May’s food

Brexit avoids a bitter taste... for now

CHEMICALS & PLASTICS Employees: 277,000 Exports: £27billion Imports: £28billion What it wants after Brexit: Stable regulatory environment, membership of EU research programmes.

This is the EU trade deal which will stop shoppers facing average price hikes of 23 per cent on imported food.

Everything from European delicacies such as cheese and chocolate to fruit and veg would go up.

The price of continental chocolate would rise by nearly a third, cheese by 36 per cent and coffee five per cent if EU tariffs bite.

And that’s what will happen if Phase Two of the Brexit talks fail.

If you fancy a 620ml bottle of £2.65 Italian Peroni beer from Tesco, then you would pay an extra 53p for it – more if you buy it in a pub. On top of that, you could expect to pay 10 per cent more for cars and clothes.

Theresa May will move on to crucial trade talks this week with EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, pictured right, after clearing the logjam over the status of the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

Frantic

On Monday she returned to Britain from Brussels with her tail between her legs after DUP leader Arlene Foster scuppered an earlier deal at the 11th hour.

Mrs May faced ruin. There was talk of her being gone by Christmas and leadership rivals Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and David Davis licked their lips in anticipation. But a round of frantic telephone diplomacy on Thursday night did the trick – as karaoke from the No10 staff Christmas party thundered above her head.

The EU blinked on the Irish border er and caved in to what Mrs May had always demanded, that its status should be sorted out alongside trade talks.

In a leaked document seen by the Sunday People, the PM told her MPs: “The best way to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland is to negotiate the right trading relationship between the UK and the EU.”

It was an important concession. Failure to keep it open will affect not only the 14,500 workers who cross it each day but businesses o operating on both sides of it. A quarter of Northern Ireland’s milk is processed in factories located in the south and both countries share energy supplies.

Theresa’s May triumphant return to Britain has echoes of PM Neville Chamberlain’s homecoming on in 1938 waving the Munich Agreement signed by Hitler.

Chamberlain also hoped the deal was a “prelude to larger

setllement in which all Europe may find peace.” The Second World War began the following year.

David Davis infuriated MPs last week when he could not produce the 57 impact assessments he had promised his department was working on. Not only had the analysis not gone into the “excruciating detail” he had previously claimed but it does not exist at all.

The Brexit Secretary further angered MPs on the Commons Brexit Committee by telling them that if he had he done