Ten years ago, ‘Project Fear’ was at the heart of the ‘Remain’ campaign’s inept efforts to persuade Britons not to vote to leave the EU.
Voting for Brexit, according to David Cameron’s government Doomsday forecasts, would cost every household £4,300 (€5,000) per year from 2030, lead to an immediate recession and mean lower house prices.
It was a huge mistake. That all the pro-EU camp could say about being members of the club was that it would be very expensive to leave was a jarring admission of failure. And the promised economic apocalypse of instant recession and house price warnings didn’t happen. Most people simply didn’t believe the figures or that the politicians behind them were being honest about them. The result, as we know, is that more than 17m Brits gave the ‘establishment’ – or what they perceived it to be – a big kick up the arse.
Fast forward to 2026 and newly-minted UK prime minister Andy Burnham has put all options for UK-EU relations – including rejoining – back on the table.
The UK Treasury, which drew up the prophecies of doom, is now expected to publish a study analysing the potential economic benefits of Britain moving closer to the EU ahead of November’s EU-UK summit.
Personally, I think Brexit and the piecemeal trade and cooperation agreement that governs EU-UK trade has resulted in a small but significant economic hit.
The hope is that the treasury won’t promise milk, honey and gold-paved streets if the UK rejoins the EU or its single market.
If over-promising increases the speed at which voters get disappointed with governments, the Brexit vote is proof that trying to frighten people is the fastest way to lose an election.
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A diverse array of MEPs on Tuesday (20 October) expressed their enthusiasm for the UK ‘correcting the mistake’ of Brexit by rejoining the European Union 10 years after its people narrowly voted to leave.
“Trump, Xi and Putin might form a troika of iliberalism standing in defiance of the achievements of liberal democracy”, warned Barry Andrews, an Irish MEP for Renew, saying that the EU should not treat the United Kingdom “like any other third country”.
His party ally Sandro Gozi, an Italian MEP, added: “Every option must be on the table, from a special partnership to full EU membership.”
The debate on EU-UK relations in the Strasbourg parliament came a month ahead of a highly-anticipated EU-UK summit in Brussels on 20 November.
Although the UK rejoining the bloc is still a distant prospect, it is back on the agenda because of new prime minister Andy Burnham.
Brexit had “done more harm than good”, Burnham told delegates at the Labour party conference in late September, adding that “we will not give Britain the clear path we need into the rest of the century until we decide on a long-term relationship with what is still our largest market.”
Britain could “go all the way” back into the EU, added Burnham.
European parliament president Robert Metsola has given an open invitation for Burnham to address MEPs, her office told EUobserver, in another sign of goodwill.
The UK Treasury, meanwhile, is expected to publish a study in the coming days detailing the scale of the hit to the UK economy from leaving the bloc.
Burnham’s predecessor Keir Starmer, who resigned in July primarily because of dismal opinion poll ratings, had promised a ‘reset’ of EU-UK relations when his government took power in July 2024. But apart from rhetoric, little has changed, though the UK now has access to the Erasmus+ student exchange programme.
Brexit is a “mistake that can be corrected by all of us” and admitting it is “a sign of strength”, said German Green MEP Terry Reintke.
New deals agreed should be “the floor and not the ceiling” of bilateral relations, said David McAllister, a German MEP for the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP).
On the right, Polish MEP for the European Conservatives and Reformists Jadwiga Wiśniewska also welcomed new talks with the UK, calling for them to be based on “concrete elements” like agriculture deals, defence and Erasmus+.
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Alex Tait on a proposed amendment to the representation of the people bill, and Dr Joseph Mullen on Russian interference in the Brexit referendum
Andy Burnham’s comments about Russian interference in Brexit (Report, 11 October) and the warning by the MI5 chief, Ken McCallum, against exaggerating its impact (Report, 13 October) risk overlooking another serious threat to electoral integrity: disinformation from our own political parties and campaigners.
Foreign interference deserves scrutiny, but misleading factual claims in electoral advertising are unregulated, unlike in commercial advertising. We have four sets of rules to ensure an advert for a packet of sausages is accurate, but none for the most important advertising of all – ads that influence how we vote.
We saw last time what reckless reliance on close polling led to. The omertà on rejoining has now been broken, but it would be folly to move too soon
When I hear that word again, a shudder runs down my spine. I want to groan, hold my head in my hands and wail. The horror! No, never again, not another referendum. But the idea is back in play as Andy Burnham looks for ways to reverse a decade of economic stagnation.
As the prime minister dared to unlock the door to a Brussels reunion, you could hear Ode to Joy burst out from all remainers. But the prospect of a re-run of the most self-destructive vote in our history is dismaying.
