Brexit ‘tougher than you think’
The tweed will stay EURO CHIEF’S BROADSIDE
fight broke out between local residents and anti-Ukip protesters fairer deal. He called for the creation of an English Parliament, to match the parliaments and assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The House of Commons at Westminster should become a “Union chamber” dealing with issues such as defence and foreign policy, he said.
“If the Union’s going to survive into the middle of this century then we’re going to have to have a fully federal UK.”
He added: “When devolution happened, Scotland got its own Parliament, Wales had its own assembly and Northern Ireland got [the assembly at] Stormont, but the English never truly got anything.”
He called for “an English parliament, a Scottish Parliament, a Welsh and a Northern Ireland assembly, and we have a Union chamber as well which deals with issues such as defence and foreign policy.”
UKIP would scrap HS2, the high speed rail line due to link London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, and spend the money on local transport schemes instead, said Mr Nuttall.
He predicted HS2 would suck jobs out of other cities and into London.
He stood unsuccessfully in the Stoke Central by-election in February, but his campaign ran into difficulties when it emerged claims had appeared on his website – including that he lost close friends in the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 – which were untrue.
Mr Nuttall said he had concluded he could not quit as party leader following the defeat because of the damage it would inflict on UKIP.
Referring to the intense criticism he received in the campaign, he said: “It was difficult. It was pretty hard to take.
“Not checking the website was my own fault. But that’s all it was, and I think a lot of it got blown out of all proportion. And the whole focus of the country’s political media fell on my shoulders for over two weeks.
“But in a way it made me stronger really. Because I knew if it broke me and I thought ‘okay I’ve had enough, I’m just going to walk away from this, I don’t need this’, then actually Ukip was in serious trouble.
“So I wouldn’t let it break Ukip. I wouldn’t let it break me. And I knew I had a job to do afterwards, which was to restructure and rebuild the party and get it ready for this post-Brexit era.” Reporter BRITAIN is underestimating the “technical difficulties” of Brexit and it will take a “huge amount of time” to reach agreement on apparently single issues, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has said.
He highlighted the question of the rights of European Union nationals in the UK and British expats in Europe, warning that it is in fact “a cortege of 25 different questions”.
Mr Juncker challenged Theresa May to sign a ready-made text on affected citizens’ status, drafted by the Commission and its chief negotiator Michel Barnier, but admitted he did not think she would.
It came after leaders of the other 27 EU countries agreed their joint negotiating position ahead of Brexit talks to begin after the UK’s June 8 General Election, and after Mr Juncker and Mr Barnier met the Prime Minister in Downing Street earlier this week.
Addressing a press conference at the European Council summit in Brussels, Mr Juncker said: “I have the impression sometimes that our British friends, not all of them, do underestimate the technical difficulties we have to face.
“A single and not simple question of citizens’ rights is in fact a cortege of 25 different questions which have to be solved.
“If we want to be precise and to deliver guarantees to citizens, this will take a huge amount of time, although we have already prepared a text which could be adopted immediately if our British friends would be ready to sign it like that, that will probably not happen.”
With much of the ground work having been done ahead of the summit, leaders took less than an hour to endorse the joint approach.
The guidelines are essentially unchanged from the draft proposals published by European Council president Donald Tusk last month.
Central to that is the “phased” approach, with EU leaders insisting the shape of a future trading relationship can only be considered when progress is made on the terms of the UK’s departure.
Mr Tusk said it was vital for the 27 to remain united.
“It is only then that we will be able to conclude the negotiations which means that our unity is also in the UK’s interest,” he said.