Monthly Archives: February 2022

There was a time, not so long ago, when the Premier Leagues biggest clubs were able to scour every corner of Europe for the continents best emerging talents.

Nowhere was off-limits. They are the great white sharks of football, said Feyenoords technical director Leo Beenhakker after Chelsea had successfully landed a 15-year-old Nathan Ake for the meagre sum of 230,000 in 2010.

Only now, in this post-Brexit age, the sharks find themselves all penned in.

The United Kingdoms formal withdrawal from the European Union (EU) at the end of 2020 brought new entry requirements for all overseas players and, just as importantly, called time on a long-running pursuit of the continents best under-18s.

The game was up and, almost overnight, youth recruitment in the Premier League was forced to evolve.

English clubs, big and small, now find themselves limited to domestic additions at youth-team level and an already fierce competition to find the best youngsters has intensified. Scouting networks are being bolstered and new markets explored.

Manchester City saw fit to spend a reported 400,000 to sign a 13-year-old Leke Drake from League Two club Stevenage this summer, while

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'Theyre looking in places they werent before' - How Brexit has affected academy recruitment - The Athletic

UK companies have lost hundreds of billions of pounds to Covid and an equal amount to Brexit, but the tally from the UK leaving the European Union is now rising faster, according to a report by The Centre for Economics and Business Research. This found numerous coronavirus lockdowns that had inflicted huge damage on businesses throughout the UK had cost them a staggering 251billion by March 2021. It revealed the value of the goods and services produced by the country's under-pressure economy had plunged by 250billion more than it otherwise would have been.

The report cited figures from business insurer Simply Business which said Covid cost small businesses alone an estimated 126.6billion. while a report from the Government in November revealed the country lost almost 365 billion in GDP from Covid overall.

But David Jinks, head of consumer research at delivery firm ParcelHero, said: British businesses have had a torrid few years.

Brexit or Covid, which has been the heavier burden for them to bear?

"The shocking answer is that the entirely avoidable Brexit crisis has had as much of an impact on UK businesses as the unforeseeable Covid-19 tragedy, and its costs are still rising.

No one could have foreseen the arrival of the pandemic and there was little that could have been done to shield UK businesses in advance.

"However, this is certainly not the case for the impact of Brexit on UK businesses."

Before the UK formally left the EU on January 1, 2021, a report from Bloomberg Economics revealed that by the end of the previous year, the economic cost of Brexit had already surged past 200billion in lost revenues for UK companies.

The report had calculated the UK economy had shrunk by three percent than it otherwise would have been.

READ MORE:French open eyes to EU shambles

Also since Brexit, the UK Trade Policy Observatory claimed the loss of trade with the EU has cost UK businesses a further 44billion.

Mr Jinks said: That breaks down to 32.5billion lost in potential imports to the UK and 11billion in exports to the EU."

Further analysis showed the UK Government spent an additional 8.1billion on preparing for Brexit and the end of the transition period in December 2021, according to the Institute for Government.

This means the combined costs of Brexit and the pandemic both equal around 250billion but longer term, it has been claimed the UK leaving the EU could end up costing even more than Covid.

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Thomas Sampson, Associate Professor at the London School of Economics, said: When measured in terms of their impact on the present value of UK GDP, the Brexit shock is forecast to be two to three times greater than the impact of Covid-19.

"Moreover, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) told the BBC last October that leaving the EU would reduce our long-run GDP by around four percent.

It has been reported the impact from the UK pandemic will only see GDP output fall by just two percent.

The latest report from Government Business Insights showed that in December, two-thirds of UK firms experienced challenges with exporting and nearly eight in ten with importing.

Mr Jinks added: This has had a knock-on effect on transport and logistics companies.

"A staggering 36.7 percent of transport and logistics companies either closed, paused trading entirely or continued trading only partially in December."

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Brexit worse than Covid! Project Fear returns as damning report hits out at EU withdrawal - Daily Express

Today marks two years since the UK formally left the EU and entered an 11-month transition period. After years of political wrangling following the Brexit referendum, the country entered a transition period during which it retained many of its privileges of membership, but had no say on rule-making. Then, last year on January 1, the rules governing the new relationship between the EU and UK took effect.

Brexit had a significant impact on the UKs vaccine rollout and allowed the Government to lift Covid restriction sooner than any country in the EU.

However, swathes of critics from across the political spectrum have insisted little progress has been made on garnering the economic benefits of Brexit.