Andy Burnham’s government is rolling out a new “Centre for Information Defence”. But the outside actors most aggressively undermining what little remains of British democracy are nowhere in its sights
Russia “interfered” in the 2016 Brexit vote by running some “anti-EU” articles on its RT channel and promoting a few internet trolls. Even MI5 has to admit that this activity had no tangible impact on the referendum campaign.
No matter. British prime minister Andy Burnham has once again revived the incendiary claim that Russian disinformation is an especial threat to British democracy. At the United Nations a few weeks ago he announced plans for a National Centre for Information Defence “to detect, attribute and disrupt these kinds of hostile state information attacks”.
For the new British prime minister, as for his predecessors, this is all about Moscow and the UK’s favourite bogeyman, Vladimir Putin. At the UN, Burnham promised British expertise to other European nations to protect them from Kremlin disinformation.
Meanwhile, evidence continues to mount that another foreign actor is meddling even more aggressively in British politics – and neither Burnham nor MI5 have a word to say about it.
Any evidence of Russia disinformation-peddling in the UK pales in comparison to Israeli influence operations – and that’s just the ones we know about. The head of MI5, Ken McCallum, noted that Russian disinformation was neither sophisticated nor successful. The same cannot be said for Israel’s handiwork.
Israel has been using “hasbara” trolls on social media platforms to manipulate public debates in Britain for years – the thrust of the accusation against Russia. But in Israel’s case, it goes much further than that.
This year the Israeli state massively increased its public diplomacy budget to $730 million to expand its influence operations. That includes flying even more politicians, clergy, academics and influencers to bombard them with pro-Israel propaganda they are then likely to spread back home. According to foreign minister Gideon Saar, Israeli advocacy should be treated “like investing in jets, bombs, and missile interceptors”.
There was already plenty of evidence through the late 2010s, as I reported at the time, that Israel was helping to organise, stoke and amplify a campaign to smear its arch-critic, Jeremy Corbyn, as an antisemite, in order to prevent him from reaching No 10 Downing Street.
Not least, Israel did so by advancing a new, bogus definition of Jew hatred through the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Usefully, for Israel, that definition largely ignores hatred of Jews to focus instead on criticism of Israel.
That was the most blatant meddling possible in what remains of Britain’s democratic processes. UK politicians and media not only failed to oppose it, but actively sought to amplify the smears.
Civil war
This week the fanatically pro-Israel US lobby group the Anti-Defamation League revealed that it had been working with leading AI firms, which are increasingly being integrated into social media platforms, to suppress what it calls “antisemitism” – or what the rest of us would refer to as criticism of Israel.
Chris Menahan 🇺🇸@infolibnews
🚨 ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt reveals in Israel that he’s been working with all the top AI Frontier Labs to push them to suppress “anti-Semitism.” “We’ve been working with the Frontier Labs—OpenAI, Anthropic, Alphabet, the company that runs Gemini, Google, Meta, who runs Muse, …
10:32 PM · Oct 13, 2026 · 447 ТЫС. Views
CEO Jonathan Greenblatt observed: “We’ve had excellent collaboration with Silicon Valley.” The platforms, he said, would tackle content the ADL doesn’t like “right in the source code” – that is, before users can see it.
That is likely not only to remove criticism of Israeli atrocities and criticism of western governments, such as the UK’s, for colluding in Israel’s genocide but turn social media into a playground for bots and Israel apologists, giving them free reign to spread their propaganda without challenge.
We also know, thanks to the work of the French security services – maybe MI5 was too busy chasing Russian bots to notice – that an Israeli cyber agency called Blackcore targeted the SNP in May’s Scottish elections, as well as meddling in elections in France and New York.
Israeli tech firms, especially those dealing in spyware, intelligence and influence operations, are typically closely aligned with the Israeli state and its military. Most of the founders of tech start-ups are alumnae of the Israeli army’s 8200 intelligence unit.
Alongside the SNP, New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and a leftwing French party headed by Jean-Luc Melenchon were targeted. Why? Because, unlike their political rivals, all had dared to speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
With echoes of what happened to Corbyn, Blackcore’s campaigns were designed to smear candidates. In the case of the French elections, fake accounts were created to accuse one candidate of rape and another of paedophilia.
A new documentary, NAZA, shows how Israel has paved the way in using AI in pioneering new ways to kill on a mass scale in Gaza. It selected banks of targets for assassination, often by murdering those “suspects” when they are in family compounds, slaughtering large numbers of bystanders in the process.
It is therefore hardly surprising that tech firms in Israel have been caught using AI in similarly innovative and indiscriminate ways online, to target western publics with disinformation.
