The government is currently in the final hours of negotiations with the EU over a new deal that Keir Starmer has said will create a ‘strengthened partnership’ with the bloc. The specifics of the deal are not yet revealed, but it is thought that a youth mobility scheme is on the table. On the BBC this morning, Laura Kuenssberg told Minister for European Relations Nick Thomas-Symonds that some people might feel betrayed by the new deal. Thomas-Symonds told Kuenssberg that it would include a ‘smart and controlled scheme’ and that going back to freedom of movement was a ‘red line’ the government would not cross. The minister claimed the new deal would be ‘absolutely consistent’ with the government’s goal of bringing net migration down, and suggested they wouldn’t discount students in immigration statistics to meet their targets.
Thomas-Symonds: ‘It’s about making Brexit work’
Over on GB News, Camilla Tominey pointed out to Thomas-Symonds that himself and Starmer had previously campaigned for a second Brexit referendum, and asked if he really knew ‘what’s in the national interest’. Thomas-Symonds argued that it is Starmer who has delivered on the promise of a post-Brexit independent trade policy, in achieving deals with India and the US. Tominey suggested that the imminent EU deal might go too far, and that the country will be ‘rule takers and not rule makers’. Thomas-Symonds said the government had ‘moved on from the debates of the past’, and were acting on a ‘hard-headed assessment’ of the UK’s interests. The minister claimed the UK would not be providing troops for an ‘EU army’, but said it was in our national interest to be working closely with the EU at a time of war.
Alex Burghart: ‘We’re on the brink of this big capitulation’
Also on GB News, Conservative MP and shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Alex Burghart criticised Labour’s deal, telling Camilla Tominey that the government is agreeing to ‘dynamic alignment’ with the EU, meaning the UK will ‘have to follow the EU’s rules on a whole host of regulations’. Burghart argued that the British public had voted for ‘independence and sovereignty’ in 2016, and described the negotiations as a ‘roll over’. Tominey pointed out that the Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal had led to issues at the border, and had reduced exports and imports. Burghart said that since Brexit, the UK’s trade with the rest of the world has increased significantly, and described the ‘remainer’ argument that Brexit would kill UK trade as ‘total rubbish’.
Sir Elton John: ‘The government are just absolute losers’
Speaking to Laura Kuenssberg, Elton John described government plans to allow AI tech firms to use copyrighted creative work without permission as ‘a criminal offence’. This week, the House of Lords backed an amendment to the data bill which would force AI companies to reveal which copyrighted material was used in the training of their models, but the government invoked ‘financial privilege’ to block the amendment. Elton John said he was ‘very angry’ about the government’s position, and told Kuenssberg that AI would rob young artists of their ‘legacy and their income’.
Centrica CEO Chris O’Shea: ‘Inevitably… this asset will be decommissioned’
Centrica, the company which owns British Gas, has asked the government for help in order to invest in its Rough storage facility. On the BBC, CEO Chris O’Shea told Laura Kuenssberg that the site would lose £100 million this year, and that without a plan to expand it, Rough would eventually be decommissioned. Kuenssberg asked why taxpayers and the government should step in, when Centrica is a ‘huge business’. O’Shea said the company wasn’t asking for government money, but they needed help to create the ‘conditions which will unlock £2bn of investment’. Rough represents around half of the UK’s gas storage capacity, and O’Shea claimed that if gas prices stay the same, the facility would become unsustainable and the country would lose energy resilience.
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