UK voters suffer Brexit 'bregret'

A NEW poll to mark the third anniversary at the end of January 2023 of the UK leaving the EU has suggested most voters think voting for Brexit in the 2016 referendum was now a mistake. The term coined by observers to describe the change of heart is 'Bregret'.

The survey by Unherd and Focaldata asked voters across England, Scotland and Wales whether ‘Britain was wrong to leave the EU’ and in all but three of 632 constituencies, more people now agree than disagree.

As it happens, the three constituencies that are still in favour of having left – Boston & Skegness, South Holland & the Deepings, and Louth & Horncastle – are all in Lincolnshire, England’s second largest county which sprawls around the Wash.

In his recent book ‘Edge of England’ on this enigmatic area, author Derek Turner dubbed Lincolnshire ‘England’s forgotten county’. It was perhaps something of a prophetic insight and, having reviewed it for Central Bylines, it seems to me there are undoubtedly some answers lurking within its pages as to why this should be so.

Despite holding on to the number one anti-Europe spot though, the number of people in Boston & Skegness follows the survey’s national trend. Those expressing faith in Brexit have fallen from 75 percent at the time of the referendum in 2016 to 41 percent now, just four percentage points above those agreeing Britain was wrong to leave the EU.

In the past, one could say that by and large the UK was properly governed and MPs in the main were public servants. Indeed, leaving the EU was hardly in the minds of the British general public until it was elevated to the top of the political agenda by Prime Minister of the day, David Cameron at the beginning of 2016, for party political reasons.

In one way, it was a politically-naive way to silence a small but increasingly vocal anti-Europe brigade on the fringes of the Conservative party and in UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party).

But it was also a handy smokescreen for those with vested interests who felt threatened by a soon-to-be-introduced EU Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive to control offshore tax havens, including questionable tax dealings by either those holding power or those wealthy enough to influence it. 

That would certainly would help explain a lot of things because at present many MPs, though not all, particularly those serving in the current cabinet and government, look like they are there to best their own personal influence and financial self-reward.

As the UK marks the third anniversary of having left the EU, it is not Brexit per se that has done the real damage but the incompetence and ignorance of politician after jingoistic politician who have proclaimed much but delivered nothing.

Figures released today (31 January) reveal the UK is the only leading economy likely to fall into recession this year, and this even behind Russia! The IMF forecasts that the UK economy will shrink 0.6 percent in 2023 as it is weighed down by the disadvantages of having left the European single market, combined with a toxic mix of sky high energy prices, rising mortgages and higher taxes.

It all adds up to a very bleak forecast for a vacuous government without a long term plan that pinned its hopes on ‘recovery’ and it leaves Rishi Sunak, the country’s third Tory prime minister in a year, mired in the sleaze and the false rhetoric of his predecessors, particularly Boris Johnson.

In the real world away from the Palace of Westminster, one business person after another describes Brexit and the form it has taken as an unmitigated disaster for the country.

One of them, entrepreneur and business leader Deborah Meaden, who regularly features on the TV programme ‘Dragon’s Den’, says: “Brexit is definitely a factor in 99 percent of businesses that I talk to. They are suffering, they’re bewildered.”

In the 2016 vote, Brexiteers got what they wanted. But despite the extensive promises, it hasn’t heralded a new dawn or a new age of prosperity for the country. Instead Brexit is costing the UK economy a million pounds per hour; it means the UK has around £20 billion a year less available for public spending; and it has lost around 330,000 workers from the UK economy.

After more than a dozen years of Conservative-controlled majority government, the country and its economy is in very poor shape. Promises are never going to be delivered, and the lies about the benefits of Brexit told during the referendum campaign and repeated ad nauseam since, only add to the image of deceitfulness at the very heart of this hard Brexit government.

Meanwhile, the government is preparing later this year to delete thousands of laws that largely benefit the ordinary people of this country, including the right to compensation for delayed trains or flights, the right to paid annual leave, equal pay and bank holidays, parental leave and pay and pension protection when a company goes bust.

These things won’t affect the super-wealthy but they will affect everyone else. Is it really what people voted for back in 2016? Probably not, given the results of the poll discussed at the beginning of this piece.

As the latest figures show, decline for the UK is now very real and continued Brexit denial will no longer cut it. Perhaps a corner is being turned at last as people finally realise what has been foisted on them?

Brexit doesn’t necessarily need to be undone wholesale but the country does need to rejoin the single market and customs union as soon as possible.

