Liam Fox is to unveil a plan intended to increase Britain’s exports after Brexit to 35% of GDP as his cabinet counterpart Dominic Raab heads to Brussels for the latest round of divorce talks with the European Union.
The international trade secretary believes there are 400,000 UK businesses that could export but do not, and will try to target them with better loans, guarantees and support – and ask businesses to spell out what barriers to trade they face.
Fox will use a speech on Tuesday to say “the UK has the potential to be a 21st-century exporting superpower” and lift exports from 30% of GDP. “As we leave the EU, we must set our sights high,” he will add.
The speech comes at a time when businesses are increasingly concerned by the lack of apparent progress in the UK’s exit negotiations with the European Union, as well as ministers’ decision to talk up a no-deal Brexit, which would leave firms scrambling to introduce contingency measures.
The Federation of Small Businesses said the export strategy to be unveiled by Fox was “strong on aspiration”, but added that support from government was urgently needed after a summer in which ministers have said the UK may need to stockpile food and medicines.
Mike Cherry, the FSB chairman, said: “The clock is ticking. If the government doesn’t act quickly and introduce financial incentives there is a risk the current uncertainty will have a serious and detrimental impact.”
Shortly after Fox unveils the export strategy, Raab, the Brexit secretary, will return to Brussels to meet the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, in the afternoon. Discussions yesterday focused on the UK’s Chequers plan and the future relationship post Brexit. Talks will continue today as both sides urgently seek to make progress.
Before the meeting, the Department for Exiting the European Union released technical Powerpoint presentations given by UK officials in Brussels on financial services and competition policy.
On competition policy, the paper said the UK would seek regulatory alignment with the EU after Brexit. It said the UK was proposing “to make binding commitments to ongoing harmonisation with EU rules on state aid” and would not lower environmental, social and employment standards.
The financial services presentation indicated the reverse, that the UK needed an independent approach. It said the UK hosted “the world’s most significant financial centre” and as a result, rule-taking from the European Union “will simply not work for this sector”.
UK Finance, the trade body for banking and insurers, said Raab and Barnier needed to make progress to ensure cross-border services remained uninterrupted. “Given the limited time available, it is vital that both UK and EU27 negotiators focus on ensuring a legally enforceable agreement that enables meaningful cross-border market access in financial services,” it said.
The pound has been tumbling against major currencies since the spring and is trading at $1.28, its lowest level for a year because of worries about the possibility of a no-deal Brexit. The deterioration helps make UK exports cheaper, but the import of raw materials and parts more expensive.
Exports totalled £615.9bn last year, according to ONS statistics, with the EU accounting for £274bn, or 44%, of the total. The US was the largest single country for UK exports, followed by Germany and France.
Source: The Guardian
For me the Eagles Lead Singer Don Henley is the best singer ever. I love the Eagles.
I met Don Henly and the other frontman Glen Frey in California 2011.
The Eagles has now also the most sold album in American history. Since country-rockband has surpassed Michael Jackson to score the biggest-selling album of all time in the US, with the Eagles – Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975.
The compilation is certified 38-time platinum, calculated by the Recording Industry Associstion of America from a combination of album sales and streams. As well as actual physical copies sold, since 2013 the RIAA has counted plays on YouTube and major streaming services such as Spotify towards a song’s “sales”, with 1,500 streams or 10 song downloads the equivalent to an album sale.
The change at the top of the biggest-seller charts comes after the RIAA tallied sales figures for the Eagles’ compilation for the first time since 2006, and found it trumped Thriller, which is 33-times platinum.
The Eagles’ biggest hit, Hotel California, is not included on the compilation as it was released in 1977 – the album of the same name is now the third-biggest selling record in the US.
“We are grateful for our families, our management, our crew, the people at radio and, most of all, the loyal fans who have stuck with us through the ups and downs of 46 years,” said the band’s singer and drummer Don Henley in a statement. “It’s been quite a ride.”
Those ups and downs include an acrimonious breakup in 1980, with Henley assuring fans that “hell would freeze over” before they toured again. Sure enough though, they returned 14 years later for the Hell Freezes Over tour. On the first concert of that tour Glen Frey opended with the legendary words, ‘for the record, we never split up – we just took a fourteen year vacation’.
Since then, guitarist Don Felder was fired in 2001, subsequently suing the band and settling out of court, while founder singer-guitarist Glenn Frey died in 2016.
Source: The Guardian
Is a ‘No-deal Brexit’ one of ‘biggest threats to European unity’ ?
A chaotic, no-deal Brexit would create a strategic split between Britain and its European allies that would take a generation to heal, Britain’s foreign secretary will warn on Tuesday. Jeremy Hunt will tell the US Institute of Peace in Washington that failure to reach a Brexit deal would add to the threats facing the values underpinning the post-war international order.
“One of the biggest threats to European unity would be a chaotic no-deal Brexit. Britain would, of course, find a way to prosper and we have faced many greater challenges in our history. But the risk of a messy divorce, as opposed to the friendship we seek, would be a fissure in relations between European allies that would take a generation to heal – a geostrategic error for Europe at an extremely vulnerable time in our history,” he will say.
“So, as I have been saying to European governments, now is the time for the European Commission to engage with an open mind with the fair and constructive proposals made by the prime minister.”
Mr Hunt faced criticism from hardline Conservative Brexiteers last week when he described a no-deal Brexit as “a mistake we would regret for generations”. He tweeted later that Britain would survive and prosper without a deal, suggesting that failure to reach an agreement would be a big mistake for Europe.
His latest remarks come as the British government prepares to publish the first tranche of more than 70 “technical notices” designed to prepare for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit. The notices will include advice for businesses, citizens and public bodies on the impact of a no-deal Brexit on everything from air services to veterinary medicine.
One notice is expected to cover the consequences of a no-deal Brexit for the Common Travel Area between Britain and the Republic. Downing Street said the advice would be “sensible, proportionate, and part of a common-sense approach to ensure stability, whatever the outcome of talks”.
The Daily Telegraph reported on Monday that EU citizens now in Britain will be allowed to continue living and working in the country even if there is no Brexit deal. Britain would make the offer unilaterally, regardless of whether the EU offers similar rights to British citizens living on the continent.
“Making an offer is not only important to provide certainty publicly, but will enable the UK government to take the moral high ground. A number of other plans are also dependent on the government’s position on this issue, relying heavily on the availability of existing labour in a ‘no deal’ scenario,” the Telegraph quoted a leaked cabinet paper as saying.
You can read the full article here: Article: Irish Times
Source: Irish Times
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