In the summer it emerged that the Israeli government had created a website for a fake “scholarly” think-tank. In a short period of time, it produced prodigious quantities of AI-generated content on Israel, optimised for common search terms, that promoted Israeli talking points and constantly suggested criticism of Israel risked fuelling antisemitism.
It was set up not only to influence internet chatbots into echoing its pro-Israel disinformation but also to integrate its content into what experts call the “underlying training data”: that is, the unquestioned assumptions on which chatbots operate.
Back in May 2024 Meta identified fake Israel-based accounts, “posing as Jewish students, African Americans and other concerned citizens”, peddling pro-Israel content in the US and Canada in support of Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
Two months ago, Meta again found the same kind of dirty tricks emanating from Israel, this time targeting Britain, France and Australia among other countries. The AI-generated accounts posed “as local, civically-engaged brands, news sources, religious organizations, and political activists”.
Notably in the case of the UK and France, the influence campaigns were designed to stoke “anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim” sentiment. Israel has been critically involved in advancing Islamophobic content, fuelling fears of a supposed “Muslim takeover” of Europe to mobilise support for Israel as a bulwark in the Middle East against Islam, and thereby encourage sympathy for its genocidal attacks on Gaza.
As a consequence, the political landscape in Britain has been disfigured. Support for the far-right has been artificially inflated, polarising British society. The path is being paved towards deeper authoritarianism and the possibility of civil war.
Death knell
None of these dire outcomes, the death knell for what little remains of British democracy, is attracting even the mildest interest from the Burnham government or MI5. Instead, they are chasing what so far appears to have been far more marginal Russian output.
But it isn’t just the influence of Israel we should be worried about. The problem runs much deeper, with a host of other noxious outside actors trying to warp and disfigure British politics in ways that closely accord with Israel’s malign intent. Burnham’s Centre for Information Defence will do precisely nothing to tackle any of it.
Here are two other powerful external actors aligned with Israel in distorting British politics.
The billionaire class, a transnational elite that has no loyalty to Britain, interfere in our politics by making our political parties dependent on their donations. They use their money to buy influence with the main parties – which is why for decades it has made little difference whether we vote for the Conservatives or Labour. We get austerity either way, while the billionaires get permission for their forever wars, directing public wealth away from public services into the arms industries and resource grabs.
Jeremy Corbyn tried to break with this model by funding Labour with small donations from ordinary people instead of the billionaires. As a result, he was destroyed by a confected campaign run by the billionaires, in association with Israel and its trolls, to smear him as an antisemite.
Sir Keir Starmer, Corbyn’s successor, went right back to begging for money from Big Business, got the billionaires behind him, and rolled on with the austerity programme.
Is Nigel Farage’s Reform different? Of course, not. Even before reaching power, he’s dependent on crypto-billionaires living in Thailand and Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, the sometime US trillionaire Elon Musk is busy rallying Britain’s new blackshirts, led by serial fraudster Tommy Robinson, to chase after a few “illegal” migrants rather than identifying the real criminals tearing apart Britain: the super-rich like Musk.
The billionaires both wield and conceal their influence through their ownership of the corporate media. They use the media to aggressively promote their own causes – political and economic policies ensuring their further enrichment – by normalising the extreme ideology of neoliberal capitalism, with its promotion of endless resource extraction through forever wars and the fuelling of needless consumption.
The consequence is the destruction of the conditions for human life on the planet. The billionaires hope they can ride out the catastrophe in their bunkers, or cryogenically freeze their bodies until a point in the future when they can be uploaded to the cloud.
One of the media’s most important jobs is to use smear campaigns to destroy anyone, such as Corbyn and now Zack Polanski, who threatens the billionaires’ privileged position by offering a mildly socialist programme of wealth redistribution.
Vassal state
If the UK media wasn’t entirely captured by the billionaire class – serving as its PR division – then we might know more about the role of the United States in meddling in our politics.
The recent claims of a supposed “terrorist plot” outside RAF Fairford – really a US airforce base pretending to be a British base and one from which the US has waged an illegal war of aggression against Iran – should have reminded us that the Pentagon is largely in charge of UK foreign policy.
The US has some 15 major military bases on British soil, plus half a dozen smaller intelligence sites. As the rightwing US podcaster Tucker Carlson recently observed, the fact that Britain has foreign troops crawling all over it makes us little more than an occupied “vassal state”.
The US recently announced a $4 billion upgrade of its UK bases, including establishing storage sites for its nuclear arsenal. The plan caused barely a ripple of interest among British politicians or the media .
Although our political and media class pretend the UK is an equal partner in a western defence alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the reality is very different. Nato takes its orders from the US, doing Washington’s bidding. That’s why Nato has been pivoting towards America’s biggest economic rival, China, which is, of course, nowhere near the North Atlantic.
