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Keir Stamer has reportedly offered the EU dynamic regulatory alignment of rules on fresh meat and dairy as well as oversight by the European Court of Justice. It is not clear what the UK will be given in exchange. Aligning with the EU on agrifoods would inhibit any future trade deal with the US and would make Britain a passive rule-taker with no say over future regulations.
Starmer keen to hand over responsibility for governing the UK to the EU
President Trump has threatened to walk away from ceasefire negotiations with Russia and Ukraine if progress is not made in the coming weeks. He is reportedly frustrated with the lack of any clear desire for a ceasefire from Russian officials. An Easter truce declared unilaterally by Russia failed to take effect over the weekend after Ukraine accused Russia of continuing to attack despite its promise.
President Macron has been invited to the UK for a state visit in May, as part of the government’s attempt at a ‘reset’ of EU-UK relations. The visit is expected to coincide with a security summit, where the UK is expected to sign a new defence and security pact with the EU. Negotiations have reportedly faltered on the unrelated issue of fishing rights, with French officials determined to extract concessions from the UK in exchange for joining the pact.
Macron eyes up British fish
The Trump administration has frozen $2.3 billion in federal funding to Harvard University after it refused to comply with demands which included, among other things, scrapping DEI programmes. Harvard officials may think this is an over-reach, but if educational institutions receive state funding they should expect some state intervention – why should they be allowed to promote ideological DEI programmes on the taxpayer’s dime?
Media
Briefings co-editor Robert Tombs on the history of tariff wars
Andrew Sentance on the Office for National Statistics
Blog
Northern Ireland richer than Ireland by Graham Gudgin
The hugely distorted national accounts of Ireland deceive people into thinking that the Republic of Ireland has higher living standards than the UK and especially Northern Ireland. When correctly measured the opposite is true. Living standards are higher in the UK than In Ireland and even Northern Ireland has higher living standards
Northern Ireland is ninth in the list of the UK’s 12 regions ranked by GDP per head and close to the seventh. It is below the UK average for living standards but by no means the poorest. Its living standards are boosted by generous levels of public services where spending per head is 10% above the UK average, and by low house prices. Northern Ireland’s economic model based on generous subsidies to a peripheral region is this more advantageous for its citizens than Ireland’s tax-haven model.
Key Points
This week, the Home Office informed French novelist Renaud Camus that he would not be able to come to the UK, because his presence would not be “conducive to the public good”. While his views on immigration are radical and conspiratorial, it seems far-fetched that a writer with a life-long commitment to non-violence could pose a threat to public safety. There are two explanations for the Home Office’s decision: either the UK has abandoned its tradition of liberal open-mindedness or it can now be held hostage by illiberal agitators.
The 78-year old Camus was set to speak at a conference organised by the Homeland Party, a fledgling hard-right party founded just over a year ago with negligible support and fewer than 1000 members. He was then supposed to speak at the Oxford Union (where it is hard to believe he would have been given a particularly warm welcome). His views are radical, but they are not particularly novel. It is very hard to imagine that an elderly French novelist speaking to (at most) a few hundred people is anything to worry about.
It may be that the Home Office has simply decided that people with views like his should be barred from entry simply because they hold them. This would be a great shame. England has a long tradition of tolerance when it comes to controversial political writers from abroad. Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky all came to London when their views made it too dangerous for them to stay on the continent. It would display a sad lack of self-confidence if a country which could once tolerate resident active revolutionaries now has to ban non-violent novelists from visiting.
But it may not be a reaction from the far-right which the Home Office fears. Left-wing activists and agitators are much more trigger-happy when it comes to public disruption, and they love to disrupt events which they find objectionable, under the guise of a ‘counterprotest’. The Home Office may have reasonable fears that the presence of Camus in Oxford – like the presence of Jewish people near a pro-Gaza march – creates too big a risk of a riot.
Had the Home Office not intervened, Camus’ visit to the UK would most likely have been a non-event. Instead, he has been made a martyr for free-speech and his views are probably far better known now than they would have been otherwise. If it is the proliferation of his anti-immigration ideas that the Home Office thinks is not “conducive to the public good”, they would do better by sticking to the UK’s long tradition of tolerance and open-mindedness.