Such a dramatic reset to the country’s political direction and agenda might only be delivered in one of two ways – a General Strike that brings down the current government, or an unscheduled General Election after a vote of no confidence in which enough MPs decide to put the country and its future first for once. 

What is certain, however, is that the UK urgently, urgently needs mature, proper politicians who will put the interests of the people they represent first and, in doing so, pave the way for the country to rebuild and prosper.

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Editor's note: this article is an amended version of an opinion piece written for and published by Central Bylines. 

 

 

 

Space Oddity

 

 

THE fact that the European Union (EU) is consolidating its space programmes under a new agency that is being given an expanded mandate is not particularly good news for the UK space industry - at least as long as the current Johnson government remains in power.

As has already been proven with the Brexit end-of-transition negotiations, anything with EU in the title has been like a red rag to the Tory right, which has used its disproportionate influence to persuade the prime minister cut off as many ties with Europe as possible, beneficial or not.

There are many examples, including the ERASMUS student scheme and perhaps even Galileo itself, the European satellite navigation system in which the UK has played such a significant role.

The politically skewered view that the UK could just go ahead and build its own multi-billion pound replacement to Galileo was, in reality, just more jingoistic hot air to serve the “sovereignty above all else” headlines.

Like so many post-Brexit negotiating decisions, the loss of high-level access to the navigation satellite  system was a politically driven position - a government, huffing and puffing to leave and failing to consider rationally what was the country’s best interest.

The UK's final big industrial contribution to the EU's Galileo sat-nav system was delivered before Christmas after Guildford-based Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) shipped the last of the navigation payloads, which are described as  the "brains" of the spacecraft generating the signals the Galileo network sends down to Earth.

Britain’s "third country" status now means UK companies can no longer be involved in the hi-tech end as they once were because Galileo is regarded by the EU as a security programme and only firms in its 27 member states or those with separate agreements can take on sensitive work.

Of course, like many things with Brexit, it didn’t have to be like this. Norway, for example, which is not an EU member, negotiated itself an agreement giving access to Galileo’s high-level signals and the ability to supply sensitive hi-tech instruments.

A savvy UK government, not driven by political ideologies, could easily have achieved the same had it wanted to rather than erect another trade barrier, this time in “space”, of its own choosing.

So, given the UK’s somewhat intransigent and often seemingly ill-thought out positions of late, the EU’s consolidation of its space programmes may not be to Britain’s long term advantage.
                        
The European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (GSA), which  acts as the technical and procurement agent for the EU's space projects, will be renamed the EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUASP).

As such, it will also take on managing the use of the Copernicus Earth observation satellite system and oversee new initiatives in satellite communications named GOVSATCOM and space situational awareness (SSA).

The Prague-based agency will continue to manage use of the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Systems (EGNOS) and Galileo satellite navigation programmes.

According to a European Commission (EC) press release last week, EUASP “will increasingly support the exploitation and market uptake of EU space activities, and play a bigger role in ensuring the security of all the components of the programme.”

EU Internal Market Commissioner, Thierry Breton, praised the reorganisation of the union’s space programmes. “Europe is the second space power in the world. But the global race is on,” he said. 

“With this agreement, we now have the means to develop our leadership in space by consolidating our flagships – Galileo and Copernicus – and exploring new initiatives that will enhance Europe’s resilience, notably in secure connectivity.”

The EU has a seven-year space budget of €13.2 billion ($16 billion) up to 2027 and most of these funds will be focused on operating and expanding the Copernicus and Galileo satellite systems. The European Space Agency (ESA), of which the UK remains a part, oversees technical aspects and development of the spacecraft.

EUASP will also oversee the new European GOVSATCOM that is designed to provide reliable, secure and cost-effective satellite communications for the EU and its member state governments.

In addition, the agency will be instructed to manage a new Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme designed to help prevent collisions of objects in Earth orbit and uncontrolled reentries from this increasingly over-crowded environment. The programme will also focus on monitoring space weather and near Earth objects.

So, despite remaining part of ESA, which at least for the time being will give the UK an on-going role in the Copernicus programme, it remains to be seen what effect the EU’s increasing involvement in the organisation of European space programmes will have.

Allied with the UK’s irrational desire to cut off as many ties with the EU as possible, will it ultimately be to the detriment of UK involvement and leadership of this hi-tech and lucrative industry?

