Holidaymakers and heavy goods vehicles were left stationary in traffic jams en route to the port in Kent, southern England on Saturday, with the port admitting that “today is going to be very busy” and travelers being warned of four-hour waits.
The UK and France have been locked in a round of finger-pointing over the cause of the gridlock, with British lawmakers laying blame on staffing on the French side, and French officials nodding to increased post-Brexit customs checks.
“The British are right to complain, because there are traffic jams. But it’s not the fault of the French, it’s the fault of the Brexit,” French MP for Calais Pierre-Henri Dumont told French public radio France Info.
“The reality is that this is the first vacation after the Brexit. After the final exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union and without travel restrictions due to the Covid pandemic … the French border force make controls as they must do for an entry in the European Union and so it takes time,” he said.
The French MP also blamed the size of the port of Dover, which he said is “three times smaller than the port of Calais.”
The Port of Dover’s chief executive Doug Bannister accepted that Brexit had resulted in delays, telling LBC on Saturday his team were “recognizing that we are in a post-Brexit environment, which means the transaction times through the borders are going to take longer.”
But British lawmakers have insisted that understaffing in Calais has clogged up the route across the Channel.
Liz Truss, Britain’s Foreign Secretary and the favorite to win a two-person race to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister, said “this awful situation should have been entirely avoidable and is unacceptable.”
“We need action from France to build up capacity at the border to limit any further disruption for British tourists and to ensure this appalling situation is avoided in future. We will be working with the French authorities to find a solution,” Truss said in a Friday statement.
Dumont said all the booths given by the British authorities in Dover to the French police in Dover were staffed at full capacity, while acknowledging a slight delay in the early hours of Friday due to “a technical failure.”
He denied allegations made in the British press of “intentional desire to punish the British,” adding there are “many French families who make a living from the cross-Channel crossing. Sailors, men and women who are on land.”
P&O Ferries told passengers to allow up to four hours to clear security checks at Dover on Saturday morning.
Relations between Britain and France have become increasingly frayed since Britain left the European Union, with leaders in both countries engaging in spats over travel and over migrant boats crossing the channel.
LONDON — The U.K.’s ruling Conservative Party has begun its race to find its next leader, and the country’s next prime minister, with eight candidates now in the running for the top job.
The candidates all had to win the initial backing of at least 20 of their fellow Conservative lawmakers in order to proceed to the first round of voting which takes place Wednesday.
In order to whittle the number of candidates down to just two, more votes will now take place – beginning Wednesday – with the 358 Conservative MPs asked to choose their favorite candidate to take over the party.
Any candidate receiving less than 30 votes from his or her fellow MPs will be eliminated in the first round of voting. Then in the second round, the candidates with the fewest votes are eliminated. These rounds of voting continue until two candidates remain, which is expected to happen by the end of this week.
When two candidates remain, all the members of the Conservative Party (some 200,000 people) are asked to vote by postal ballot on their favorite candidate. The winner is expected to be announced on Sept. 5.
Rishi Sunak makes a speech to launch his bid to be leader of the Conservative Party on July 12, 2022 in London, England. The former Chancellor was the second high-profile minister to resign from Boris Johnson’s cabinet last week setting in motion the events that saw Johnson step down as Conservative Party Leader.
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The eight candidates include well-known faces, such as former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak — one of the favorites to win — and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and new Finance Minister Nadhim Zahawi, as well as those with less high-profiles such as Tom Tugendhat, Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch.
Former Health Minister Jeremy Hunt is also in the race, as well as Penny Mordaunt, international trade minister, another of the favorites who’s popular with grassroots party activists. Sajid Javid, former health secretary, withdrew from the leadership race on Tuesday.
Showing some division among Tory MPs and those among the more grassroots Conservative Party members and activists, Penny Mordaunt, a former defense secretary, topped a poll of Tory party members this week on who should be the next leader, with 20% of the vote.
Ex-local government minister Kemi Badenoch was seen with 19% of the vote, followed by Rishi Sunak on 12%, according to the poll of over 800 Tory party members on Tuesday by website Conservative Home.
