Tom Bewick

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I don’t know what Labour is proposing on Gibraltar. But I do know this. While Starmer is here, every shakedown artist is chancing his arm. Slavery reparations, Chagos Islands, Irish border, museum artefacts, fishing grounds - it’s open season on Britain. express.co.uk/news/politics/…

Extraordinary talk on EU-UK by Chancellor @RachelReevesMP at LSE @LSEnews last night, chaired by @angelo_martelli 🇬🇧🇪🇺 Reeves: "I start by saying I strongly believe that Britain's future is inextricably bound with that of Europe's, and that is for economic reasons that I'm primarily responsible for as chancellor, but also reasons of security, resilience and defence." "The truth is, economic gravity is reality, and almost half of our trade is with the European Union. We trade almost as much with the EU as the whole of the rest of the world combined. And so, you know, I'm all up for doing deals with India and the US and Korea, but none of them are going to be as big as what we can get through better trade relations with Europe." "I think further integration will require further alignment. I'm up for that. My government, here's government, is up for that, and we are keen to go through a sectoral level of what areas we think we could have deeper alignment in, some of which could be unilateral, and some of which could be negotiated, but I think there are big opportunities there. I was with Valdis Dombrovskis and Maros Sefcovic just a couple of weeks ago in Downing Street. We had really productive meetings about what the future might look like, and we've made good progress this last year, but I think there is more to do, including in the area that I'm most responsible for in the treasury, around financial services. There are sort of three big financial centres in the world. There's New York, there's London, and there's Hong Kong. And London should be seen as an asset for the whole of Europe, not just for the UK, but for the whole of Europe. And we want London to be that asset." "Other countries around the world are looking inwards and increasing barriers at the moment, whether that's on trade, on movement of people, on investment, and we want to show there is a different path, and there is a path that leads to greater prosperity for our people. And I believe that that path is from one which is around openness, openness to trade, to investment, to business to talent, and that is what we're trying to pursue in the UK. And I think there are obviously big similarities. Our challenges in the UK are the same as the challenges in all of the member states across the EU, but we've got a better chance of succeeding if we work together in that shared environment. There are three big trading blocks in the world, there's the US, there's China, and there is Europe, and we want to make Europe as strong as possible, and that means not putting up the drawbridge." "I know we did that when we voted to Leave, not me, but the country made that decision, but I believe that there is an appetite. There's a lot of pushback, saying, wait a second, we voted to Leave. Or why are we going to be making it easier to trade again? And where does this lead? And even with the ambitious feasibility scheme, I think Erasmus is one of the most popular things that we have done as a government, because it is about giving hope that there is a better future and that we are ambitious to Britain for our young people." "We've already agreed the Erasmus student exchange program, which I'm so pleased about, because it was seemed to me when we left the EU and no sense that we would at the same time take away those opportunities that many of us had from our children and future generations. And so we're very pleased to have secured that deal, and we are working on implementing what was agreed between Keir Starmer and Ursula von der Leyen and the teams at the summit last year on SBS, a food and farming agreement on energy trading, and an ambitious Youth Mobility scheme, and I hope that very soon we would have made more concrete progress in some of those areas".

Brexit is back, and Number 10 wants to pick a fight with Nigel Farage over it, my colleague @oliver_wright reports Sir Keir Starmer is to ask MPs to authorise the transfer of sovereign British legal powers to Europe for the first time since Brexit as he paves the way for his reset with Brussels this year Senior government figures said they were “very happy to have the fight”, pointing to polls that show that the public are overwhelmingly in favour of pursuing a closer relationship with Europe Ministers are preparing a “major” bill, expected to be presented to parliament as soon as next month that will allow the EU to effectively alter British law in areas such as food standards, animal welfare and pesticide use The legislation will mark the first time since Brexit that MPs have been asked to surrender their sovereign right to make laws in certain areas. Instead the UK will effectively be expected to comply with regulations from Brussels under a process known as dynamic alignment. In contrast to when the UK was a member of the EU the British government will not have a vote on future laws passed by Brussels that could affect the UK. In certain circumstances the UK would have to submit to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice on matters of EU law Ministers say the change in legal jurisdiction will matter little as, since Brexit, UK food manufacturers have largely followed new EU rules because they are supplying to both markets The bill is expected to be opposed by both the Conservative and Reform UK parties who will use the debate to argue that Labour is taking the UK back into the EU’s legal orbit with only marginal benefits thetimes.com/uk/politics/ar…