Over the coming months, and years, such matters will go much deeper than the “temporary” disruptions and difficulties that are now becoming more and more evident by the day for firms and traders at UK borders.

The term 'Long Covid' has become increasingly familiar as the Covid-19 pandemic has progressed. Sadly, if previously vibrant and successful UK industries suffer the very practical fallout of misplaced political ideology and British exceptionalism, it may not be long before 'Long Brexit' becomes a thing too. 

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Editor's note: thanks to Prof Chris Grey for the acknowledgement and mention in his Brexit & Beyond blog on 22 January 2021, and the suggestion that the term Long Brexit has better parity with Long Covid by dropping the hyphen.

Brexit's wretched betrayal

A SPEECH given yesterday by Sir John Major, the UK prime minister from 1990 to 1997, is one that every journalist, TV host and political pundit should be obliged to watch from beginning to end. And, for that matter, anyone else who is interested in the country's post-Brexit trajectory.

In a pre-recorded lecture at Middle Temple, London, he told viewers that Brexit may prove "even more brutal than expected" due to the UK's own negotiating "failures".

He stated that the UK's "inflexibility" and "threats" towards the EU would make future trade "less profitable". And he warned of the "corrosive" impact to the UK's reputation of a proposed new law giving ministers the power to over-ride aspects of the Brexit agreement.

It came on the same day that the House of Lords rejected parts of the government’s controversial Internal Market Bill. Peers removed a series of clauses which would give the UK the right to disregard obligations in the EU Withdrawal Agreement in relation to Northern Ireland, defeating the government twice by huge margins.

Sir John, an outspoken critic of the UK's exit from the EU, described the Bill as a “slippery slope down which no democratic government should ever travel" and he urged Parliament to resist measures which he said threatened essential liberties and could place ministers above the law.

"This action is unprecedented in all our history - and for good reason. It has damaged our reputation around the world," he said. "Lawyers everywhere are incredulous that the UK - often seen as the very cradle of the rule of law - could give themselves the power to break the law."

Sir John stated he was not optimistic about the prospects for trade talks between the UK and EU, which resumed in London on Monday, saying the UK was not being "frank" about the possible outcomes when the UK leaves the single market and customs union at the end of the post-Brexit transition period.

The government  has said it is hopeful of securing a comprehensive deal modelled on the EU's arrangement with Canada but Sir John said it was "disingenuous" of ministers to pretend they were not seeking far deeper commitments in key areas, such as energy and aviation.

He said he feared, as a result, the process would end up with either no deal or a "flimsy and bare-bones" agreement that created new trade barriers and would be a "wretched betrayal" of the promises made to British voters during the 2016 referendum.

"These costs and complexities are the certain legacy of Brexit," he stated. "This is as a result of our negotiating failure - and it is a failure.

"Because of our bombast, our blustering, our threats and our inflexibility - our trade will be less profitable, our Treasury poorer, our jobs fewer, and our future less prosperous.

“It now seems that on 1 January next year, Brexit may be even more brutal than anyone expected," he added.

 To listen to Sir John Major’s speech in full click here: ‘The State we Are In’

Under cover of Covid

DATES and events are beginning to converge for the UK like some perfect storm on a doomsday calendar. The end of the new national lockdown, being implemented across England from this Thursday (4 November), will nominally take us to within 30 days of the end of the EU transition period.

And if the lockdown has to be extended, either nationally or regionally, not only is it going to bump straight into Christmas but then swiftly follows 31 December, the day that the UK goes rogue from Europe.

It means the UK is likely to be in the midst of two major crisis at the same time, at least one of them wholly self-inflicted and still, potentially, postponable.

Twelve months ago who would have prophesied, or even dare imagine, that the country would be living simultaneously in the first and second episodes of some wild dystopian trilogy? 

That Britons would, throughout 2020, have had their civil liberties severely restricted, that pubs would be unable to serve a pint, and that people would be forbidden from visiting their families or loved ones.

At the same time the impending conflagration of the ending Brexit transition period does not seem to bother the current prime minister and his team, at least in public. Or is it that a government can, perhaps quite reasonably, only concentrate on one major thing at once?

More likely, its appointees and associates are all still hedging their Brexit hedge fund bets and, come January, whatever the Covid-state-of-the-nation, are looking forward to divvying out some lucrative financial rewards.

The Lighthouse Keeper has been viewing events and this unfortunate convergence of dates with increasing alarm and disdain for some time from a favourite cliff top perch on England’s North Norfolk coast.