“If Putin succeeds there will be untold further misery across Europe and terrible consequences across the globe,” said U.K. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.
Mateusz Wlodarczyk | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Tuesday night, the eight candidates had 12 minutes each to try to convince their fellow MPs why they should be the next leader of the party and the country. Several promised to cut taxes and unite the party after the spectacular fall of Boris Johnson, who remains as prime minister but only in a caretaker role while his replacement is found.
Summing up the economic implications of the candidates expected to proceed to at least a second round of voting, Daiwa Capital Markets said that “at the time of writing, former Chancellor Rishi Sunak looked odds-on to make it to the second round. There he is most likely to face a challenger from the populist right wing — most likely Foreign Secretary Liz Truss or Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt.”
“While Sunak has argued against any further near-term loosening of fiscal policy, Truss, Mordaunt and several others have argued for unfunded tax cuts, which would arguably be inflationary and would likely lead to more monetary tightening than would be the case under a Sunak premiership,” Daiwa said in a note Tuesday.
Wide-open race
The leadership contest has come about after Johnson resigned as party leader last week after months of controversy over his conduct while in office. His government has been plagued by scandals over parties during Covid-19 lockdowns and several party officials have been hit with sleaze allegations.
The final straw for many MPs who had previously supported Johnson, despite his less than conventional style of leadership, was his appointment of a deputy chief whip (responsible for party discipline) who had previous sexual misconduct allegations made against him of which Johnson was aware. That led to a wave of resignations with ministers and officials saying Johnson no longer commanded their confidence.
Describing Johnson’s departure as a “Bjexit,” Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, commented this week that “near term, U.K. policy is paralyzed by the caretaker government’s lack of a mandate (whether Johnson-led or under a new temporary prime minister” and that economic, foreign and defense policy are “essentially in stasis until there’s new leadership in the fall.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson makes a statement at Downing Street in London, Britain, July 7, 2022.
Henry Nicholls | Reuters
“It’s a wide open race for the fall … but either way, Johnson’s two most important foreign policy initiatives—on Europe and on Ukraine — aren’t going to change. On the former, with Brexit and euroskepticism already firmly in place for the Conservative Party, there’s no lane for a softer Europe policy, even on the contentious Northern Ireland issue, among premiership competitors,” Bremmer noted on Monday.
European leaders, and particularly France’s President Emmanuel Macron, are happy to see the back of Johnson and will have less dysfunctional personal diplomacy with his successor, but the overarching U.K.-EU relationship will remain significantly strained, Bremmer added.
“That leaves plenty of uncertainty domestically— on fiscal easing and corporate tax policy for example. But I don’t see fireworks over who leads the United Kingdom driving much drama outside of old Blighty.”
A snap YouGov poll conducted Tuesday found that 69% of Britons surveyed want Johnson to resign. The poll of 3,009 adults found that only 18% want him to stay on.
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LONDON — U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s leadership is hanging by a thread after the resignations of two of his most high-profile ministers and several other top officials and ministerial aides in the last 24 hours.
British Finance Minister Rishi Sunak resigned Tuesday evening, saying the government should be run “properly, competently and seriously.” Health Secretary Sajid Javid, likewise, resigned in protest against Johnson’s leadership, which has been beset by controversy and scandal in recent months.
As a number of senior Tories called for Johnson to quit, the government’s former Brexit negotiator David Frost also joined the fray, calling on the prime minister to step down without delay. In a newspaper column Wednesday, Frost echoed other critics of Johnson by stating emphatically that “it is time for him to go,” adding that “if he hangs on, he risks taking the party and the government down with him.”
Despite calls to resign, the prime minister shows no signs of being ready to stand down. Last night, he reshuffled his ministerial team to fill the vacancies created by the shock resignations.
Several ministers defended Johnson, expressing their loyalty to him. Top figures staying in the Cabinet include Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Home Secretary Priti Patel.
Odds of a snap election
For now, the loyalty of top ministers, diminishes the immediate prospect of snap election in Britain. For that to happen, Johnson would have to resign or face another confidence vote. As he faced such a vote only last month, a new challenge would require a rule change to allow another vote within the next 12 months.