When the US snaps its fingers, Britain stands to attention and hikes its spending on the war industries. Along with European governments, the UK is willing to drain its national coffers and scythe through public spending with yet more austerity cuts to support Washington’s military agenda for “full-spectrum global dominance”.
Hidden influence
Much of the US influence on British politics is carefully concealed from view, operating behind closed doors.
In the early 2010s, the US was desperately seeking a pretext to extradite Julian Assange from the UK and lock him up in a super-max jail, hiding him out of sight after his organisation Wikileaks revealed US and British war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was during this period that Starmer, as the director of public prosecutions, repeatedly jetted off to Washington for secret meetings with US officials.
We will never know what was discussed. Freedom of information requests discovered that his own officials destroyed all records of those meetings.
Once he became a politician, Starmer was recruited to the shadowy Trilateral Commission, originally founded in the 1970s by officials in Jimmy Carter’s administration to deal with the supposed problem of “an excess of democracy” in the US. The commission’s view was that voters were becoming dangerously less passive, at that time over the Vietnam war, and ways needed to be found to return them to docility.
A similar British-American Project cements ties between rising stars in British politics, business and journalism and Washington elites. The power imbalance between the two sides ensures up-and-coming British leaders are readily groomed into an Atlanticist worldview in which the UK is very much the junior partner.
There are a plethora of other “respected’ think-tanks and organisations whose chief role is to embed US policy ideas, especially those relating to foreign policy, in the thinking of British elites. They include the Bilderberg Group, Chatham House, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council, The British-American Parliamentary Group, and BritishAmerican Business.
The US uses its financial muscle through these organisations and many others to manufacture consent for its extreme neoliberal and neoconservative ideologies. The latest example are massive grants to organisations willing to export Trump’s MAGA ideology to the UK, masquerading as a “public education” initiative.
There is plenty of evidence to show that it was pressure from the Trump administration that led to the unprecedented decision by Starmer’s government to proscribe a civil disobedience group, Palestine Action, for the first time in Britain’s history as a terrorist organisation.
Palestine Action had incensed Israel by targeting its weapons factories on UK soil, highlighting another aspect of British collusion in the Gaza genocide, and had infuriated Trump personally by spraying one of his golf courses in Scotland with the words “Gaza is not 4 sale”.
In truth, the ways that the US meddles directly in British politics are so numerous it is virtually impossible to quantify them. Britain is little more than a colony of the US, receiving diktats on important foreign policy issues – especially regarding US and Israeli interests – that the UK is invariably too frightened to oppose.
Burnham is already rolling over to reverse the UK’s decision to honour a ruling from the International Court of Justice and other international tribunals that Britain has no claim to sovereignty over the Chagos Islands and must return them to Mauritius. The UK has faced a temper tantrum from Trump on the matter because the US operates an illegal military base on one of the islands.
Disobedience by the UK is the exception, not the rule. Which makes Burnham’s exclusive focus on Russian influence almost laughably beside the point. This furious finger-pointing at the Kremlin is designed with one purpose in mind only: to distract the British public from where the real external meddling in our politics is coming from.
‘Sovereignty without the ability to act on it is not autonomy,’ paper by Institute for Public Policy Research says
Britain cannot deal effectively with geopolitical crises such as Russian aggression and political turmoil in the US without rejoining the EU, according to an influential thinktank.
The Institute for Public Policy Research has become the latest organisation close to the Labour party to call for the UK to re-enter the bloc, after Andy Burnham said he wanted to examine all possible options.
UK home secretary’s meeting comes after PM said he wanted to rejoin European law enforcement databases
The UK home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, will meet the EU’s home affairs commissioner on Monday for further talks just days after Andy Burnham said he wanted to rejoin European law enforcement databases from which the UK has been locked out of since Brexit.
According to the European Commission, they will discuss “migration, border management, law enforcement cooperation and counter-terrorism”, with the latest Frontex data published on Monday showing a 43% decline in small boats crossing the Channel.
UK home secretary’s meeting comes after PM said he wanted to rejoin European law enforcement databases
The UK home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, will meet the EU’s home affairs commissioner on Monday for further talks just days after Andy Burnham said he wanted to rejoin European law enforcement databases from which the UK has been locked out of since Brexit.
According to the European Commission, they will discuss “migration, border management, law enforcement cooperation and counter-terrorism”, with the latest Frontex data published on Monday showing a 43% decline in small boats crossing the Channel.