It looks out over the grey North Sea and, on clear days, it almost seems possible to see the low-lying coast of the Netherlands, hardly sunlit uplands in a physical sense but nevertheless beginning to look quite enticing from this side of the Brexit divide.

Of course, whichever way you view it, the country is in something of a pandemic-driven economic crisis already and, by all accounts, preparations for leaving the EU are also seriously behind the curve, which means a bumpy ride for many come the New Year.

The fact that the Covid-19 crisis has also been handled in a somewhat lackadaisical and reactive way by the Johnson-led government hardly bodes well for the enormous, long-term complexities of post-EU Britain.

Only this morning, on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme, Prof Andrew Hayward, a member of the government’s SAGE science advisory group, said: "We can't turn back the clock but if we had chosen a two-week circuit breaker in mid-September we would definitely have saved thousands of lives.

“And we would clearly have inflicted substantially less damage on our economy than the proposed four-week lock down will now do."

Ministers will say that there are other costs to lockdown that they were weighing up, which is very true and too often forgotten. But by making a late U-turn, it becomes much harder to make that point, as now those costs are being borne anyway, with none of the benefits of acting earlier.

Are we repeating the same inexcusable mistakes elsewhere and will we, come the start of January, be saying just the same about a botched and ill-planned Brexit departure?

If only we had used the time to prepare wisely. If only we could turn the clock back. If only we had strategic leadership with the country's best interests at heart.

Despite the government's current narrative, Brexit isn't really the story of getting a trade deal with the EU. It's the story of discarding one. And not just any old trade deal. The country is discarding single market and customs union membership, part of the most advanced trade deal anywhere on Earth.

To put the tricky situation in further context, I turn to the latest article by Prof Chris Grey and the conclusion of this blog is a precis of what he published on Friday (30 October) soon after returning from a half-term trip to Germany.

“Drive down any motorway today and you see the unavoidable message of the government’s increasingly panicky campaign - ‘time is running out’. Brexit is no longer mentioned, for we are not supposed to recall that what were to have been the ‘sunny uplands’ turn out to be a quagmire of paperwork, expense and inconvenience," he writes. 

"In Kent on the way to Dover there is more visible evidence of the future - huge construction works for  the giant lorry parks that will be needed post-transition.

None of the difficulties, as everyone should know by now, will be avoided by an EU-UK trade deal, although they will be worsened without a deal. The outcome remains opaque. 

Tony Connelly, a journalist for the Irish TV channel RTE, reports that one reason the outcome of negotiations remains unknowable is Johnson’s almost pathological aversion to making the necessary choices.

One suggestion is that he will await the outcome of this week’s US Presidential election before deciding which way to jump. It may be a plausible enough theory of Johnson’s decision-making process, if only because it is so inane.

Economically, of course, even the best US trade deal will not come close to compensating for the damage of there being no deal with the EU.

A tiny foretaste of just how dishonest the spin will become came in the government’s triumphant announcement that, as a result of a trade deal it has just signed with Japan, soy sauce will be cheaper from 1 January as it will attract a zero tariff.

Even that turned out to be a lie of a strange and complex sort. Soy sauce currently has no tariff charged anyway because of the EU-Japan trade deal which the UK is leaving, so the deal with Japan doesn’t make it cheaper it just stops it getting more expensive by virtue of trading on WTO terms."

Its all very nonsensical and misleading, just like the Alice in Wonderland politics the Lighthouse Keeper wrote about in Johnson’s land of fake believe back in 2019. 

Prof Grey goes on: "Moving from Brexiter PR back into the real world what we find are new reports of impending labour shortages once transition ends in fields ranging from agriculture to dentistry, of regulatory uncertainty in industries from aerospace to chemicals, and of ongoing difficulties in the recruitment of trained customs staff.

Many of these stories are, as they have been for years, under the public radar, appearing in the business pages of newspapers or in the specialist media of particular industries.

There is more public awareness when the Brexit effects on holiday-makers are reported, as with last weekend’s outrage at the ‘petty EU’ for ‘threatening’ British tourists with longer passport queues from next year.

It’s a story that encapsulates so much of the Brexiter mindset. That this was likely to be an effect of Brexit is not a new idea, but they dismissed it in the past as Project Fear. Then, when it threatens to become a reality, they treat it as a form of punishment as if, whilst leaving the EU, Britain ought to retain the rights it had as a member.