“Current party rules stipulate that Johnson cannot face another no-confidence vote until next summer. But the main risk now is either that those rules will be changed to force another vote, or Johnson is pressured to voluntarily step down,” Allan Monks, an economist at JPMorgan, said in a note Tuesday night.
“Events could move very quickly, with a Conservative leadership contest potentially putting in place a new Prime Minister in the next couple of months or so – ahead of the party’s annual conference in early October.”
Market response
Sterling fell to a new March 2020 low on Tuesday as the U.K.’s political instability played out. How markets react in the next few days will be closely watched.
“There’s paralysis and there’s so much uncertainty over how it will exactly play out,” Ben Emons, managing director of Global Macro Strategy at at Medley Global Advisors, told CNBC Wednesday.
“The way the markets responded, somewhat negatively as sterling and U.K. gilt yields fell, but then they recovered and I think that does indicate that as much as there’s uncertainty surrounding the Cabinet and Johnson’s position, it has not fallen apart, he does still have support,” he said.
“We’re not going to see any snap election, they have to elect a new leader for that to happen, so I think the markets take some comfort in [the fact that] we’re going to enter a period of some uncertainty but that uncertainty reflects the status quo, nothing will change in the economy or with policy,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”
String of scandals
The latest political upheaval to hit the U.K. comes after a series of controversies, ranging from the “partygate” scandal with Johnson and multiple other government officials who were found to have broken pandemic lockdown rules, to sleaze allegations — the latest of which involves Chris Pincher, the Conservative Party’s deputy chief whip, responsible for maintaining party discipline.
Pincher resigned and was suspended as a Conservative Party MP last week, following accusations that he drunkenly groped two men at a private members’ club. It has since emerged that Johnson appointed him to the role despite knowing of previous misconduct allegations against him.
Johnson apologized for appointing Pincher as deputy chief whip, but it was too little too late with the high-profile resignations coming just minutes after.
Johnson has survived a number of challenges to his leadership in recent months, as well as calls for him to resign, particularly following a bruising confidence vote and the Conservative Party’s loss of two key by-elections in the last month as the British public’s faith in its leader wears thin.
A snap YouGov poll conducted Tuesday found that 69% of Britons surveyed want Johnson to resign. The poll of 3,009 adults found that only 18% want him to stay on.
Among the Conservative voters polled, 54% said they want to see Johnson go, while 33% want him to stay on, showing that Johnson has become an unpopular figure for many voters initially attracted to his leadership in 2019, when he won a massive 80-seat majority on his election bid to “get Brexit done.”
Britain’s opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer tweeted on Tuesday that “the Tory party is corrupted and changing one man won’t fix that. Only a real change of government can give Britain the fresh start it needs.”
Nadhim Zahawi, Britain’s new finance minister, told Sky News on Wednesday that he backed the prime minister and said “the team in government today is the team that will deliver” but Ed Davey, the leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, told CNBC that “it’s clearly in the national interest for Boris Johnson to go” and that Johnson had been proven to be deceitful in the past.
“Having someone as a British prime minister who clearly doesn’t tell the truth and who lies on an industrial scale, is damaging to our democracy, it’s damaging to Britain’s reputation around the world and it’s damaging for our investment … We need a government that knows what it’s doing.”
Johnson has been accused of lying on multiple occasions during his time in office though he has invariably denied doing so, and has denied misleading parliament over the “partygate” scandal, over which there is an ongoing inquiry.
WASHINGTON/LONDON, May 25 (Reuters) – A new website that published leaked emails from several leading proponents of Britain’s exit from the European Union is tied to Russian hackers, according to a Google cybersecurity official and the former head of UK foreign intelligence.
The website – titled “Very English Coop d’Etat” – says it has published private emails from former British spymaster Richard Dearlove, leading Brexit campaigner Gisela Stuart, pro-Brexit historian Robert Tombs, and other supporters of Britain’s divorce from the EU, which was finalized in January 2020.
The site contends that they are part of a group of hardline pro-Brexit figures secretly calling the shots in the United Kingdom.
