UK government ministers have been put under pressure by David Davis’s former chief of staff at the Brexit department after he asked a serious of pointed question about how leaving the EU will affect their patches. James Chapman, who also worked for George Osborne and as political editor of the Daily Mail, has revealed his belief that Brexit would be a “catastrophe”.
Britain is “a bit gloomy” about Brexit and can achieve success outside the European Union, Australia’s high commissioner to the UK has said. Alexander Downer said the UK could be “cautiously optimistic” about achieving a new free trade deal with the EU, and could forge a new and successful economic policy if it pursued the right path domestically.
The possibility of releasing new powers to Holyrood after Brexit will be discussed in talks between the UK and Scottish ministers scheduled for this Wednesday. First Secretary of State Damian Green will meet Deputy First Minister John Swinney and Scotland's Brexit Minister Michael Russell in Edinburgh.
The president of the UK’s Supreme Court has called on the UK Government to provide greater clarity over the role of the European Court of Justice after Brexit. Lord Neuberger said it would be “unfair” to blame judges for making the law “when Parliament has failed to do so”.
Britain should consider pushing back the 2019 Brexit deadline as the simplest way to managing all the trade deals and other arrangements for leaving the European Union, business leaders urged on Friday.
Liberal Democrats will abandon political party protocol by joining pro-EU campaigners to protest against Brexit outside this year’s Conservative Party Conference. Activists are planning to stage one of the biggest marches in opposition to Britain leaving the EU when the Tories stage their annual conference in Manchester in October.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable has lashed out at hard line Brexit “martyrs” who view economic pain as a price worth paying to break away from Brussels. Cable accused them of “masochism” and claimed older Brexit voters with views “colored by nostalgia from an imperial past” had imposed their will on a younger generation more comfortable with the European Union.
The UK needs a “credible fallback” in case no EU trade deal is reached during Brexit negotiations, former Bank of England governor Mervyn King has said. Lord King said British negotiators needed to show Brussels the country has an alternative over a bad trade deal post-Brexit.
The UK's Brexit negotiations have not begun well amid differences inside the cabinet, a former head of the diplomatic service has said. Sir Simon Fraser, chief mandarin at the Foreign Office until 2015, said the UK side had been a bit absent from formal negotiations in Brussels.
Investors pulling money out of The City pose a greater risk to London’s financial dominance than banks exiting the UK because of Brexit, according to Square Mile official, Sherry Madera, the City of London Corporation’s special adviser for Asia.