As the years have gone on, this mindset seems to have become so ingrained that there is no way of reasoning with it: all the adverse effects of Brexit are either denied (they won’t happen, it’s just scaremongering), ignored (they aren’t happening), displaced (they are happening but it’s not because of Brexit) or disowned (they shouldn’t happen, it’s only because the EU is punishing us).

Much that is familiar to everyday life in Britain is being ripped up by force majeure and few of us have alive today have experienced anything like it. But, still, Britain pushes on with the one, supposedly inviolable, immutable policy of Brexit.

It is a policy of such folly that the government no longer dares mention it by name and which even its most enthusiastic proponents have ceased to try to justify in any serious way. The Brexit Emperor lacks not just clothes now but skin and flesh too.

Yet even now – hugely difficult as it would be – it wouldn’t be totally impossible, given the extraordinary circumstances for the UK, to at least try to find some route to extending the transition,  rather than to just parrot that ‘time is running out’.

It seems feasible that, if the UK was open to such an idea, the EU would be at least willing to explore how to make it work, if only because of the worsening Covid-19 situation in many of its member states too.

The likelihood that this won’t happen, however, is down solely to the warthog stubbornness of a small group of fanatical Brexiters, still fighting the battle to leave that they have already won, and totally indifferent to its costs.

So, in Brexit trade terms we blunder on. Prisoners of a series of past decisions that we do not have the wit or the will to revisit, and of a small but powerful group of ideologues we are either too cowardly or too weak to face down. It is worse than folly. It is insanity.” 

The Lighthouse Keeper couldn’t agree more. 

To read Prof Chris Grey’s full post click here: “Beyond folly”.

If leaving me is easy

THROUGH the lens of the global Covid-19 pandemic the uncertainty delivered by the EU referendum exactly four years ago today (17 June 2016) now seems to be growing worse by the day. And, for a government determined to follow its Brexit ideology at all costs, an unexpected virus has been the perfect smokescreen.

Back in 2016, promises proffered by the Vote Leave campaign won the day, albeit by the slimmest of margins. Those promises, however, have not only failed to materialise but have largely been exposed as a cache of blatant lies.

Despite the severest of economic storms generated by the coronavirus pandemic, it would seem that the British government, under the leadership of Boris Johnson, is happy to pursue either of two suicidal options - the most basic of severance arrangements with the EU or no deal at all.

With a final deadline for agreement all but ignored, Britain as a country stands on a precipice and is in grave danger of being driven into a black hole by manipulative and evil forces. Anyone who understands the physics of black holes will know there is no return from such a cosmic catastrophe.

Four years ago the PR spin and slogans of Vote Leave were carefully created to tap into a public mood of general dissatisfaction.

Blaming just about everything that was wrong with the country on a beleaguered EU worked well and one of the most dishonest and manipulative campaigns in political history, which also broke so many rules and regulations in the process, won the day.

In reality, extreme wealth and greed were the poisonous roots of a long-festering anti-EU drive. Much of this stemmed from the long anticipated ‘Anti Tax Avoidance Directive’ designed to ensure mega companies and billionaires pay a fair share of tax in their country of residence or operation, rather than be able to shift it to tax havens.

Surely this was a logical and sensible piece of legislation? But when this new directive was finally approved by 27 of the then 28 EU nations, it was the UK that abstained.

Since 2016, the real Brexit has gradually unfolded scene by scene, a tragedy of self-inflicted deprivation - the loss of rights, freedoms and privileges; the loss of standards and ethics; the loss of opportunity, jobs and prosperity; the loss of relationships, reputation and influence; the loss of dignity, humanity and diversity.

In complete opposite to the trite referendum campaign slogan “taking back control”, it has already heralded the loss of many of the country’s fundamental democracies and international respect and influence.

And, according to a Bloomberg Economics analysis, Brexit is on course to cost the UK more than its combined total of payments to the European Union budget over the past 47 years.

Four years on, as we look back with hindsight, one cannot fail to be struck by the transformation of politics and society. The Johnson government continues to put its pure Brexit ideology before the good of the country.

Now it hails a liberated UK. But if further chaos ensues from the start of next year when the transition period ends you can be sure the narrative will shift, probably to blame Covid-19 and the EU at the same time. To date Brexit has changed everything and served up nothing.

Happy EU referendum anniversary everyone!

"Brexit - we have a problem!"