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Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the emails, but two victims of the leak on Wednesday confirmed that they had been targeted by hackers and blamed the Russian government.
“I am well aware of a Russian operation against a Proton account which contained emails to and from me,” said Dearlove, referring to the privacy-focused email service ProtonMail.
Dearlove, who led Britain’s foreign spy service – known as MI6 – between 1999 and 2004, told Reuters the leaked material should be treated with caution given “the context of the present crisis in relations with Russia.”
Tombs said in an email he and his colleagues were “aware of this Russian disinformation based on illegal hacking.” He declined further comment. Stuart, who chaired Britain’s Vote Leave campaign in 2016, did not return emails.
Shane Huntley, who directs Google’s Threat Analysis Group, told Reuters that the “English Coop” website was linked to what the Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O)-owned company knew as “Cold River,” a Russia-based hacking group.
“We’re able to see that through technical indicators,” Huntley said.
Huntley said that the entire operation – from Cold River’s hacking attempts to publicizing the leaks – had “clear technical links” between one another.
The Russian embassies in London and Washington did not return emails seeking comment.
Britain’s Foreign Office, which handles media queries for MI6, declined comment. Other Brexit supporters whose emails were suspected of being disseminated on the website also did not respond to emails.
‘LOOKS VERY FAMILIAR’
How the emails were obtained is unknown and the website hosting them made no effort to explain who was behind the leak. The leaked messages mainly appear to have been exchanged using ProtonMail. ProtonMail declined comment.
Reuters was unable to independently verify Google’s assessment about a Russian link to the website, but Thomas Rid, a cybersecurity expert at Johns Hopkins University, said the site was reminiscent of past hack-and-leak operations attributed to Russian hackers.
“What jumps out at me is how similar the M.O. is to Guccifer 2 and DCLeaks,” he said, referring to two of the sites that disseminated leaked emails stolen from Democrats in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
“It looks very familiar in some ways, including the sloppiness,” he said.
If the leaked messages are in fact authentic it would mark the second time in three years that suspected Kremlin spies have stolen private emails from a senior British national security official and published them online.
In 2019, classified U.S.-UK trade documents were leaked ahead of Britain’s election after being stolen from the email account of former trade minister Liam Fox, Reuters previously reported. UK officials never confirmed the specifics of the operation, but then-British foreign minister Dominic Raab said the hack-and-leak was an effort by the Kremlin to interfere in the Britain’s election, a charge that Moscow denied.
The “English Coop” site makes a variety of allegations, including one that Dearlove was at the center of a conspiracy by Brexit hardliners to oust former British Prime Minister Theresa May, who had negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the European Union in early 2019, and replace her with Johnson, who took a more uncompromising position.
Dearlove said that the emails captured a “legitimate lobbying exercise which, seen through this antagonistic optic, is now subject to distortion.”
He declined further comment.
Johnson, who took over from May later in 2019, has staked out a tough stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, committing hundreds of millions of dollars of military equipment to the government in Kyiv. In April, Johnson visited the capital for a televised walkabout with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. read more
Johnson was officially banned from Russian soil on April 16. Internet domain records show the “Coop” website was registered three days later. Its URL included the words “sneaky strawhead” in an apparent knock at Johnson’s tousled hairstyle.
Rid said that while journalists should not shy away from covering authenticated material exposed by the leak, they should still tread very carefully.
“If the leak has newsworthy detail, then it is also newsworthy to point out that the material comes from an adversarial intelligence agency, especially in a time of war,” said Rid.
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Reporting by Raphael Satter and Christopher Bing in Washington and James Pearson in London; editing by Chris Sanders and Grant McCool
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday renewed British threats to break a Brexit agreement with the European Union, blaming it for a political crisis that’s blocking the formation of a new government in Northern Ireland.
Johnson said there would be “a necessity to act” if the EU doesn’t agree to overhaul post-Brexit trade rules that he says are destabilizing Northern Ireland’s delicate political balance.
Johnson held private talks with the leaders of Northern Ireland’s main political parties, urging them to get back to work. But his public message was aimed at the 27-nation EU, which he accused of refusing to give ground over post-Brexit border checks.