For more than three decades, Michael Gove has been a leading figure in British Conservatism. As a journalist, government minister and now editor of the Tory bible the Spectator, he has helped shape the right even as it has moved further rightwards. In the latest episode of Radical Thinking, Gove joins Aditya Chakrabortty to discuss the future of the right, his record on Brexit and austerity, and the Spectator’s position on Islam
To read the fruits of Michael Gove’s dalliance with the Marxism Todaygang, look up his essay in a 1998 collection called The Moderniser’s Dilemma: Radical Politics in the Age of Blair
For a slalom ride through Michael Gove’s years in power, read The Demented Dalek by the historian Richard J Evans in the London Review of Books
To learn more on what’s become of the British right, there’s a Guardian column by Aditya
Phil also writes a very good blog on British politics, which keeps a close eye on how each party is trying to marshall a coalition of voters. Here he is on Kemi Badenoch
Geoffrey Wheatcroft does an entertaining short narrative in Bloody Panico!:
For more on the economics of the Cameron years, this paper is acute on how the Tories failed to move the UK away from being a country of renters towards a country of makers. Two of its authors will join us for a podcast later in the series.
And if you want to read how Brexit may have cost the UK 8% of GDP, there’s this paper based on data from the Bank of England
Finally, on the Spectator, read Nesrine Malik’s recent Guardian column
For more than three decades, Michael Gove has been a leading figure in British Conservatism. As a journalist, government minister and now editor of the Tory bible the Spectator, he has helped shape the right even as it has moved further rightwards. In the latest episode of Radical Thinking, Gove joins Aditya Chakrabortty to discuss the future of the right, his record on Brexit and austerity, and the Spectator’s position on Islam
To read the fruits of Michael Gove’s dalliance with the Marxism Todaygang, look up his essay in a 1998 collection called The Moderniser’s Dilemma: Radical Politics in the Age of Blair
For a slalom ride through Michael Gove’s years in power, read The Demented Dalek by the historian Richard J Evans in the London Review of Books
To learn more on what’s become of the British right, there’s a Guardian column by Aditya
Phil also writes a very good blog on British politics, which keeps a close eye on how each party is trying to marshall a coalition of voters. Here he is on Kemi Badenoch
Geoffrey Wheatcroft does an entertaining short narrative in Bloody Panico!:
For more on the economics of the Cameron years, this paper is acute on how the Tories failed to move the UK away from being a country of renters towards a country of makers. Two of its authors will join us for a podcast later in the series.
And if you want to read how Brexit may have cost the UK 8% of GDP, there’s this paper based on data from the Bank of England
Finally, on the Spectator, read Nesrine Malik’s recent Guardian column
Mark Smith, who has severe health issues, says he was told three times he needed to do nothing in order to remain after Brexit
A seriously ill British man living in Sweden has been forced into hiding amid fears he will be deported as a result of what he says is a government Brexit residency error.
Mark Smith, 60, who has had heart attacks, strokes, severe headaches and chronically high blood pressure that has been difficult to treat, was told on the phone he should leave Sweden by 17 October as he was an “alien” without permission to stay.
The UK government has returned to an issue musicians have been discussing since Brexit: how to make working in Europe easier again.
Its new music strategy, Turn It Up: Our Plan for Music, refers to the first high-level meeting on culture between the UK and the European Commission, held back in March, and promises continued work to reduce the barriers faced by British artists touring the EU.
The timing is significant. The UK is preparing to rejoin Erasmus+ in 2027, while London and Brussels are pursuing a broader reset of post-Brexit relations.
Music offers an interesting test of that reset. The UK has left the European Union, but its musicians have not become any less European.
British performers still tour the continent, while European musicians continue to work in British orchestras. The musical ecosystem survived Brexit. Navigating it became considerably more difficult.
A UK government study estimates that additional barriers to EU touring between 2022 and 2024 cost Britain £208m in lost economic output and the equivalent of 2,490 full-time jobs.
A Musicians’ Union survey found that, among musicians who had previously worked in the EU, 75 percent reported fewer bookings and 72 percent lower EU income.
More than half said EU touring was no longer financially viable.
But music reveals something more interesting than another item on the list of Brexit consequences. Brexit drew a political border through a professional community that had operated internationally for centuries.
Musicians were ‘European’ before EU
European musical mobility did not begin with freedom of movement. In the early 19th century, theatre companies crossed linguistic and political borders. Imperial Russia accommodated French and German theatrical companies alongside Russian performers, while Italian opera was embedded in its musical life.
Individual musicians were equally mobile. John Field, the Irish pianist and composer at the centre of my own research, trained in London before spending most of his adult career in the Russian Empire. The German pianist Adolf Henselt settled there and became deeply involved in Russian musical education.
These were not exceptions: musical life itself was international. The EU did not invent that circulation. European integration merely made it administratively easier.