The British government announced this week the intriguing appointment of life-long and passionate youth hosteller Graham Tunnock to head up the UK Space Agency (UKSA).

Mr Tunnock, in stark contrast to his predecessor Dr David Parker, has apparently no previous space industry experience and is being drafted in from the relative obscurity of the ‘Better Regulation Executive’, a demure unit buried within the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, where he was Chief Executive.

His new post, which he takes up on 1 April 2017, will undoubtedly be higher profile as he guides UKSA through the turbulent and uncharted waters of Brexit and beyond.

On the face of it, Brexit should have no impact on the UK’s role and contributions to ESA as the agreement and working relationship is largely outside of the EU. At least that is the argument for now.

Perhaps a bigger long term issue in terms of Brexit fallout for UK space might be that of ‘mission creep’. As well as being outside the European Single Market, there is a suggestion that the UK could leave the Customs Union, the European Convention on Human Rights and Euratom (legally distinct from the EU but is governed by it).

Stormy waters may well lie ahead for any organisation linked to Europe and, given the many unknowns ahead, it is certainly not clear where this might end, especially if those on the political right for whom the word ‘Europe’ is an anathema get their way.



Graham Tunnock, new head of the UK Space Agency

Perhaps it is not surprising therefore that Theresa May’s government has chosen to appoint a relative ‘space neutral’ at this time, someone who might be more comfortable with regulations and procedures than the technical details of a space programme that succeeds through close European cooperation.

A brief delve onto the Internet delivers a relatively ‘lite’ online footprint for Mr Tunnock. Nothing on LinkedIn, for example, and in Google his name is immediately associated with the Youth Hostel Association (YHA) and not much else, unless he is connected to the family of Tunnock’s teacake* fame.

“Graham is a lifelong hosteller”, begins the entry about him on the YHA website. “He was quickly bitten by the bug on family holidays and soon started hostelling independently with his brother and friends in his teens, his passion for hostelling developing alongside another great enthusiasm of his life, cycling. He has continued to hostel in adult life and a personal highlight is the annual YHA weekend he organises for his cycling club.”

Quite a contrast to the previous long-term and passionate space proponent Dr David Parker who brought with him a wealth of relevant space experience and contacts when he took up the post in 2013. Dr Parker is now Director of Human Spaceflight and Robotic Exploration with ESA.

On leaving he was able to cite many recent advances in UK space policy, including the 25% increase in UK funding of ESA made at its Council of Ministers in 2012 as probably having the biggest impact.

One of his proudest moments was in July 2015 when ESA moved into the European Centre for Satellite Applications and Telecommunications (ECSAT), a superb new facility at Harwell in Oxfordshire.

“This was a project that I lived with since 2008 and it was an emotional moment to see the flags of all the ESA member states raised in honour on UK soil for the first time. For me, it symbolised the UK anchored in ESA, and ESA anchored in the UK,” he said.

Announcing his successor’s permanent appointment on 1 March, a UKSA statement said Mr Tunnock had “extensive experience across Whitehall and at a European level, having also worked in the European Commission and held several other posts in the UK Civil Service”.

It went on: “He will be responsible for realising the agency’s aims of increasing the size of the UK space industry, using space to understand planet Earth and the universe, supporting British businesses to deliver practical help to developing countries and overseeing the Agency’s plans to establish commercial spaceflight in the UK.”

Whilst management of UK space interests related to manufacturing and assembly of spacecraft and satellites, their systems and subsystems ought not to be affected by Brexit, in reality the British space industry is strongly tied to pan-European consortia. Tunnock’s experience in handling ‘regulation’ might just come in handy.

Still, given the many unknowns still to be unravelled, it is highly likely that a future roadmap of UK participation in European space will be influenced by the shape of post-Brexit UK and its relations, good or bad, with the rest of Europe.

The present situation will evolve in some way simply because the economic profile of the UK will be different - though the magnitude of change is likely to be contingent on the terms of the negotiated settlement and the new political climate. In turn, this may well influence decisions taken in Europe about the amount of work shared out to consortia facilities in respective ESA member states.

There is also a question mark over the increasing interests of the EU itself in space programmes and policy. For example, full involvement in Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation programme, an EU-led space project, might be at risk following Brexit unless a specific agreement is reached.

European Galileo satellites.

Basic services from the Galileo satellites are available to all but use of the encrypted, robust Public Regulated Service (PRS) designed for government-authorised users - such as fire brigades and the police - may be restricted to those outside of the EU.