“I hope the EU’s position changes. If it does not, there will be a necessity to act,” Johnson wrote in the Belfast Telegraph.
The government is expected Tuesday to outline planned legislation that would give Britain powers to override parts of its Brexit treaty with the EU.
EU member Ireland warned that a unilateral move by Britain could imperil the entire post-Brexit trade agreement that the U.K. and the bloc hammered out in months of rancorous negotiations before the U.K.’s exit from the bloc in 2020.
Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said Britain’s stance “calls into question the functioning of the TCA” — the trade and cooperation agreement between the U.K. and the EU.
Northern Ireland elected a new Assembly earlier this month, in a vote that saw the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein win the most seats. It was the first time a party that seeks union with the Republic of Ireland has won an election in Northern Ireland, a bastion of Protestant unionist power.
The Democratic Unionist Party came second and is refusing to form a government, or even allow the assembly to sit, until Johnson’s government scraps post-Brexit checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K.
Under power-sharing rules set up as part of Northern Ireland’s peace process, a government can’t be formed without the cooperation of both nationalist and unionist parties.
Northern Ireland is the only part of the U.K. that shares a border with the EU. When Britain left the bloc and its borderless free-trade zone, a deal was agreed to keep the Irish land border free of customs posts and other checks, because an open border is a key pillar of the peace process that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland. Instead, there are checks on some goods, such as meat and eggs, entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K.
The arrangement is opposed by unionists in Northern Ireland, who say the new checks have put a burden on businesses and frayed the bonds between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.
The British government agrees that the regulations, known as the Northern Ireland Protocol, are destabilizing a peace agreement that relies on support from both Protestant unionist and Catholic nationalist communities.
“The DUP has a mandate to see the Protocol replaced with arrangements that restore our place within the U.K. internal market,” party leader Jeffrey Donaldson said after meeting Monday with Johnson. “Our mandate will be respected.”
But while the DUP wants the Protocol scrapped, most other parties in Northern Ireland want to keep it, with some tweaks.
The EU says the treaty can’t be renegotiated, but it is willing to be flexible to ease the burden of checks.
Johnson, however, accused the EU of failing to recognize that the arrangements aren’t working.
“We don’t want to scrap it, but we think it can be fixed,” Johnson said after his meetings with the parties at Hillsborough Castle near Belfast.
He said he would prefer to do that through talks with the EU, but “to have the insurance, we need to proceed with a legislative solution as well.”
Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald accused the British government of “cynical antics” and “placating the DUP.”
“It seems to us absolutely extraordinary that the British government would propose to legislate to break the law” by overriding the Brexit treaty, she said.
New legislation would take months to pass through Parliament, but the unilateral move would immediately anger the EU, which would hit back with legal action — and potentially trade sanctions. Even after Brexit, bloc is Britain’s biggest economic partner.
Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said he had spoken to EU Council chief Charles Michel and “agreed that the only way to resolve this issue is through substantive talks between the European Union and the United Kingdom government.”
Coveney said a U.K.-EU feud “is the last thing Europe needs right now” as it seeks unity in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“This is a time for calmness,” Coveney said at an EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels. “It’s a time for dialogue. It’s a time for compromise and partnership between the EU and the U.K. to solve these outstanding issues.”
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Samuel Petrequin in Brussels contributed to this story.
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More AP coverage of Brexit: https://apnews.com/hub/brexit
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) — Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein was widely expected to become the largest group in the Northern Ireland Assembly for the first time, giving it the right to the post of first minister in Belfast, as vote-counting in this week’s election resumed Saturday.
A Sinn Fein win would be a milestone for a party long linked to the Irish Republican Army, a paramilitary group that used bombs, bullets and other forms of violence to try to take Northern Ireland out of U.K. rule during decades of unrest — in which the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary, as well as Protestant Loyalist paramilitaries, were also strongly involved.
A victory would bring Sinn Fein’s ultimate goal of a united Ireland a step closer. But the party has kept unification out of the spotlight during a campaign that has been dominated by more immediate concerns, namely the skyrocketing cost of living.
