Markus Andrews

Boris Johnson’s government and top scientific advisers have concerns that the new Covid variant could “defeat the vaccine”, a cabinet minister has warned.South Africa is one of six countries which have been added to England’s travel red list after alarm was raised about the B.1.1.529 variant, described as the “worst one we’ve seen so far”.Transport secretary Grant Shapps said ministers wanted to take a “safety first” approach to the variant over fears it may be able to evade the protection of existing vaccines.“We can’t take risks when we see a variant which could well defeat the vaccine – or at least that’s the concern – and we need just a bit of time to check that out,” the minister told BBC’s Breakfast.Mr Shapps said ministers had acted fast to bring in travel changes following an emergency meeting with chief medical officers on Thursday – saying there was “concern” over the “very fast” spread of the variant.He added: “That gives us a bit of time for the scientists to work on sequencing the genome, which involves growing cultures – it takes several weeks to do – so we can find out how significant a concern this particular variant is. It is a safety-first approach.”Flight arrivals from South Africa will be banned between 12 noon on Friday and 4am on Sunday while quarantine hotel accommodation is prepared.Asked if people must take a PCR test after returning from the countries in southern Africa, Mr Shapps said: “We’ve asked them to. It’s unlikely, given this is only new … we’re not expecting that people who have come back prior to now will have it.”He added: “The concern about this particular variant is that it is spreading very, very fast, its rate of growth has been very quick, we think the issue is probably (starting) from now, so we’re asking people to quarantine, self-isolate when they get home.”The UK has no known cases of B.1.1.529 – expected to be named the ‘Nu’ variant in the coming days – but some 60 cases have been confirmed in South Africa, Botswana, Hong Kong and Israel.The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has designated it a “variant under investigation”. The body’s chief executive, Dr Jenny Harries, said: “This is the most significant variant we have encountered to date and urgent research is underway.”Susan Hopkins, chief medical adviser at the UKHSA, also described it as the “most worrying” variant yet seen during the pandemic.The EU also aims to halt air travel from the southern African region amid rising concern about the new variant detected there, EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday.“The Commission will propose, in close coordination with Member States, to activate the emergency brake to stop air travel from the southern African region due to the variant of concern B.1.1.529,” she said in a tweet.The World Health Organisation is convening an experts’ meeting from Geneva on Friday to assess the new variant and work out if it should be designated a “variant of interest” or “variant of concern”. More

French president Emmanuel Macron has accused Boris Johnson of failing to act “seriously” in the migrant crisis, as he justified Paris’s decision to withdraw Priti Patel’s invitation to an emergency summit on Sunday.France responded with fury to a letter to Mr Macron from the prime minister last night, in which Mr Johnson set out a five-point package to step up action on small boat crossings of the English Channel, following Wednesday’s tragedy in which 27 people died.Mr Macron today voiced his anger that the PM had published the letter on Twitter yesterday evening.It included a demand – certain to provoke the Elysee Palace – for France to take back migrants who the UK deems “illegal” in what Mr Johnson described as a “bilateral returns agreement”.Speaking at a press conference with Italian prime minister Mario Draghi in Rome on Friday, Mr Macron said: “I’m surprised when things are not done seriously.“We don’t communicate between leaders via tweets or published letters, we are not whistle-blowers.”The French interior ministry said Ms Patel was “no longer invited” to the meeting with her French counterpart Gerald Darmanin and ministers from other European countries on Sunday.“We consider the British prime minister’s public letter unacceptable and contrary to our discussions between counterparts,” said the ministry in a statement early on Friday.“Therefore, Priti Patel is no longer invited on Sunday to the inter-ministerial meeting whose format will be: France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and European Commission.”French government spokesperson Gabriel Attal said Paris was “fed up with double-talk” from London, adding: “Darmanin told his counterpart she was no longer welcome.”There was no immediate response from the Home Office, but transport secretary Grant Shapps said he hoped the French would reconsider their decision. “I don’t think there is anything inflammatory to ask for close co-operation with our nearest neighbours,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today.The row underlines poor relations between the two countries and ongoing disagreements on how to work together to stop unsafe boat crossings.Following the deaths on Wednesday, Mr Johnson irritated Paris by saying the tragedy had showed that efforts to stop people leaving on boats “haven’t been enough” and there had been “difficulties” in getting the French to take action.The prime minister set out his proposals in a letter on Thursday, telling the French president that “we must go further and faster, together” to tackle the migrant crisis.Mr Johnson said the UK wanted joint patrols to prevent more boats from leaving French beaches; joint or reciprocal maritime patrols in each other’s territorial waters, and airborne surveillance by manned flights and drones.The UK is also offering technology