Dr Bull toldExpress.co.ukhe did not regret having campaigned and voted for Brexit, referencing the UKs vaccine rollout as a notable success of Brexit.

However, he claimed the UK had not taken advantage of the extraordinary 2016 referendum result and the Government needed to do more.

Read More:Question Time: 'On brink of WW3!' Brexit row

Dr Bull said: I dont think we have taken advantage of the extraordinary vote that we had.

I maintain to this day it was still the right decision.

The largest ever democratic vote in the United Kingdom I think, and it was extraordinary.

The whole point about it was that we became a free and self-governing country where we no longer are held ransom by this ridiculous monolist that is the European Union and that we can decide the rules and the laws that are good for Britain.

Were now a high tax, high regulation, low growth economy and you can see that with the fact weve got inflation rising, national insurance coming in, our tax bills coming up.

This isnt what people voted for.

When asked to rate the first year of Brexit out of ten he gave it a four and insisted the UK could do better to make the most of the referendum result.

Dr Bull said: I think thats generous.

Has anyone really noticed any difference? No, is the honest answer.

What worries me the most is youve got this brigade of Remainers that actually should be called Rejoiners, like [Andrew] Adonis, [Peter] Mandelson and so on, and actually they are pointing out the fact that theres no discernable difference at the moment.

And actually I think theyre right, and all weve done by not grasping that nettle is to say, Actually if there is no discernible difference we would be better off back in the EU.

What we should have done is to say, Right, this is where the future begins, were now going to slash tax, were going to go to a flat tax across the board for example. Were going to slash VAT, were doing these trade deals, were going to bring in the brightest talent.

Then, there would be no discussion about going back. But they didnt do it.

Dr Bull then revised his grade to three-and-a-half, and added: A bit like fishing, yes weve reduced the licences by three boats or something. Its pathetic.

I think my report if I was the teacher would be could do better.

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'Extraordinary' Brexit achievement MUST be capitalised on to shut up Rejoiners - Daily Express

The Centre for Policy Studies has today welcomed the Government white paper The Benefits of Brexit.

The new paper sets out how the government plans to take advantage of Britains exit from the European Union.

The think tank said it supported the papers intention to make Britain the best regulated economy in the world but warned that more needed to be done to put meat on the bones.

CPS praised the Government for its commitment to keeping the costs of regulation as low as possible, to regulate only where absolutely necessary, and to involve business as an equal partner when drawing up new regulation that affects it.

It also welcomed the adoption of specific CPS recommendations, such as ensuring regulators take account of the impact of their decisions on competition, growth and innovation; simplifying reporting burdens for small and medium sized companies; and pushing forward with the freeports agenda.

But it warned that much tougher deregulatory targets will be needed, as well as a sustained push from the centre.

Robert Colvile, Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, said: Fixing our regulatory system is one of the great opportunities of Brexit. But that needs to apply to all regulations, not just those inherited from Brussels.

The 1 billion target for cutting post-Brexit regulation is headline-grabbing but relatively unambitious. We need more detail on what will replace the current system of regulatory budgeting and business impact targets, which are due to expire. It is especially concerning to note that a one-in-two-out system was considered but rejected apparently because it will be too difficult to implement alongside Net Zero.

Above all, the better regulation agenda needs a strong and dedicated champion at the centre of Whitehall, with the power to hold others feet to the fire. The lesson of the past is that if departments and regulators are left to mark their own homework, any push for deregulation will have only a limited impact.

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Centre-right think tank calls for 'greater ambition' on post-Brexit regulation - Politics.co.uk

There is a lesser-known Robert Redford film, The Candidate, in which he plays a no-hope Democrat taking on a popular and well-liked Republican in a Californian election. After engaging unexpectedly well with the public and winning an improbable victory, he turns to one of his aides and asks, bewildered: What do we do now? The question is left hanging in the air like the back end of the bus in The Italian Job.

The script might as well have been written about Boris Johnson and the Brexit referendum campaign. It is nearly six years on from that victory, and two years on from Brexit itself. And yet it is still far from clear what if anything the Prime Minister intends to do with his victory.

We thought we knew what he wanted from Brexit. Had he not spent the referendum campaign advocating how leaving the EU would help us open up to the rest of the world? Had he not spent his early months as foreign secretary banging on about global Britain and how it was his mission to help Britain be more outward-looking and more engaged with the world than ever before?

