Day: October 12, 2019

    A Boris Johnson clown in the style of the horror film It is among the images that will grace billboards going up around the country this weekend after a competition to redesign the government’s “Get Ready for Brexit” campaign. The image is among five winning entries picked by the writer-director Armando Iannucci and the actor and comedian David Schneider, following the competition run by the pro-remain group Led By Donkeys, which described it as a push to give the public more accurate information. Donald Trump, who was also a strong theme among more than 3,000 entries to the competition, also features in one of the winners. In a nod to fears that the future of the NHS would be on the table in any post-Brexit US-UK trade deal, the billboard shows Trump gobbling up ...

    The Democratic Unionist party has given a guarded response to Boris Johnson’s apparent U-turn on the Irish border, saying it will judge any Brexit deal on how it affects Northern Ireland’s long-term economic and constitutional interests. In a statement on Friday night Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, reiterated the party’s opposition to the backstop but did not criticise the prime minister’s reported acceptance that there could not be a customs border on the island of Ireland. “The DUP has always indicated that the United Kingdom must leave the EU as one nation and in so doing that no barriers to trade are erected within the UK,” said Foster, warning against any measure that would “trap” Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market or customs union. She vowed to use th...

    Downing Street appears to have a credible Brexit proposal after a week which began with a Number 10 aide calling a deal essentially impossible. The proposal thrashed out between Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar, in theory, deals with the main of the outstanding intractable issues. The nascent plan, revealed by leaks to Sky News and others, appears clever because it creates the illusion of victory for both sides on the most difficult issue of all customs. Under the plan, the whole of the United Kingdom leaves the EU customs union, in a big and important win for Boris Johnson. However, the EU tariff regime will continue to be applied on whole of the island of Ireland. This means that the tariffs charged in Great Britain could be different to those in Northern Ireland...