Brexit did not make British musicians unwelcome in Europe, or European musicians unwelcome in Britain. It changed the cost of maintaining those relationships.
For an international star with professional support, another permit can be an inconvenience. For a young ensemble deciding whether four European concerts are financially viable, it can determine whether the tour happens at all.
The border appears before the first tour
The consequences begin before professional life. A conservatoire is not simply somewhere a musician obtains a qualification. It is where professional relationships form. A student may meet a future ensemble partner, while an exchange can produce an opportunity years later.
The post-Brexit figures are striking. The number of new EU students entering UK higher education fell from 66,685 in 2020–21 to 28,375 in 2023–24 — a decline of around 57 percent, according to figures based on HESA data.
Britain’s Turing Scheme supported outward mobility, but did not reproduce Erasmus+’s reciprocal structure.
The UK’s return to Erasmus+ in 2027 therefore matters beyond universities. In music, today’s exchange student can become tomorrow’s professional collaborator.
Meanwhile, Brussels is actively spending money to encourage cultural mobility. Creative Europe has a €2.44bn budget for 2021–27. Its Pan-European Cultural Entities programme specifically supports orchestras working across borders to develop young musicians: around €11m was allocated to five projects in 2024, expected to involve more than 1,000 young musicians from at least 20 participating countries. The policy assumption is revealing: movement itself creates value.
Put musicians into the reset
At the 2025 UK-EU summit, London and Brussels explicitly recognised “the value of travel and cultural and artistic exchanges, including the activities of touring artists.”
The new high-level cultural dialogue provides a forum to turn that promise into policy. Cultural mobility should become a permanent part of the UK-EU reset.
London and Brussels should use the dialogue to identify touring requirements that can realistically be simplified and work with member states towards greater consistency for short-term cultural engagements.
Emerging artists should also be explicitly considered in the proposed Youth Experience Scheme. The commission’s original proposal envisaged a time-limited route for people aged 18 to 30 to live on the other side of the English Channel. Paid cultural work should be clearly accommodated in whatever agreement emerges.
A 24-year-old violinist should not discover that a programme intended to restore opportunities for young Europeans works perfectly until somebody pays her to perform.
None of this means recreating freedom of movement through the orchestra pit. Britain chose to leave the EU and cannot expect every privilege of membership.
The argument is more practical. British and European cultural industries remain intertwined, and unnecessary friction is most expensive for those least able to absorb it. Major institutions employ administrators. International stars have managers. A young quartet may have four instruments and a group chat.
Two centuries ago, Field travelled from Ireland through London and built a career in Russia. Henselt left Germany and became part of Russian musical education. They did so long before Eurostar, Erasmus+ or Creative Europe.
Two hundred years later, crossing the continent is faster. Building a European career need not become harder. The UK has left the EU. Its musicians have not left European musical life.
As London and Brussels shape their new relationship, cultural mobility should be treated as part of its infrastructure. Musicians will continue to cross the Channel. The question is how costly we choose to make it.
For more than three decades, Michael Gove has been a leading figure in British Conservatism. As a journalist, government minister and now editor of the Tory bible, the Spectator, he has helped shape the right even as it has moved further rightwards. In the latest episode of Radical Thinking, Gove joins Aditya Chakrabortty to discuss the future of the right, his record on Brexit and austerity, and the Spectator’s position on Islam
To read the fruits of Michael Gove’s dalliance with the Marxism Today gang, look up his essay in a 1998 collection called The Moderniser’s Dilemma: Radical Politics in the Age of Blair
For slalom ride through Michael Gove’s years in power, read The Demented Dalek by the historian Richard J Evans in the London Review of Books
To learn more on what’s become of the British right, there’s a column by me for the Guardian
Phil also writes a very good blog on British politics, which keeps a close eye on how each party is trying to marshall a coalition of voters. Here he is on Kemi Badenoch
Geoffrey Wheatcroft does an entertaining short narrative in Bloody Panico!:
For more on the economics of the Cameron years, this paper is acute on how the Tories failed to move the UK away from being a country of renters towards a country of makers. Two of its authors will join us for a podcast later in the series.
And if you want to read how Brexit may have cost the UK 8% of GDP, there’s this paper based on data from the Bank of England
Finally, on the Spectator read Nesrine Malik’s recent column in The Guardian
Andy Burnham's claim that Russia interfered with Brexit is risible for one very simple reason, says Ben Pile: EU policy on climate and energy is so suicidal that Putin could not have wanted Britain to leave.
As Andy Burnham talks up closer alignment with the EU and a poll suggests half in UK would rejoin, the B-word is back on the agenda
In February 2016, days after David Cameron announced the UK would hold a referendum on leaving the EU, he told workers in Slough not to imagine they could change their minds a few years down the line if they did not like how things panned out. Voting to stay in or leave was a once in a generation thing, he said. “This is a decision that lasts for life.”