With about 51 of 90 seats counted so far, results showed that Sinn Fein has 18 seats, while the Democratic Unionist Party, which has been the largest in the Northern Ireland Assembly for two decades, have 14.
The centrist Alliance Party, which doesn’t identify as either nationalist or unionist, has seen support surge and is set to be the other big winner of the elections. It has 10 seats so far.
Unionist parties have led the government since Northern Ireland was formed as a Protestant-majority state in 1921.
While a Sinn Fein win would be a historic shift that shows diluting support for unionist parties, it’s far from clear what happens next.
Under a mandatory power-sharing system created by the 1998 peace agreement that ended decades of Catholic-Protestant conflict, the jobs of first minister and deputy first minister are split between the biggest unionist party and the largest nationalist one.
Both posts must be filled for a government to function, but the Democratic Unionist Party has suggested it might not serve under a Sinn Fein first minister.
The DUP has also said it will refuse to join a new government unless there are major changes to post-Brexit border arrangements, known as the Northern Ireland Protocol, that are opposed by many unionists.
The post-Brexit rules have imposed customs and border checks on some goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K. The arrangement was designed to maintain an open border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland, a key pillar of the peace process.
But it angered unionists, who maintain that the new checks have created a barrier between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. that undermines their British identity.
In February the DUP’s Paul Givan resigned as first minister as post-Brexit tensions triggered a fresh political crisis in Northern Ireland.
Polling expert John Curtice, a professor of political science at the University of Strathclyde, said the Northern Ireland results are a legacy of Brexit.
“The unionist vote has fragmented because of the divisions within the community over whether or not the Northern Ireland Protocol is something that can be amended satisfactorily or whether it needs to be scrapped,” he wrote on the BBC website.
Persuading the DUP to join a new government will pose a headache for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, he added.
Sinn Fein vice president Michelle O’Neill said the party wanted to work “in partnership with others.”
“That is the only way we will achieve much, much more for people here, whether in terms of the cost-of-living crisis or trying to fix our health service,” she said.
She also said that with regard to Irish unification, there would be no constitutional change until voters decide on it.
Party leader Mary Lou McDonald indicated on Friday that planning for any unity referendum could come within the next five years.
The full results of the election, which uses a system of proportional representation, were expected later in the weekend.
The new legislators will meet next week to try to form an executive. If none can be formed within six months, the administration will collapse, triggering a new election and more uncertainty.
Ipsos MORI publishes its poll monthly, and November’s was carried out over a week during the COP26 climate conference. The event was held in Glasgow, Scotland, and received extensive national media coverage.
Around 40% of people surveyed said climate change, pollution and the environment were among their top three concerns. The pandemic came second at 27% and Brexit was third, with 22%. Ipsos MORI interviewed more than 1,000 adults, who answered spontaneously and were not prompted with options as answers.
Climate concern was 16 percentage points higher in November than October, when people expressed greater concern about Brexit, the pandemic and the economy.
While there was a clear bump in interest during the COP26 conference, there has been longterm growth in concern about climate over the past decade, which has been confirmed by other polls, including from YouGov.
The Ipsos MORI poll showed was a fairly even distribution of climate concern across age groups, genders and political affiliation.
“[It’s] very encouraging that climate change is no longer a preoccupation reserved to the young and the liberal,” Gabriela Jiga-Boy, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Swansea, told CNN. “It means that British society may not be very divided regarding climate change. This is very important in these times, when we discuss a lot about real or false polarization on issues, and we often exaggerate how polarized people actually are.”
Climate a top concern for older people, too
Men and women considered the climate crisis a top issue almost equally, at 40% and 41%, respectively, the poll showed. And supporters of the center-right Conservative Party and center-left Labour Party were equal in their concern for climate issues.
In the age group of 55 and over, 47% of people said it was a top issue. For the 35 to 54 age group, it was 43%. Among those 18 to 34 years old, just 27% said the same, though that age group was less likely to say they were worried about any particular issue.