including radar, automatic numberplate recognition cameras and motion sensors to target the minor roads and dirt tracks used by people-smuggling gangs to deliver their human cargo to the beaches of northern France.France has accused Britain of a poorly managed immigration system and said Britain is politicising the migrant issue for domestic gain.As a result of Brexit, the UK is no longer able to use the EU’s system for returning migrants to the first member state they entered.Labour’s shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds described the PM’s publication of the Macron letter as an “enormous error”. “This is a prime minister who is out of control,” Mr Thomas-Symonds told Times Radio. “He’s lost control of this situation in the English Channel and now appears to have sent a public letter on Twitter asking for greater international talks and ended up being excluded from international talks.“Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael said: “Boris Johnson’s Twitter diplomacy has backfired, after yet again he put chasing headlines ahead of finding solutions. “At a time we need competence and strong leadership to tackle this crisis, the prime minister has shown he is not up to the task. “Neither Boris Johnson’s tweets nor the French government cancelling talks will solve this problem. We need grown-up leadership on both sides of the Channel to tackle this crisis and put saving lives over political posturing.” More

The French government has dramatically cancelled talks with home secretary Priti Patel following Boris Johnson’s latest intervention in the migrant crisis. The French interior ministry said Ms Patel was “no longer invited” to the meeting with her French counterpart Gerald Darmanin and ministers from other European countries on Sunday.The ministry said Mr Johnson’s public letter to French president Emmanuel Macron – in which he called for joint patrols to prevent more boats leaving French beaches – was “unacceptable”.The minister statement said: “We consider the British prime minister’s public letter unacceptable and contrary to our discussions between counterparts.”It added: “Therefore, Priti Patel is no longer invited on Sunday to the inter-ministerial meeting whose format will be: France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and European Commission.”There was no immediate response from the Home Office, but transport secretary Grant Shapps said he hoped the French would reconsider their decision. “I don’t think there is anything inflammatory to ask for close co-operation with our nearest neighbours,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today.But Mr Macron said on Friday that the public letter sent by Mr Johnson was not a “serious” way of handling matters. “We don’t communicate between leaders via tweets or published letters, we are not whistle-blowers.”The row underlines poor relations between the two countries and ongoing disagreements on how to work together to stop unsafe boat crossings, after 27 people drowned trying to reach British shores on Wednesday.Following the deaths on Wednesday, Mr Johnson irritated Paris by saying the tragedy had showed that efforts to stop people leaving on boats “haven’t been enough” and there had been “difficulties” in getting the French to take action.The prime minister set out his proposals in a letter on Thursday, telling the French president that “we must go further and faster, together” to tackle the migrant crisis.Mr Johnson said the UK wanted joint patrols would prevent more boats from leaving French beaches; joint or reciprocal maritime patrols in each other’s territorial waters, and airborne surveillance by manned flights and drones.What do you think? Tell us in our poll belowThe PM also suggested there could be immediate work on a bilateral returns agreement with France, to allow migrants to be sent back across the Channel, alongside talks to establish a UK-EU returns agreement.But the French interior minister accused Britain of “bad immigration management”. And in a statement on Friday, Mr Darmanin said that making Mr Johnson’s letter public had made the situation “even worse”.The ex-UK ambassador to France, Lord Ricketts, said he thought French anger was “understandable” – pointing to Mr Johnson’s request that Paris agree to take back all recent arrivals in the UK.But the former top diplomat said France was wrong to exclude the home secretary. “In my view they were wrong to cancel the invitation to Patel. The Sunday meeting of European ministers will be less useful without the Brits,” he tweeted.Labour attacked the tone of the PM’s letter and the decision to make it public. Shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds told Times Radio it was “clearly an enormous error”.In a Thursday phone call with Mr Darmanin, Ms Patel made an offer of plain-clothes UK police or border officials to take part in joint patrols around the beaches used by people-traffickers to launch overcrowded boats.Operating without a warrant, such officers would be able to assist with surveillance and tracking, but would have no powers of arrest, in order to get round Paris’s objections on sovereignty grounds.Ms Patel also confirmed on Thursday that she has authorised Border Force officers to use “push back” tactics to drive boats back towards France, and was continuing to explore the idea of “offshoring” the processing of asylum applications.It comes as French fishermen prepare to blockade the Channel Tunnel and major ports on Friday in a protest over post-Brexit fishing rights.The fishermen’s national committee said it would stage protests at the tunnel and the Channel ports of Calais, Saint-Malo and Ouistreham.In a statement it said the action – which will take place over a few hours today – was intended to be “symbolic and non-violent” but any protests could have a major impact on cross-Channel trade. More