Well times change, as the last prime minister but five could testify. A decade after Britain told Brussels where to go, Brexit is back on the political agenda. After years in which many politicians avoided any mention of the B-word, Andy Burnham broke the omertà in his party conference speech last month, saying he would look again at Britain’s relationship with Europe.
NFU analysis of official data shows falls in exports to UK’s largest trading partner since 2019 include 70% for sugar and 74% for egg products
Exports of British food and drink to the EU have collapsed by more than a third since Brexit with eggs, chicken and potato producers badly hit, new figures show.
Analysis by the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) of HMRC data shows a sharp fall in exports in the year to July compared with the same period in 2019, with sugar dropping the most, down 70%.
Bernd Lange, who was involved in Brexit talks, says deal could be negotiated within months of any decision to deepen ties
The UK could re-enter the EU in a “Switzerland plus” package that could be negotiated within months of any decision to deepen ties with the bloc, the head of a European parliament committee has said.
Bernd Lange, who was heavily involved in Brexit negotiations, said: “I would love to see the UK back.” He said the EU missed the UK in decision-making because of its strong history of promoting open markets and democracy.
Shevaun Haviland argues PM is right to revisit Labour’s EU red lines as current trading relationship is bad for business
Repairing the economic damage of Brexit should be the top priority for Andy Burnham as he reconsiders Labour’s red lines on EU membership, the head of one of Britain’s leading business groups has said.
Shevaun Haviland, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), said she welcomed the prime minister reopening the Brexit battle lines despite the uncertainty it could create, arguing that the UK’s current trading relationship with the EU was bad for business.
EUobserver is proud to have an editorial partnership with Europod to co-publish the podcast series “Briefed” hosted by Léa Marchal. The podcast is available on all major platforms.
Find the full transcript below:
Ten years after the Brexit vote, more and more Britons are asking whether they should go back. According to a YouGov poll conducted earlier this month, 52% would vote to rejoin the EU in a referendum.
And the UK’s new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, seems to be keeping that door open.
But how realistic is that? Andy Burnham became Prime Minister this summer. And since then, he has been dropping hints here and there about a possible return to the EU. A few months ago, he was saying it was too early to even discuss it.
So what changed? Perhaps the international context, but also the realisation that the UK cannot get everything it wants while staying outside the Union.
On 20 November, EU leaders will have the opportunity to discuss the relationship with the UK during a bilateral summit. They will try to reach agreements on a number of issues that have stalled.
What are those topics? First, food. Today, agri-food products face checks and certification when they enter the EU, and that slows trade down. The solution on the table is for the UK to align its sanitary and phytosanitary standards with the EU’s. But the details still need to be agreed.
Second, people. Right now, a European who wants to work in the UK needs a visa. The two sides could agree on a scheme to make mobility easier, especially for young people.
Third, carbon. The British would like to link their carbon market to the EU’s, so that their exporters don’t have to pay extra for their emissions when they sell to Europe. In practice, that means avoiding the EU’s carbon border tax.
Last but not least, industry. And this is a big part of the discussion. As the EU moves towards giving priority to European products, the British fear being left out of this “European preference”.
Now, you might say: in all these cases, isn’t this a bit like being in the EU, without the drawbacks? That’s exactly what critics call cherry-picking.
At the heart of the problem is a simple question: where do you draw the line between being a member and being a partner? It’s the same debate the EU has with Switzerland, which wants to stay very close but not be part of the bloc.
Now, is a return to the EU a realistic scenario? The door is open, as Emmanuel Macron and others have put it.
The UK could apply, and it’s unlikely that any member state would block the process. But the European Commission has already warned: there would be no special treatment for the British.
On the positive side, the UK would start from a good position. It already applies a good part of EU legislation, and it meets the rule-of-law criteria.
But all these years after leaving the EU, the two sides are still negotiating. There are sticking points on free movement and on standards. And those disagreements would make any accession talks that much harder.
Let’s see what comes out of the summit on 20 November.
Mercedes-Benz chief executive Ola Källenius has warned that excluding British manufacturers from European industrial preference rules would damage automotive production on both sides of the Channel, increasing pressure on Brussels ahead of negotiations over its proposed Industrial Accelerator Act.
The head of Mercedes-Benz has warned that excluding British manufacturers from the European Union’s proposed industrial preference rules would damage the competitiveness of carmakers across Europe, challenging Brussels over legislation intended to protect European production from growing international competition.