Ralitsa Hiteva, a senior research fellow in the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex Business School, said that climate change is now a top priority among a majority of groups because the topic is “becoming personal.” That’s also true for how policies like net-zero emissions targets may affect them.
Dozens of countries have set a net-zero emissions goal for mid-century, for which they plan to drastically reduce greenhouse emissions and “capture” excess, through actions like planing trees or using technology to remove carbon from fossil fuels. Such technology isn’t fully developed and remains controversial.
“We are seeing that people are personally affected by things related to both the target for net zero, and are seeing and experiencing the impact of climate change — from large wildfires to the rapid increases of the price of energy,” Hiteva told CNN in an email.
While concern about the climate crisis is fairly even among age groups, support for different types of climate action is more divisive.
“Older people are more inclined to pay for investment in infrastructure to improve the experience of future generations,” she said, adding that younger adults were less likely to do so.
“The only way for this to translate into action is to use the momentum of the moment and engage people with re-imagining how infrastructure investment can be designed and used in an innovative way which is not only kinder to the environment but is also more inclusive and fairer.”
A European Union (EU) flies alongside a British Union flag, also known as a Union Jack in London.
Jason Alden | Bloomberg Creative Photos | Getty Images
LONDON — The United Kingdom and the European Union are due to enter new negotiations on Friday in an attempt to avoid a looming trade war.
The U.K. officially left the EU in January 2020 and since then a number of new trade arrangements have come into place. However, the agreements now look to be under threat as the U.K. complains about difficulties in implementing the required checks on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
The nature of this border post-Brexit has been a major sticking point in negotiations between the U.K. government and the European Union. Great Britain includes England, Scotland and Wales, but not Northern Ireland; Northern Ireland is, however, part of the U.K.
The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, proposed last month to adapt certain parts of the trade deal in an effort to make it easier for these checks to take place. But EU officials have since complained that the government of U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is not showing a willingness to negotiate.
Political analysts have warned that this standoff could drag on for several months.
A Commission official, who did not want to be named due to the sensitivity of the negotiations, said Thursday that its proposals mark “a significant difference” from the original trade deal.
“Northern Ireland deserves stability and certainty, and we are ready to work around the clock to achieve this,” the official said. “The U.K. must take a step towards us to make sure the talks are meaningful.”
There are, however, significant differences in how the EU and U.K. are looking to solve the problem.
U.K. Brexit Minister David Frost said that all checks on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland should come to an end. Instead, he thinks authorities should trust businesses to inform them if products will stay in Northern Ireland or continue to the Republic of Ireland — which is European territory.
Businesses have to fill different forms depending on whether goods will enter the European market or not.
However the European Commission says they cannot trust companies to keep them informed about trade flows. “What … doesn’t work is to wait for traders to tell us,” the unnamed Commission official said. “We believe we need data to track that.”
The Commission says it does want to significantly reduce the amount of paperwork that businesses need to fill when moving goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. Ultimately though, Brussels is worried that products that do not meet European standards could end up entering the EU’s single market via Northern Ireland.
Another issue is that the U.K. wants to end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice over how their trade deal works. But the EU is not budging on this one.
Tearing it all apart?
Amid this standoff, Frost has threatened to trigger so-called Article 16 — this would lead to the suspension of part of the current trade agreement on the basis that it is causing “economic, societal, or environmental difficulties.”
He said Wednesday that triggering this article would be the “only option” if negotiations with the EU fail.
The EU, for its part, has warned that it would retaliate in this scenario, which could lead to no trade deal — and a trade war.
“Senior EU officials in Brussels, but also across the continent’s 27 capitals, are extremely gloomy about the outlook and believe escalation in the form of a trade war — probably early in the new year — is now almost unavoidable,” analysts at consultancy group Eurasia said in a note Tuesday.
LONDON/BRUSSELS, Nov 5 (Reuters) – Britain will not trigger an emergency provision in its Brexit deal on Friday, its negotiator said on arriving for talks with the European Union’s pointman aimed at overcoming disagreements over trade across the Irish border.