France has cancelled talks with home secretary Priti Patel in protest at a letter sent to President Macron by Boris Johnson. The letter, sent by Boris Johnson to the French President on Thursday, called on France to agree to “take back” people who cross the Channel to the UK. Boris Johnson set out five steps to “move further and faster” to stop people taking the dangerous trip. France reacted to the letter by withdrawing an invitation to the home secretary to hold talks with French interior minister Gerald Darmanin in Calais on Sunday. In a statement the French interior ministry said they considered Boris Johnson’s “public letter unacceptable and in opposition with discussion between counterparts”. Mr Johnson published the letter on Twitter at 8:49pm on Thursday night. Read Boris Johnson’s letter to Emmanuel Macron in full below. Dear Emmanuel, Yesterday’s appalling tragedy in the Channel has shocked people across France and the United Kingdom. I know your thoughts, like mine, are with the families of those men, women and children who lost their lives at sea. I pay tribute to the work of your emergency services who have been dealing with this devastating situation. I also pay tribute to you, the French government and other authorities across France, who have been working on this challenging issue for so long. We spoke yesterday evening and agreed to intensive talks between our ministers and officials. I am confident following our conversation that you recognise, like I do, the urgency of the situation we are both facing. I have also seen the statement by your Prime Minister today and a read out of a call between the Home Secretary and your Interior Minister, which has agreed a number of positive steps and areas for further cooperation. In particular, I welcome the fact that the Home Secretary will be invited to Calais this Sunday to meet her counterparts from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. I stand ready to upgrade this meeting to a Leaders’ Level Summit or to arrange further bilateral discussion with you or with colleagues. As I set out in a letter to you this summer, I have long been profoundly concerned that any morning we could wake to the news of a serious tragedy involving widespread loss of life in the Channel, including of women and children. I noted that the British and French public would rightly ask whether we had done everything possible to prevent such a catastrophe. Such a catastrophe has now happened. I recognise that in both our countries, frontline law enforcement teams and immigration officials are working day and night but I agree with your words that unless we increase our efforts today, other tragedies will happen. This morning, further boats have arrived with yet more lives put at risk. I write to offer my support and solidarity as well as specific ideas for saving lives and tackling the traffickers that sit behind these crossings, in a spirit of partnership and cooperation with you and our neighbours across Europe. Britain and France have a joint moral commitment to save lives but also legal obligations, including through the United Nations’ Migrant Smuggling Protocol and the Convention on the Trafficking in Human Beings.In my letter in June, I outlined areas where I believed we could do more to work together. We have made some progress since then, including with the agreement reached between the Home Office and your Interior Ministry this summer. Although we have made some progress and stopped over 20,000 crossings, far too many have seen their lives put at risk. We must go further and faster, together.As we discussed last night, I am open to any new creative ideas to help eliminate this terrible trade in human beings and to protect lives. Our model for future steps should be the exceptional creativity our countries showed in the past through the creation of the Juxtaposed Controls. These new ideas would build on the strength of our bilateral security and intelligence relationship and would recognise the scale of organised criminality both our countries are fighting.To redouble our efforts, I would like us to consider: • joint or reciprocal maritime patrol operations in each other’s territorial waters;• deploying more advanced technology including ground sensors and radar; • reciprocal airborne surveillance by manned and unmanned aircraft, perhaps flying under joint insignia; and• deepening the work of our Joint Intelligence Cell with better real time intelligence sharing to deliver arrests and prosecutions on both sides of the Channel.But I am also now formally requesting that we make urgent progress towards one of my previous proposals by establishing joint patrols wherever this can be most effective. This could include French gendarmes and UK Border Force working together, perhaps under one single command structure or the joint deployment of private security contractors. We are ready to begin such patrols from the start of next week, and to scale up thereafter.In addition to our bilateral work, my ministers and officials are ready to work multilaterally and with the EU to address our shared challenges. France will soon be taking the presidency of the Council of the European Union. I am glad you have committed to make reaching a systematic returns agreement between the UK and the EU a priority for your presidency, especially given the EU’s own legal obligations to address migrant smuggling. The EU has readmissions agreements with countries including Belarus and the Russian Federation; I hope such an agreement can be rapidly reached with the United Kingdom too.Pending such a readmissions agreement at EU level, I propose that we put in place a bilateral readmissions agreement to allow all illegal migrants who cross the Channel to be returned. This would have