Ola Källenius, chief executive of Mercedes-Benz and president of the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA), criticised the prospect of restricting British participation in the forthcoming “Made in Europe” framework during discussions in Brussels on Wednesday, 14 October.
His intervention comes as European governments negotiate the Industrial Accelerator Act, which would introduce European-content requirements affecting public procurement and certain forms of industrial support.
The proposed legislation is intended to strengthen manufacturing within the EU, but its treatment of production in neighbouring countries has become contentious, particularly in an automotive industry whose factories and suppliers operate across national borders.
European production extends beyond the EU
British manufacturing remains closely integrated with continental European automotive production despite the United Kingdom’s departure from the single market.
Components manufactured in Britain are incorporated into vehicles assembled in EU member states, while British factories depend on engines, batteries, electronics and other parts produced in continental Europe.
The value of this integrated manufacturing system depends on companies being able to source components across borders without unnecessary restrictions.
Källenius warned that excluding the UK from the proposed rules would weaken manufacturers operating on both sides of the Channel.
His position reflects industry concerns that a narrowly defined European-content regime could impose additional costs on companies already facing pressure from Chinese competition, slowing demand and substantial investment requirements.
As EU Today reported in September, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has been pressing Brussels to recognise the UK as a trusted industrial partner under the emerging framework.
Germany has also supported a broader approach that would allow selected trading partners to qualify under European-content rules where reciprocal conditions are met.
France has favoured stronger preferences for production within the EU itself, reflecting differences among member states over how far European industrial policy should extend beyond the Union’s borders.
Its provisions address public procurement and industrial incentives affecting products including vehicles, steel, aluminium and clean technologies.
The Commission wants European public spending to support local industrial capacity rather than reinforce dependence on imports from major international competitors.
China has become the principal focus of those concerns because of its expanding manufacturing capacity, particularly in electric vehicles and batteries.
However, measures designed to counter Chinese industrial competition could also affect established trading partners whose manufacturers form part of European supply chains.
The United Kingdom, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey occupy different legal positions in their economic relations with the EU, but all maintain important industrial connections with member states.
An approach that treats their production as equivalent to imports from countries with substantially different market conditions could require European companies to reorganise existing supplier relationships.
For manufacturers, replacing a supplier may involve more than simply ordering components from another factory. Production standards, technical certification, logistics and long-term investment arrangements can make changes expensive and difficult.
Industry demands regulatory certainty
Following an ACEA board meeting on Wednesday, European manufacturers called for faster progress on the wider automotive legislative package.
In its 14 October statement, ACEA urged EU institutions to advance negotiations so that the package could be finalised early next year.
The association argues that manufacturers require a predictable regulatory framework to plan investments in electric vehicles, production facilities and new technologies.
Källenius linked the industry’s transition towards zero-emission mobility with the need to preserve employment and strengthen economic security.
European manufacturers are simultaneously investing heavily in electrification while competing against Chinese companies with established battery supply chains and significant production capacity.
The resulting financial pressures are particularly serious for manufacturers that must develop new vehicle platforms while maintaining existing factories and dealer networks.
Additional restrictions on component sourcing could complicate those decisions at a time when companies are seeking to reduce costs.
Britain refuses to follow EU tariffs automatically
The dispute has acquired a further dimension following remarks by British Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds.
Speaking on Wednesday, Reynolds indicated that Britain would not automatically follow the European Union in imposing tariffs on Chinese vehicles.
The UK government maintains that trade measures must be determined according to British economic interests rather than adopted simply to align with Brussels.
That position complicates London’s attempt to secure favourable treatment under European industrial rules.
EU policymakers have argued that closer alignment on trade defences could support Britain’s claim to be treated as a trusted partner.
British ministers, however, must consider whether restrictions on Chinese imports would benefit domestic manufacturers and consumers.
The disagreement will form part of the broader economic relationship being discussed ahead of the next UK–EU summit, scheduled for 20 November.
The wider implications for EU–UK relations
The automotive dispute follows earlier negotiations over British participation in European defence procurement and other industrial programmes.
In both cases, London wants access to initiatives designed to strengthen European production while remaining outside the EU’s institutional framework.
Brussels must determine how far preferential treatment can extend to non-member countries without undermining the objectives of its industrial policy.
The Commission’s proposals have already revealed disagreements between governments favouring a tightly defined European manufacturing base and those seeking to preserve wider commercial partnerships.
Källenius’s intervention strengthens the argument that industrial protection cannot be considered separately from the supply chains on which European manufacturers depend.
The final legislation will influence investment decisions, procurement arrangements and the position of British suppliers within the continental automotive industry.
The outcome will also provide an indication of how far the EU is prepared to accommodate its closest trading partners as it attempts to strengthen European manufacturing against growing competition from China.
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