johnson may be planning to make a “constructive” intervention shortly, in which he makes clear he believes Sunak should press ahead with the legislation, which Sunak has temporarily paused.

But any such intervention would undoubtedly be seen as an attempt to “undermine” Sunak, said the paper, and even as “a ploy to return as PM himself”.

Tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, peppers and citrus fruits are in short supply at UK supermarkets, with fears the empty shelves could last for several weeks.

The recent shortages have caused widespread concern, with photos on social media of empty supermarket shelves, from “customers of Waitrose, Morrisons, Waitrose and Aldi”, said the i news site. Some questioned the effect that Brexit might have had, while others mentioned overall rising prices in the country.

Poor weather conditions in Spain and Morocco “have been compounded by transportation difficulties and a lack of European glasshouse production as a result of the energy crisis”, said National World. These factors “have driven up wholesale food prices by half in some instances”, said the news site.

Paul Rowe, from Poupart Imports, which supplies independent retailers and UK wholesalers, told National World that the shortages could last for “several weeks”.

Poor weather has affected supplies...

Spain and Morocco, “known in the industry as Europe’s breadbaskets at this time of year”, according to National World, are the source of most of the UK’s fresh produce.

Warm weather in early January followed by “freezing conditions and extreme wind and rain storms” has hit crops in both countries, added the website.

Since Brexit, UK importers have “become increasingly reliant on Morocco”, said The Telegraph, as new trading arrangements have “slowed” the movement of produce from other European countries. But storms in Morocco have meant produce has not been able to be shipped to the UK as normal.

... and prices are rising as a result

Farmers in Britain have been “planting fewer vegetables… due to the rising cost of heating greenhouses”, according to the i news site.

Supermarkets have also been “unwilling to pay higher prices to cover the cost of producing fresh fruit and vegetables in the UK year-round”, farmers told the site.

Rowe told National World that “it [is] the wholesale price dynamics that [are] driving the shortages”. There have been some instances, he says, where growers have refused to unload their produce because UK supermarkets refuse to pay more for it.

Growing a tomato cost 27% more last year than it did in 2021, according to research by the National Farmers Union. This caused the cost of a kilogram of tomatoes to rise from £2.09 in January 2020 to £2.96 in February 2023, said the Office for National Statistics.

Similar spikes in costs “were found with other crops, including lettuce, broccoli and potatoes”, said i news.

How long will it last?

Tesco, Aldi, Asda and Morrisons have all introduced fresh produce rationings into their stores, the Independent reported.

Tesco and Asda now allows only “three items per customer” of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers at its stores. Additionally Asda has put rations on cauliflower, lettuce, broccoli and raspberries, said Sky News.

The shortages, Rowe told National World, will most likely last for a month, until “new crops start to come out of Northern Europe”. He recommended that customers try shopping for high-demand goods in independent retailers “where price is less of a factor”.

However, the UK will have a “difficult year” ahead, he said, as “many growers” are still “choosing not to plant vegetables due to uncertainties over return”.

Many British farmers have been planting wheat over produce, “as it’s less expensive to grow and lasts longer”, Jack Ward, chief executive of the British Growers Association, told the i news site.

Whether it’s climate or rising energy prices driving these shortages, Liz Webster, the Save British Farming chair, believes the government needs to take action.

She blamed Brexit and said “this disastrous Conservative government…has no interest in food production, farming or even food supply”, the Independent reported.

The “clock is ticking”, Webster said, for the government to lower inflation and provide subsidies to farmers so that they may continue to grow produce more regularly.

Therese Coffey, the environment secretary, denied that the government was in any way responsible, saying: “We can’t control the weather in Spain.”