The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 20 September 2018

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Britain was overwhelmed by Brexitry. Before flying off to an EU summit in Salzburg, Theresa May, the Prime Minister, interviewed on Panorama, said that if Parliament did not ratify the Chequers plan, ‘I think that the alternative to that will be having no deal.’ The International Monetary Fund warned against ‘a no-deal Brexit on WTO terms that would entail substantial costs for the UK economy’. Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: ‘We must heed the clear warnings of the IMF.’ Mr Hammond was said to have suggested in cabinet that Britain might have to remain a member of the EU beyond 29 March next year, but he was ‘slapped down’ by Mrs May. Storm Ali, the first of the season, named after Mohammed’s son-in-law, sent debris flying in Scotland.

Free movement from the EU should end after Brexit, and Britain should allow no preferential access to the labour market for citizens of any other country, according to a report from the Migration Advisory Committee commissioned by the government. The office of Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, was said to recognise that a hard border with Northern Ireland could be avoided by technology. But it seemed to envisage a border between Britain and Northern Ireland rather than one between Ireland and Northern Ireland. The number of vapers in Britain was found to have grown to more than three million — four times as many as in 2012.

Jaguar Land Rover said it was putting 1,000 workers at its Castle Bromwich plant in Birmingham on a three-day week until Christmas; customers were said to be worried that the government would make diesel vehicles expensive and unsaleable. BMW brought forward the month’s summer maintenance shutdown at its Mini factory in Oxford to April 2019, to reduce any ‘possible short-term parts-supply disruption’ associated with Brexit.

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