Whatever the post-Brexit shape of the UK, the necessary readjustment of the domestic economy along with newly placed priorities at government level may eventually change the level of support - and thus the amount of money available - for national and international projects and programmes, including those of ESA.

So far, the government has indicated it is fully committed to supporting the country’s robust and expanding aerospace sector, one of the strongest growing sectors in UK investment and revenue.

Although British civil servants traditionally remain neutral of government policy, it has already been suggested that some new appointees across government departments are being selected partly on the grounds that their personal views are more sympathetic to the political aims of Brexit.

Only time will tell whether there was any such motive behind the appointment of Graham Tunnock as chief executive of UKSA and, if so, the effects this might ultimately have on the British space industry.

Despite assurances to the contrary, a post-Brexit Britain may not sit so comfortably with Europe’s space ambitions, particularly if the EU becomes more involved. One way or another our hugely successful space industry looks set to have a fight on its hands.


*Tunnock’s teacakes are a traditional English biscuit (soft marshmallow on a biscuit base coated in milk chocolate) developed by family bakers who first started trading in the 1890s.

Climate change accelerates

Photo: Clive Simpson

Europe’s regions are facing rising sea levels and more extreme weather, such as more frequent and more intense heatwaves, flooding, droughts and storms due to climate change, according to a European Environment Agency (EEA) report published today.

The report assesses the latest trends and projections on climate change and its impacts across Europe and finds that better and more flexible adaptation strategies, policies and measures will be crucial to lessen these impacts.

Temperatures in mountain ranges such as the Alps and the Pyrenees are predicted to soar to glacier-melting levels, while the Mediterranean faces a ‘drastic’ increase in heat extremes, droughts, crop failure and forest fires.

Hans-Martin Füssel, a lead author of the EEA report, said that scientific evidence was pointing increasingly to a speeding up in the pace of climate change.

“We have more data confirming that sea-level rise is accelerating,” he said. “It is not a linear trend, largely due to increased disintegration of ice sheets. There is also new evidence that heavy precipitation has increased in Europe. That is what is causing the floods. Climate projections are coming true.”

Earlier this month, NASA, NOAA and the UK Met Office confirmed that 2016 had broken the record for the hottest year ever - previously held by 2015, which had itself broken the record that had been set in 2014.

Hans Bruyninckx, the director of the EEA, says there was now “not a snowball’s chance in hell” of limiting global warming to 2C without the full involvement of the US, which has just elected a climate-sceptic president.

Europe’s thermal growing season is now 10 days longer than in 1992, with delays to the end of the season more dramatic than the advance of its start. In countries such as Spain, warmer conditions are expected to shift crop cultivation to the winter.

New records continue to be set on global and European temperatures, sea levels and reduced sea ice in the Arctic. Precipitation patterns are changing, generally making wet regions in Europe wetter and dry regions drier. Glacier volume and snow cover are decreasing.

At the same time, climate-related extremes such as heat waves, heavy precipitation and droughts, are increasing in frequency and intensity in many regions. Improved climate projections provide further evidence that climate-related extremes will increase in many European regions.

“The scale of future climate change and its impacts will depend on the effectiveness of implementing our global agreements to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but also ensuring that we have the right adaptation strategies and policies in place to reduce the risks from current and projected climate extremes,” adds Bruyninckx.

All European regions are vulnerable to climate change, but some regions will experience more negative impacts than others. Southern and south-eastern Europe is projected to be a climate change hotspot, as it is expected to face the highest number of adverse impacts.

This region is already experiencing large increases in heat extremes and decreases in precipitation and river flows, which have heightened the risk of more severe droughts, lower crop yields, biodiversity loss and forest fires. More frequent heat waves and changes in the distribution of climate-sensitive infectious diseases are expected to increase risks to human health and well-being.

Coastal areas and flood plains in western parts of Europe are also seen as hotspots as they face an increased risk of flooding from rising sea levels and a possible increase in storm surges. Climate change is also leading to major changes in marine ecosystems as a result of ocean acidification, warming and the expansion of oxygen-depleted dead zones.

The report is intended to spur Europe’s sluggish moves towards adaptation strategies for dealing with the impacts of climate change, ahead of an EU review later this year.

Who do we think we are?

Britain is about the decide who it wants to be. Are we so different from others that we cannot play by shared rules? Are we one member in a family of nations, or a country that prefers to keep itself to itself and bolt the door?

