Suchergebnisse

Following the raft of customs changes introduced at the start of this year, firms across the United Kingdom (UK) are now having to navigate an increasingly complex trading environment when exporting to and importing from the European Union (EU).

One has to hand it to Boris Johnson, at the time of writing still the UK's Prime Minister and if current form continues, also for years to come. Over the years, and this probably goes way back, he must have shrewdly built up a reserve of scandals and affairs that when needed can be called upon to divert attentions from more serious shortcomings in his management of the country. How else to explain the convenient and ongoing gifts of partygate and now poochgate just as his Brexit-provided political armour is starting to show chinks, the latest of which are the new queues of lorries for Dover.

Back in mid-2020 UK in a Changing Europe published a report on the effects of Brexit of UK manufacturing, analysing the picture up to the point of publication and offering thoughts on the likely effects after the end of the transition period.

Five years and seven months after the 2016 referendum, it was not Remainers who ripped up Brexit. It was not the European Union. It was Mr. Poots.

The government's ambitions for 'levelling up' are laudable. Last week's long awaited eponymous White Paper [i]featured 12 national missions that will be enshrined in law and with an number of targets to be met by 2030. It also included analysis of the challenges by Andy Haldane, the ex- chief economist of the Bank of England and now head of the RSA , who was seconded to the Cabinet office for this purpose.

News yesterday of the Parliament's Public Accounts Committee's damning verdict on the Government's handling of Brexit should drive the Labour Party to stand up and call for the UK to re-join the Single Market and Customs Union.

There are numerous concerns about whether the recent rapid acceleration in inflation in recent months will put a break to the bounce-back of the world economy in 2022. In the UK the Bank of England just revised its forecast for this year to 3.75%, a sharp cut from the 5% they expected in the autumn[i]. Not only are workers being affected by a cost of living crisis, mainly as a result of higher world energy costs, but higher interest rates will also act as a dampener to growth. However there is extra dimension that will hang over any recovery, possibly limiting its growth – namely the level of accumulated debt, both public and private during the pandemic which may well prove even more of a challenge than the disruption caused by what is now the highest rate of inflation in 30 years.

As we emerge from the winter and Covid-19 looks to have been tamed, the UK Government is now seeking to return to some type of "situation normal" and as such has been phasing out assistance to those affected by the Pandemic. However, the prospect emerges of life getting more difficult for the majority of us. In this context, the spectacle of a beleaguered and mendacious Prime Minister and his entourage being subject to a police investigation in allegedly having violated their own rules on Covid-19 restrictions is a mere side-show.

Over the past two years, the UK economy has changed beyond measure. After COVID ushered in another recession, several furlough schemes, inflation and the rising of interest rates, it's safe to say that the economy has seen some turbulence.

In my last piece for Centre for Brexit Studies, I highlighted the 'WMCA Five Year Plan' and some of the challenges and opportunities arising as we transition to net zero.

A lot's been written about weather recently. Understandably, the succession of storms, Dudley and Eunice last week and Franklin on Sunday night and into Monday, has created inevitable stories based on our being subjected the dangers associated extremely high wind speeds which damage property and are a threat to life and limb.

The chickens have come home to roost. The West's more than three decades of self-absorbed indulgence in unbridled greed and increasingly petty self-interest that brought us the likes of Brexit, have now left it powerless to face the threat of authoritarian regimes that seek to encroach on it and subvert it. Because whoever thinks that Ukraine will be the end of it is sorely mistaken and whoever thinks that Brexit and other divide-and-rule-based projects have nothing to do with our current weakness, is even more misguided.

In the current climate it's easy to become pessimistic. Some contend the Russia's invasion of Ukraine as has parallels to the beginning of the second world war when, in 1938/39, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler used the grievances of the German-speaking citizens of the Sudetenland, then part of Czechoslovakia, as a prelude to war (Florea, 2022).

Putin gave Johnson a helping hand with Russia's support for the Leave campaign in the 2016 Brexit referendum. More than 5 1/2 years later, the Russian leader is unlikely to have been thinking of Boris when he launched Moscow's invasion of Ukraine; however, the effect has been just as significant for the wanna-be Churchill in 10 Downing Street.

Right up until the last few weeks it was just about possible to see Vladimir Putin as someone determined to restore a sense of Russian power and greatness but to pursue this aim through absorbing territories bordering Russia with Russian-speaking majorities rather than invading countries opposed to his rule. Past incursions included two small parts of Georgia and then the Crimea plus the Russian majority parts of the Donbas industrial region of the Ukraine. All of these were welcomed, indeed promoted, by majority local populations. In Crimea the majority for absorption into Russia was 96%. This week's recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk breakaway areas was met in those areas with jubilant fireworks and Russian flags. Putin's apparent anxieties about Russian security could be viewed in light of his personal history, with a brother dying of diphtheria in the siege of Leningrad and three family members dying in the terrible circumstances of the eastern front in WW2.