Then there were the promises to take action on over-regulation, a subject which he had spent 25 years railing against and which formed an important part of the Daily Telegraph piece in March 2016 in which he explained why he had decided to campaign for Leave. The example he singled out then was of lorries, which he said could not be redesigned to make them safer for cyclists because of EU rules. There was the issue of tax, too. One of the benefits of leaving, he declared in May 2016, was that it would allow Britain to remove the 5 per cent VAT on household energy bills the lowest rate allowed under EU rules.

How are we doing when it comes to taking advantage of Britains newfound freedoms? The government has negotiated new trade deals with Australia and New Zealand. There are minor differences in the deals it has agreed with Canada and Japan compared with the deals to which Britain was party as a member of the EU. In the case of a further 70 countries, EU-negotiated deals have been rolled over, but no more. There has been no deal with the US, and none, it seems, is in prospect any time soon. There are negotiations with India and an application was submitted a year ago to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

There are, then, at least some signs of ambition over trade although we could be going more rapidly. Some have implored the government at least to establish some quick, basic trade deals or even unilateral tariff removals involving goods which we dont make in Britain anyway. Under EU membership, for example, we were hampered in making trade deals thanks to trainer manufacturers in Italy. But we dont make trainers in Britain and neither do we grow oranges, avocados and many other foods which we could open to free trade without offending a single UK producer.

With tax and regulation, perversely we seem to be drifting further towards the EU model, in spite of leaving the bloc. Given the perfect opportunity to enact his proposed elimination of VAT on fuel the prospect of bills rising by 50 per cent or more in April, as the governments price cap is raised and sharp inflation in wholesale energy prices is allowed to work itself through the Prime Minister has refused to act, saying there is no need for a tax cut for people who can afford higher energy bills.

What about the Common Agricultural Policy, which forms by far the biggest slice of the EU budget? Brexit gave Britain the chance to chop the 3 billion a year paid to farmers under the scheme payments not for producing food but simply for owning land. Cut out that bill and we would be a sixth of the way to doing what it said on the side of the Vote Leave bus (We send the EU 350 million a week; lets fund our NHS instead): farm subsidies work out at 58 million a week. Yet the government has instead reinvented CAP at a UK level, with landowners receiving money for sustainable farming and, more controversially, for rewilding. In other words, wealthy landowners will continue to receive fat sums from the public purse not to produce food on their land, just as they did under the CAP.

For years, Britain was instrumental in shaping the EUs antipathy to state aid for industry, making it more difficult for governments to use taxpayers money to give companies an unfair advantage or to bail out failing industries. You might expect, therefore, an independent Britain to be moving in a more laissez-faire direction. Instead, we have the Subsidy Control Bill, the whole ethos of which is to make it easier for public bodies, including local authorities, to provide aid for favoured companies.

What about the EUs social chapter, which Britain was allowed to opt out of when agreeing to the Maastricht Treaty but which Tony Blair later signed up for anyway? If Johnson has any intention of rowing back on some of its rules there is scant sign of it yet. No piece of legislation has been proposed along those lines, and nor should employers expect any. Indeed, if anything, we can expect more EU-style employment rules to be piled on business in coming years the Conservatives 2019 manifesto, for example, promised to encourage flexible working and consult on making it the default unless employers have good reasons not to. Then there is the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill, which duplicates existing welfare legislation as well an imposing a ban on exports of live animals and which an earlier Johnson might have attacked like red meat thrown to a starving dog.

As for the tax burden, membership of the EU didnt stop us from having one of the lowest rates of employment taxes in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development with a worker on the national average wage paying 31 per cent of their earnings, compared with 47 per cent in France, 49 per cent in Germany and 52 per cent in Belgium. Anyone who fooled themselves into thinking that Brexit would free us to move to a lower tax burden, perhaps rivalling that of Korea (23 per cent) or Chile (just 7 per cent), will be disappointed in April rates will be going up as National Insurance is raised by 1.25 percentage points. Corporation tax, too, will be rising over the coming years from 19 per cent to 25 per cent not, of course, that being members of the EU prevented us from attracting business investment through low rates (as Ireland shows). The only EU-related tax cut we have had so far is the removal of VAT on tampons.

