Brexit news – live: Christmas deadline for deal as Barnier says up to Boris Johnson and VDL to negotiate fish

Ireland’s premier Micheál Martin has hinted at the possibility of EU officials working on the text of a Brexit deal on Christmas Day if a breakthrough comes before then.

Mr Martin said he and other European leaders were on “standby” to endorse any agreement that might emerge from negotiations between Brussels and the UK.

“If you had a breakthrough tonight or tomorrow officials in Europe could be working Christmas Day on the text,” he said.

Mr Martin said both sides were still a distance apart in agreeing a reduction in the EU catch in UK waters.

He said there was also EU concern about a UK demand for an annual negotiation on catch size, claiming that would create “instability”.

In some none Brexit-related news, our political editor Andrew Woodcock reports: 

A health official said: “Ministers have met today to assess what further action may be needed to address the rise in cases driven by the new variant.

“The health secretary will provide an update at a Downing Street press conference at 3pm.”

For those dreaming of an escape from the UK and the expected economic turmoil, the end of the transition period on 31 December brings about the biggest changes to freedom of movement in decades.

My colleague Adam Forrest explores what happens if you want to move to the EU after 1 January:

Remainer Lord Andrew Adonis appeared on the BBC today and said that lorry queues at Dover are a taste of things to come after the Brexit transition ends.

When asked what more needs to be done to improve the situation on the border, he said: “It’s obvious what needs to happen, a deal. Given the complete chaos, close to pandemonium we are seeing in Dover at the moment which won’t even be properly cleared until next week at this rate.”

He warned if a deal isn’t done “we will just see more of this chaos” at the border next week.

In a piece by Beckie White in PoliticsHome, Sir Jonathan Jones rips into the government for preparing to insert clauses into the Internal Market Bill that would allow it to break international law.

Sir Jonathan resigned over the matter and in the interview published today has slammed the “absolutely bonkers” move that made his position untenable.

The government later agreed to drop the clauses in December but Sir Jonathan said it was “quite disgraceful” and there was “no justification” for it in the first place.

He said: “The point is that the government, by introducing the clauses, was saying publicly that it was prepared, avowedly, to break the terms of the treaty which it had concluded and indeed, implemented into UK law only months before. That seemed to me to be disgraceful.”

France said today that European Union negotiators should not yield to any time pressure imposed by the January 1 economic cutoff date in the talks on a post-Brexit trade agreement, arguing that no deal would be better than a bad one.

Negotiators are dealing with EU fisheries rights in UK waters and a few remaining fair competition issues as the last outstanding problems in the nine-month talks that are seeking to avert a chaotic transition on New Year’s Day when Britain fully leaves the EU’s single market.

Beyond the imposition of customs checks and other barriers, a trade deal would avert the imposition of tariffs and duties that could cost both sides hundreds of thousands of jobs.

But the diplomatic brinkmanship continued despite the urgency for a deal.

“We should not put ourselves, Europeans, under time pressure to finished by this hour or that day. Otherwise we would be put ourselves in a situation to make bad concessions,” France’s Europe Minister Clement Beaune told the BFM network.

EU officials have already said they would negotiate past January 1 if necessary.

Associated Press

In an explosive piece written for the Daily Mirror, former Labour adviser Alastair Campbell has called Boris Johnson the C-word. 

The article, titled “Alastair Campbell: Boris Johnson is a c*** and has condemned us all to a Covid dystopian hell”, sees Tony Blair’s former spokesman launch an attack on the “blonde-haired, grinning, smirking, clueless clown [Mr Johnson]”. 

It comes amid another week of chaos in the UK, after borders closed due to a new coronavirus variant and EU-UK Brexit negotiations appeared to be delayed – again. 

Refusing to apologise for the move, Mr Campbell posted the article to his personal Twitter account and wrote: “I know the C-word is bad, but … when you wake up before 4am in the middle of a Dystopian nightmare that feels all too real, someone has to feel the rage!”

Christmas is emerging as the final deadline to avoid a no-deal Brexit, amid warnings from Brussels that  a deal needs to be signed before the holiday to be in place by the the end of the transition.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, privately told MEPs on Tuesday night that he had done all he could to break the deadlock on fishing – with an official present at the meeting saying Mr Barnier had warned that fishing now had to be resolved directly by Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen.

Our policy correspondent Jon Stone reports:

Ireland’s premier Micheal Martin said fishing remains the main obstacle in the way of a UK-EU deal.

“It’s all down to fish, it would appear right now,” he said on Wednesday. “There was a lot of progress made on the level playing field over the last two to three weeks and it’s very difficult for all involved but the gap is still wide on fish, and for fishing communities in Ireland it’s a time of worry.”

Mr Martin said the EU was agreeing to reduce the number of fish caught in UK waters by 25 per cent, accompanied by a six-year transition period. He suggested the UK was asking for a drop in excess of 35 per cent.

“It’s not just about monetary terms, I think it’s about the sustainability of the fishing industry in the respect of member states and there’s six or seven member states have particular concerns here,” he said.

“It’s about sustaining rural communities.”

He said there was a need for a sustainable future agreement on fishing and expressed concern about a UK demand for annual negotiations.

“One of the concerns here is that Britain must have annual negotiations in terms of access to its waters and to the fish in its waters, which I think would be a recipe for instability and in terms of the fishing community wanting to know what does the future look like,” he said.