All of these questions were always on the ballot in this week’s fateful referendum. But after a campaign that has been nasty, brutish and seemingly endless, the UK will be voting on another question too.

With all the differences and the diversity among all of us who already live on these islands, how are we all going to get along? In the final run-up to polling day this contest has risked descending into a plebiscite on whether immigrants are a good or a bad thing. Consider the dark forces that could so easily become emboldened by a narrow insistence on putting the indigenous first.

The backdrop has been the most unrelenting, unbalanced and sometimes xenophobic press assault in history. Leading political lights of leave have claimed to be pro-immigrant and yet have, at the same time, been ruthlessly fearmongering about Britain being overrun by Turks, after a Turkish accession which they understand perfectly well is not on the cards.

The mood is frenzied, the air thick with indignation, and clouded with untruths. The best starting point for Britain to reach a sound decision on Thursday is to cool the passions of the heart, and listen to the head.

All reason tells us that the great issues of our time have little respect for national borders. The leave side has attempted to turn “expert” into a term of abuse, but one does not need the IMF, the Bank of England or any special knowledge to grasp that these border-busting issues range from corporate power, migration and tax evasion to weapons proliferation, epidemics and climate change.

Not one of them can be properly tackled at the level of the nation state. Impose controls on a multinational corporation and it will move to a softer jurisdiction. Crack down on tax evasion and the evaders will vanish offshore. Cap your own carbon emissions in isolation and some other country will burn with abandon.

In so far as any of these problems can be effectively addressed, it is through cooperation. A better world means working across borders, not sheltering behind them. Cutting yourself off solves nothing. That, fundamentally, is why Britain should vote to remain in the club that represents the most advanced form of cross-border cooperation that the world has ever seen.

There are certainly flaws in the way that Europe is constituted and led. The EU is a union of nations working together, it is not and never will be a United States of Europe, and so its leadership is bound to depend on the imperfect leadership of all these countries.

The single currency has been a flawed project and has set one nation against another, forcing the poor to pay the price for propping up a shonky structure. But Britain is not part of the eurozone, and the EU is not a plot against the nation state. Britain is still robustly herself too, warts and all.

The only argument about the immediate economic effects of Brexit is the depth of the hit that the economy would take, not whether it would take a hit at all.

The political victors would not be those who wish to rebuild politics. They would be rightwing Tories, and ruthless plutocrats who want freedom to reorder Britain and make money as they choose.

They have no interest in fairer taxes on the rich, or higher spending on the NHS. They have spent their so-called Brexit dividend – which in reality is almost certainly a negative number, not the mendacious £350m a week which has earned them an official reprimand – many times over.

A significant group of them are flat-taxers who are whispering about deep cuts to corporation taxes. Facile Brexiter talk of a more buccaneering Britain – presumably a country fit for Sir Philip Green or Fred Goodwin to capture other galleons – offers precisely nothing to assuage the fears of elderly voters who simply want nothing more to change.

It is a fantasy to suppose that, if Britain votes to leave, these victors would want to maintain or extend protections for pensioners or workers. On the contrary. Human rights, equality, health and safety, and aid to refugees would be out of the window.

Those who vote to leave as a protest against the elite will, in truth, be handing the keys to the very worst of that very elite. There would be no ‘taking back control’ for most working-class leave voters, just less control over their diminishing share than ever.

Those who have not yet made up their mind in this campaign should ask themselves this: do you want to live in a Britain in the image of Nigel Farage? Yes or no? For that’s the choice on offer. If the answer is no, then vote remain.

Thursday’s vote has become a turn-in-the-road issue for Britain and Europe alike. Imagine a world without the EU – without the clout to face down Russia over Ukraine, without the ability to put together coherent answers to carbon emissions, to protect standards at work from a race to the bottom.

Like democracy, the EU is an imperfect way of answering the modern world’s unrelenting challenges. But the answer to its imperfections is to reform them, not to walk away – still less to give in to this country’s occasional hooligan instinct in Europe.

Like democracy, whose virtues are in our minds afresh after the violent death of the committed and principled MP Jo Cox, the EU is not just the least bad of the available options. It is also the one that embodies the best of us as a free people in a peaceful Europe.

Vote this week. Vote for a united country that reaches out to the world, and vote against a divided nation that turns inwards. Vote to remain.

Based on an article which first appeared in The Observer newspaper