The emergency measures, called Article 16, allows either side to take unilateral action if they deem their agreement governing post-Brexit trade is having a strongly negative impact on their interests.
Britain left the bloc last year, but it has since refused to implement some of the border checks between its province of Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland that the 27-nation union says London is obliged to under their divorce deal.
London says the checks are disproportionate and are heightening tensions in Northern Ireland, putting at risk a 1998 peace deal that largely brought an end to three decades of conflict between Irish Catholic nationalist militants and pro-British Protestant “loyalist” paramilitaries.
The EU says tighter controls are necessary to protect its single market of 450 million people.
“We are not going to trigger Article 16 today, but Article 16 is very much on the table,” Britain’s negotiator David Frost told journalists.
Later on Friday, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Boris Johnson told reporters Britain would press on with negotiations to try to resolve the issues with the so-called Northern Ireland protocol that governs post-Brexit trade with the province.
“We obviously want to agree consensual solutions on the protocol and we need to resolve these issues urgently, because the disruption on the ground in Northern Ireland hasn’t gone away,” the spokesperson said.
As expectations grow that London might resort to that option, Frost said the best way of avoiding it was “if we can reach an agreement, an essential agreement… that provides a sustainable solution”.
He said there was a “significant” gap between the EU and the UK on the matter and that time was running out for his negotiations with Maros Sefcovic, a deputy head of the bloc’s executive European Commission.
A spokesperson for the Commission told a regular news briefing on Friday the bloc was “fully concentrated on finding solutions that provide predictability for people” in Ireland and Northern Ireland that share a history of sectarian violence.
Asked whether it was planning what to do should London trigger Article 16, the Commission – which negotiates with Britain on behalf of EU countries – said earlier this week it always prepares for eventualities.
Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge in London, Christian Levaus and Johnny Cotton, Jan Strupczewski in Brussels and Elizabeth Piper in Glasgow; Writing by Gabrela Baczynska; Editing by William Maclean and Jan Harvey
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
French President Emmanuel MacronEmmanuel Jean-Michel MacronOvernight Defense & National Security — Biden discusses Afghanistan, submarine deals in Europe The Hill’s 12:30 Report – Presented by Facebook – Biden doesn’t discuss abortion with Pope Francis Biden lauds ally France, calls handling of sub deal ‘clumsy’ MORE said that Britain’s resolution to a fishing disagreement between the two nations would be a test of the United Kingdom’s credibility.
The two European countries are embroiled in a dispute over French fishing boats and permits, The Associated Press reported. The dispute, tied to a trade agreement between Britain and the European Union, requires permits for EU nations to fish in the U.K.’s surrounding waters, according to Euronews.
While many permits have been given to French fishing boats, a number of French boats are still without permits — an issue that Britain says is related to paperwork that has not yet been provided to its government.
In retaliation, France has said that trucks and boats would undergo more rigorous checks and U.K. boats seeking to pass through the English Channel would be barred if permits are not given to the remaining fishing boats by Tuesday, the AP reported.
“Make no mistake, it is not just for the Europeans but all of their partners,” Macron told the Financial Times in an interview, according to the AP. “Because when you spend years negotiating a treaty and then a few months later you do the opposite of what was decided on the aspects that suit you the least, it is not a big sign of your credibility.”
“If there is a breach of the treaty or we think there is a breach of the treaty then we will do what is necessary to protect British interests,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told British news outlets, the AP noted.
President and chairman of the northern French ports of Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer Jean-Marc Puissesseau estimated in an interview with BBC radio that roughly 40 boats had yet to receive their permits.
This marks the latest dispute that the two countries have found themselves in; earlier this year, a deal between France and Australia was nixed after Australia, the U.K. and the United States announced that they would be helping Australia acquire nuclear submarines. In retaliation, the French ambassador to the U.S. was temporarily recalled.
On Friday, President BidenJoe BidenOvernight Energy & Environment — American Clean Power — Supreme Court to review power plant rule case Harris makes a final pitch for McAuliffe Overnight Health Care — Presented by Altria — Young children one step closer to vaccine MORE stressed that France is an ally and called the submarine deal between the two other nations “clumsy.”
