News that London and Brussels will publish a new declaration highlighting their commitment to \u201cfree and open trade\u201d shouldn\u2019t come as much of a surprise given that they signed a post-Brexit free trade agreement almost half a decade ago.<\/p>\n
What is more concerning is the section in a leaked document<\/a> recommitting the pair to \u201cmultilateralism,\u201d including through support for the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).<\/p>\n Britain\u2019s membership of this convention is a major block to supposed efforts to tackle Channel crossings, with illegal migrants successfully appealing to it in order to stay in the country after committing crimes. In one now infamous case<\/a>, the removal of a criminal Albanian migrant was blocked because of his child\u2019s distaste for the \u201ctype of chicken nuggets that are available abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n Such assaults were always bound to continue under Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer after he said he would \u201cnever\u201d allow Britain to withdraw from the ECHR. But a recommitment to the convention as part of a \u201cnew strategic partnership\u201d with the European Union could also make it more difficult for future governments with serious intentions to control national borders to pull out.<\/p>\n Reports say the declaration will also recommit the UK to the United Nations, which Israel this week accused<\/a> of weaponising international law \u201cin order to deprive the most attacked country in the world\u2014Israel\u2014of its most basic right to defend itself.\u201d<\/p>\n The agreement has been drawn up ahead of a summit<\/a> in London on May 19th, and is seen as a response to Donald Trump\u2019s levying of reciprocal tariffs. Leaders are also expected to discuss increased UK-EU military alignment, which Reform\u2019s Nigel Farage worries<\/a> could \u201cfundamentally damage our relationship with NATO and America.\u201d<\/p>\n Brexiteer John Redwood also said<\/a> that a \u201csell out deal with the EU\u201d as opposed to a firmer free trade agreement with America \u201cwill tie us in more tightly to slow growth and no growth Europe,\u201d warning<\/a> elsewhere that adopting more Brussels rules \u201cwill reinforce the dominance of food imports from the continent at the expense of jobs and output at home.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"News that London and Brussels will publish a new declaration highlighting their commitment to \u201cfree and open trade\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-63661","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114428451527475735","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}