The one thing that can be said to have changed since Brexit is migration. EU citizens can no longer automatically come to Britain to live or work they require visas and sponsors, and, in most cases, a job which pays them a salary of at least 25,600 a year. We dont yet have a whole years data to show the effect of this the most recently published figures are for the year ending March 2020, when 715,000 people came to live in Britain and 403,000 left, giving a net migration figure of 313,000. Migration is widely believed to have fallen since then, and this has certainly been blamed for shortages of some workers, as well as for increased wages for some British workers such as lorry drivers although the pandemic has rendered it impossible to judge the real effect of Brexit on EU migration.

Slowing down low-skilled migration from the EU, however, is only one side of the ledger. The other side, promised as part of global Britain, was supposed to be making it easier for high-skilled workers from other parts of the world. How is that going? In early January the Prime Minister appeared to row back on promises to make it easier and cheaper for Indian citizens to come to study or work in Britain, saying that he wont be including the subject of visas in negotiations for an Indian trade deal. So, for the moment, Indian citizens must continue to pay 1,400 for a work visa and 348 for a student visa. So much for going out of your way to attract global talent.

The purpose of Brexit, surely, was to decouple from the European model of social democracy and to become something different: either a socialist economy or a more liberal one. You can be sure that if Jeremy Corbyn had won the 2019 election Britain would be well on its way to the former. But there is scant sign of Johnson taking us anywhere close to the latter. If we were going to become simply a different brand of European social democracy, it is hard to tell what it was all for. But that is, for the moment, exactly what we are becoming: we are the Pepsi to the EUs Coca-Cola close your eyes and taste it and you would struggle to tell the difference. If that is all we are going to aspire to be, it is perfectly reasonable to ask: wouldnt we be better off inside the EU?

True, we are still in a pandemic, as we have been for almost all the time since Brexitday on 31 January 2020. There has been a limit to how much other business the government has been able to get done. But at the very least we ought to have expected the Prime Minister to signal his intentions, to provide us with a vision and some kind of timetable. Instead, like Robert Redfords character, he seems lost, befuddled by the realisation he now has to achieve something for his voters. Fewer eastern Europeans and no tampon tax doesnt seem quite enough to justify the whole agonising business of Brexit.

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The abandoned revolution: has the government given up on Brexit? - Spectator.co.uk

Monday 31 January 2022 9:48 am

Scotland has not seen any benefits from Brexit, a minister has said ahead of a meeting with the UK Government.

Scotlands Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon hit out at the UK leaving the EU two years on from the finalisation of a deal to leave the bloc.

Ahead of a meeting of the inter-ministerial group for environment, food and rural affairs which brings together ministers from the devolved administrations and the UK Government Ms Gougeon pointed to the impacts of leaving the EU on the food and drink industry north of the border.

Two years on, Brexit has failed to deliver a single benefit for Scotlands rural communities, or the countless food and drink businesses that support them, she said.

Fragile rural and island communities are bearing the brunt of a hard Brexit, recklessly pursued while a global pandemic has ravaged our society and our economy.

Scotlands food and drink sector has been a global success story, providing highly paid, highly skilled jobs, and businesses, often in remote rural and island communities.

Brexit has caused labour and skills shortages and created barriers to trade that have harmed many businesses and communities in the short term, with research suggesting a significant risk to their success in the longer term too.

The Scottish Government has previously called for a 24-month visa for temporary workers to alleviate pressure on the sector.

Ms Gougeon also pushed for the UK Government to engage with the EU to ease the red tape faced by exporting businesses.

Scottish exporters are also being forced to cope with a mountain of complex, time-consuming and costly customs and borders arrangements, she said.

Businesses put in huge amounts of preparation for the new Export Health Certificates introduced this year, but they still face uncertainty around the level of certification needed to ensure valuable seafood exports enter the EU without delay.

The UK Government must listen to the needs of Scottish businesses and re-engage in good faith with the EU to find pragmatic solutions to the problems still facing businesses, before they and the communities they support endure further unnecessary pain.

A spokesman for the UK Government said: Our zero tariffs and zero quotas trade and cooperation agreement has allowed us to take back control of our money, borders, laws, and our waters, as well as enable us to strike trade deals with the worlds fastest-growing markets.

We want to ensure that businesses get the support they need to trade effectively with Europe and to seize new opportunities from our trade deals.

Thats why in addition to the 20m SME Brexit Support Fund we are operating export helplines, running webinars with experts and offering businesses support via our network of 300 international trade advisers.

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'Brexit has failed to deliver a single benefit while communities bear the brunt', angry Scottish minister tells UK govt - City A.M.