UK food, fuel & medicine short under ‘no deal’ Brexit
Bridge attack victims remembered
LONDON, June 3, (Agencies): British civil servants have warned of shortages of food, fuel and medicines within weeks if the UK leaves the European Union next year without a trade deal, a newspaper reported Sunday.
The Sunday Times said government officials have modeled three potential scenarios for a “no deal” Brexit: mild, severe and “Armageddon.”
It said under the “severe” scenario, the English Channel ferry port of Dover would “collapse on day one” and supermarkets and hospitals would soon run short of supplies.
Britain wants to strike a deal on future trade relations with the EU before it officially leaves the bloc on March 29, 2019, but officials are also drawing up plans for negotiations ending without an agreement.
The UK’s Department for Exiting the European Union rejected the downbeat scenario, saying it was drawing up nodeal plans but was confident “none of this would come to pass.”
Britain and the EU are aiming to strike an overall Brexit agreement by October, so parliaments in other EU nations have time to ratify it before Britain leaves the bloc.
But British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government is split between ministers who favor a cleanbreak “hard Brexit,” that would leave Britain freer to strike new trade deals around the world, and those who want to keep the country closely aligned to the EU, Britain’s biggest trading partner.
EU leaders are frustrated with what they see as a lack of firm proposals from the UK over how to resolve major issues around customs arrangements and the status of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. That will be the UK’s only land border with the EU after Britain leaves the bloc. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Simon
Coveney said Saturday that the UK must produce “written proposals” for the border within two weeks, ahead of a June 28-29 EU summit.
British Home Secretary Sajid Javid said Sunday that the British government would have “a good set of proposals” to submit to the bloc at its June meeting.
Britain will have a good set of proposals on Brexit policy ready for a meeting of European Union leaders this month, Javid said on Sunday, adding that he expected a positive response from Brussels.
He rejected a newspaper report saying failure to reach an exit deal with the EU would cause immediate shortages of medicine, fuel and food.
Prime Minister Theresa May is struggling to find a proposal on post-Brexit customs arrangements — the biggest stumbling block so far in exit talks — to take into negotiations with Brussels as the clock ticks down to Britain’s scheduled exit in March 2019.
Ireland said on Saturday that May had two weeks to put forward proposals, but her cabinet is divided and EU officials have poured scorn on draft options under discussion in London.
Javid said discussions between ministers on agreeing a position were making good progress ahead of the June 28-29 summit.
“I am absolutely confident as we get to the June council meeting that the prime minister will have a good set of proposals, and our colleagues in Europe will respond positively to them,” Javid told the BBC.
Meanwhile, prominent eurosceptic Michael Gove should replace British Prime Minister Theresa May because she is incapable of delivering Brexit, a donor to her party was quoted as saying in an early edition of the Observer newspaper seen on Saturday.
May became prime minister in July 2016 after Britain voted to leave the European Union, and promised to bring about Britain’s departure from the European Union.
But she then lost her majority in parliament when she called an early election last year, and her cabinet remains divided on key issues about Britain’s future relationship with the bloc, with less than a year until Britain is due to leave it.
Crispin Odey, a hedge fund manager who backed the Leave campaign and is a donor to May’s Conservatives, told the Observer that May, who voted Remain, couldn’t be trusted to see Brexit through, and that environment minister Gove had the skills to be Prime Minister.
“What is true is that you have a whole lot of people who didn’t want this to happen who are in charge of it happening ... I would go to Gove,” he told the newspaper, adding May wasn’t suited to politics.
“She can’t make a decision. So there is no leadership.”
Odey was a prominent supporter of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, signing a letter alongside hedge fund manager Paul Marshall backing the main Brexit campaign group.
Islamist threat to stay:
The threat posed by Islamist militants to Britain is expected to remain high for the next two years and could even rise, the interior ministry said on Sunday, on the first anniversary of an attack that killed eight people in central London.
The current threat level to Britain is assessed as severe, meaning an attack is highly likely. The government said it had foiled 25 Islamist militant plots since June 2013 — 12 of those since March 2017 — and was currently handling over 500 live operations.
Britain will publish a revised counter-terrorism strategy on Monday designed to cope with what it said was a shift in the threats the country faces as militants of all ideologies adopt new tactics.
UK remembers attack victims:
Britain’s resolve to “stand firm” against terrorism is stronger than ever, Prime Minister Theresa May said Sunday, a year since a deadly vehicle-and-knife attack on London Bridge.
Eight people were killed and almost 50 injured when three Islamic State group-inspired attackers ran down pedestrians on the bridge, then stabbed people at bars and restaurants in nearby Borough Market on a warm spring evening. The three attackers were shot dead by police within minutes.
The rampage came two weeks after a bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester Arena that killed 22 people.