Farage rages and Stellantis threatens: news of the Brexit frenzy Visa requirements lifted for Kosovars

Nigel Farage had been pushing for Britain’s exit from the European Union for years. In the vote almost seven years ago, he was at the front, along with Boris Johnson. But today the 59-year-old right-wing populist is sober. “Brexit has failed,” Farage told the BBC on Monday evening.

The UK has so far not benefited economically from the historic move, the former head of the UKIP party said. That is a huge understatement. According to analysts and economists, including the Bank of England, leaving the EU has done massive damage to the UK economy.

Today, surveys show that almost 60 percent of the population would vote to stay in the EU. For Nigel Farage, however, the ruling Conservative Party is mainly to blame for the misery, because it “did not deliver”. Brexit has shown “that our politicians are just as useless as the Commissioners in Brussels”.

Barriers to import and export

Farage, who is hosting a show today on Fox News’ knock-off GB News, apparently doesn’t want to see the real problem. Britain’s departure from the internal market and customs union has created new barriers to imports and exports. The car industry, one of the most important employers on the island, is also feeling the consequences.

On Wednesday, Stellantis, the world’s number four automaker, warned of factory closures if the trade deal negotiated after the Brexit vote with the EU is not renegotiated. Just two years ago, the company promised to start producing electric cars at its British factories near Liverpool and London.

Threatening rate of ten percent

They were intended for the domestic market and for export to the EU, but from next year a 10 percent tariff is looming, with which British cars could no longer compete, according to Stellantis. The reason is a clause in the agreement, according to which 45 percent of the added value for duty-free products must take place in Great Britain or the EU.

Stellantis could not comply with this rule, according to the group, which includes Peugeot, Citroën, Fiat, Chrysler and Vauxhall – the British version of Opel. He calls for the current supply to be extended until 2027. Otherwise, manufacturers would no longer invest and move production capacity abroad.

Battery startup bankruptcy

The biggest problem is the batteries. The US wants to support production with billions of dollars in subsidies, and the Europeans are also arming themselves. French President Emmanuel Macron spoke Monday at the Elysée Palace with Tesla founder Elon Musk about building a gigafactory. However, the British are hopelessly behind.

An expression of the misery was the bankruptcy of the start-up Britishvolt in January. It was a beacon of hope and wanted to build a large battery factory in North East England. In February it was bought by Australian Recharge Industries. She wants to build the factory further, but will not produce batteries for vehicles there, but for energy storage.

800,000 jobs at risk

Experts warn the kingdom is running out of time when it comes to car batteries. There are 800,000 industry-related jobs at stake. David Bailey, an economics professor at Birmingham Business School, told the BBC: “If we don’t make batteries on a large scale, we won’t have mass production of cars.”

Bailey criticized that there is no industrial policy to encourage the construction of a gigafactory. Stellantis is not the only one struggling with this. The Indian Tata group, owner of Jaguar Land Rover, had plans to build a battery factory in Great Britain. But now Spain lures with EU subsidies. A decision must be made quickly.

EU rules remain in force

The battery problem is mainly homegrown. And the 45 percent rule also applies to the EU. The impending “penalty rate” is only due to Brexit. If the UK wasn’t out it wouldn’t be a problem. It is far from certain whether the EU would agree to renegotiations and be willing to make concessions – just ask Switzerland.

In any case, the Brexit madness does not seem to be coming to an end. Last week, Minister of Economic Affairs and Trade Kemi Badenoch had to admit that abolishing all regulations from the EU period is not realistic. Under pressure from the Brexit hardliners, the government passed a corresponding law with a “guillotine clause”.

Pragmatism instead of bombast

By the end of the year, some 4,000 ‘EU laws’ would have suddenly disappeared. But that would lead to “legal uncertainty,” Badenoch said. This finding is not particularly surprising. Now 600 more laws are expiring. The superhardliner Jacob Rees-Mogg therefore accused Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of “failure” and “incompetence”.

For the Brexit-critical “Guardian”, Sunak has “again outweighed pragmatism over Brexit hype” by scrapping the guillotine clause. That was already the case with the Windsor agreement with the EU. In it, the prime minister had to accept that EU law continues to apply in Northern Ireland and that the European Court of Justice has the final say in disputes.

Agreement with Switzerland not a substitute

These are bitter pills for the “Brexiteers” led by Nigel Farage. In the BBC interview, the Brexit champion did not want to rule out a return to active politics. He had “never given any thought” that the British economy would be better off if it stayed in the EU. For example, the figures and forecasts of the OECD speak a different language.

The British economy will have to grapple with the consequences of the referendum seven years ago for a long time to come. The further elaboration of the bilateral trade agreement with Switzerland, on which Kemi Badenoch and Federal Councilor Guy Parmelin reached agreement in principle on Monday, is at most a drop in the ocean.