Brexit news – live: Workers’ rights ‘surprisingly weak’ warns think tank as Tory MPs scrutinise Johnson’s deal

Last summer, a historic cobbled town in Teesdale found itself at the centre of a media storm, after it emerged Dominic Cummings took a 60-mile round trip there during the height of the coronavirus lockdown to “test his eyesight”. 

Chiara Giordano takes a look at Barnard Castle’s rise to fame:

The SNP has said it will vote against the Brexit trade deal when the Commons meets on Wednesday.

Ian Blackford, the party’s leader in Westminster, said: “Boris Johnson’s extreme Tory Brexit is an unforgivable act of economic vandalism and gross stupidity, which will cause lasting damage to the economy and leave the UK much worse off at the worst possible time – during a pandemic and economic recession.”

Blackford also had a go at Labour for “lining up behind Boris Johnson” to back the deal. The ruling party in Scotland won’t let Keir Starmer forget it.

Asked why Labour would vote for Boris Johnson’s Brexit trade deal, shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds said: “Businesses have been through so much, the last thing they need now is yet more legal uncertainty.”

She told Sky News: “This is a thin deal – it is not what the Conservatives promised, but Labour is not going to stand in the way to getting those measures implement. They are needed now.”  

Following reports Dodds’ wasn’t happy with Keir Starmer’s decision to back the deal, the shadow chancellor said: “I haven’t had any disagreement around this at all.”

So what did Boris Johnson say in his first interview since the Brexit deal was concluded? Well, the PM told the Sunday Telegraph the agreement “perhaps does not go as far as we would like” over UK access to EU markets for financial services.

Johnson mentioned low-tax freeports among the “big changes” he has planned – claiming new regulatory freedoms would help his government “deliver for people who felt left behind”. But the PM also denied the UK would regress on workers’ rights and environmental standards.  

Rishi Sunak has tried to reassure the City of London it won’t be damaged by the deal, but said on Sunday the finance sector would be “doing a few things a bit differently”. He said the government was looking at “how we make the City of London the most attractive place to list new companies anywhere in the world”.

Leo Varadkar has said that the UK’s access to the European single market is “not unconditional”.

The deputy premier told Newstalk on Sunday: “They don’t have to pay tariffs or quotas either which is advantageous to them. But it’s not unconditional. So what they have agreed to is what we call a level playing field.

“They have agreed to a non-regression clause in all but name, so we said you can only have access to the market if you don’t reduce your standards when it comes to workers’ rights, the environment, health and safety, product standards – all of those things.

“If they do reduce their standards or don’t keep with our standards then that access to our market could be threatened. They have to largely follow European rules where they are relevant.”

He added: “But if they do deviate too much then they lose access to the market and the truth is the lunar pull isn’t a bad analogy.

“You can’t get away from the obvious geography that Britain is in Europe, geographically, and if Europe is the Earth then Britain, which is much smaller, is the moon.”

The Independent’s latest editorial points out how much is left undone in the Brexit deal – and how close cooperation with the EU will have to continue.

“What is striking about the sections between the gaps … is the extent to which they reinvent so many aspects of EU membership,” it states. “It is almost as if the British government, having sought to deny the interdependence of nations in theory, is forced to accommodate it in practice.  

It adds: “Every aspect of that relationship is going to be renegotiated constantly over the coming decades. There will be many more discussions, negotiations and agreements, on data sharing, intelligence on criminals, financial services, reciprocal healthcare and fish.”

The most intriguing Sunday interview comes from mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham. The Labour man said he might have been able to beat then-PM Theresa May and oust the Tories at the 2017 general election if he was in charge of the party rather than Jeremy Corbyn.

“I personally wouldn’t go as far as to say that I could have changed Brexit. I just think the debate would have been a bit different,” he told The Sunday Times. “And could I have beaten [Theresa] May in 2017? Yeah, possibly.”

Burnham expressed regrets about his Labour leadership campaign when he was up against Corbyn. “I guess when I stood for the leadership in 2015, I had all these people from that world telling me, ‘Oh you can’t say that, you can’t do that, you can’t …’ And, yeah, it would have been better if I’d followed my own instincts, maybe.”

Asked if he could have beaten Corbyn if he had been more outspoken, he said: “I honestly don’t know. I could have, possibly, but I wouldn’t say definitely.”

Reports this weekend suggests several shadow cabinet members could be prepared to quit over Keir Starmer’s decision to instruct Labour MPs to vote for the Brexit deal next week.  

Commentators are slightly puzzled by his eagerness to back the deal before it was even published. “Thought he was supposed to be a forensic lawyer,” says The Mail’s Andrew Pierce. Our own policy correspondent Jon Stone said he found the pre-Christmas move “quite weird”.

More now on the chancellor’s comments on what the Brexit deal means for the financial sector. Rishi Sunak did not give too much away when speaking to Sky News, but he suggested the City of London would benefit from the agreement.

“Now that we’ve left the European Union we can do things a bit differently and we’re embarking on that journey, for example, examining how we make the City of London the most attractive place to list new companies anywhere in the world.”

“But this deal also provides reassurance because there’s a stable, regulatory co-operative framework mentioned in the deal which I think will give people that reassurance that we will remain in close dialogue with our European partners.”

Columnists and experts from across the continent have been responding to the details of the Brexit trade agreement this weekend.

Writing in Spain’s El Mundo newspaper, José Ignacio Torreblanca said: “Britain is consumed by the eccentric plan of the conservative elite to return to exerting [global] influence from a position of splendid isolation.”

Björn Finke, writing in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, stated: “Those who think the Brexit drama comes to an end with this deal will be bitterly disappointed. In the coming years and decades, there will be plenty of reasons to call on the arbitration bodies envisioned in the deal, likely under the threat of tariffs. The drama will carry on. Sadly.”

France’s Libération newspaper said the deal gave only “a facade of commercial freedom for the UK”.