an immediate effect and would significantly reduce if not stop the crossings, saving lives by fundamentally breaking the business model of the criminal gangs. My officials will share draft text with counterparts.As you would expect, we will also be bringing forward measures domestically to further our work to tackle illegal migration and human trafficking. I will make sure your officials are kept updated on these. Our New Plan For Immigration includes far-reaching reforms to our asylum system, designed to deter illegal entry into the UK, break the business model of people smuggling networks and remove more easily those with no right to be here. This builds on our work to make sure that our criminal justice system effectively prosecutes people smugglers.I remain confident that our two great countries can rise to this challenge and build on our deep security cooperation to address illegal migration and human trafficking at our shared border as well as upstream across the Continent of Europe, in the Mediterranean and beyond.I am copying this letter to the President of the European Council.With my best wishes, Boris Johnson More

Tony Blair has urged Keir Starmer to “reject wokeism” if he wants to win the next general election. In a commentary published on Friday, the former prime minister said Labour should adopt a “commonsensical position on the ‘culture issues’”. Without elaborating on which issues he was referring, Mr Blair likened Labour’s situation to 1983 – when the party was attacked over support for LGBT rights.He argued that “large numbers of Labour voters in 1983 felt our economic policy was not credible and our attitudes across a range of cultural questions profoundly alienating”.Suggesting the way forward at the next election, he said: “We should openly embrace liberal, tolerant but commonsensical positions on the ‘culture’ issues, and emphatically reject the ‘wokeism’ of a small though vocal minority.”Mr Blair also argued that Sir Keir should continue his war against socialism – which the new leader has banished from the party’s policy platform in favour of more centrist prescriptions. “The leadership should continue to push the far left back to the margins,” Mr Blair said in his foreword to a new report.“The country must know there is no question of negotiating the terms of power with them.”In 2015 Mr Blair said he wouldn’t want Labour to win on a left-wing platform “even if I thought it was the route to victory”. His latest comments introduce a new report containing focus group work and polling conducted by the firm Deltapoll for the Tony Blair Institute. More

Boris Johnson’s government cannot be sure of the quality of jobs created by its Kickstart scheme – or whether the roles would have developed anyway without public funding, a watchdog has said.The National Audit Office (NAO) said the government has only “limited” assurances about whether its Kickstart scheme to help young Britons into work is having a positive impact.The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) launched the £1.9bn programme last September following a rise in youth unemployment in the early months of the Covid crisis.Last week the DWP claimed that over 100,000 young people have started jobs through the scheme, which gives employers £1,500 per six-month work placements for those on Universal Credit.But the NAO’s latest report found there were concerns that jobs might have been created through the scheme which would have existed anyway as the economy reopened.The spending watchdog also said more could be done to ensure the scheme for 16 to 24-year-olds, which has been extended to March 2022, is “targeted at those who need it the most”.Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “At the start of the pandemic, DWP acted quickly to set up Kickstart to help young people into work when youth unemployment was predicted to rise significantly.”He added: “However, DWP has limited assurance that Kickstart is having the positive impact intended. It does not know whether the jobs created are of high quality or whether they would have existed without the scheme.”Labour MP Meg Hillier, chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, said the “jury was still out” on the Kickstart scheme will end up being value for money.The influential backbencher said: “DWP moved quickly to set up the scheme, yet in many ways it has already been overtaken by events. The opening-up of the economy has meant the taxpayer may just be subsidising jobs that would have existed anyway.”Ms Hillier added: “Given the cash that government has pumped into the scheme, DWP has taken a worryingly light-touch approach to setting targets or tracking performance.”It comes as Labour pointed to figures which show that as many Kickstart placements have been created in the south of England as in the north and Midlands combined – despite demand for the scheme being 50 per cent higher in the latter regions.Figures shared by the Tory employment minister Mims Davies show that just under 39,000 young people have started jobs in the south, and in the north and Midlands combined.“The chancellor’s ‘plan for jobs’ has failed to plan for the jobs our country actually needs in the places that need them most,” said Jonathan Reynolds MP, Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary.He added: “Just like their broken promises on rail, and their working-class dementia tax when it comes to jobs the government’s promises to the north and Midlands ring hollow.”Chancellor Rishi Sunak said last week that he was “so proud” that 100,000 young people have started Kickstart jobs. “I’ve seen first-hand how it has transformed people’s lives,” he said.Responding the NAO findings, a government spokesman said: “We acted quickly and decisively to establish Kickstart at the start of the pandemic when it was feared unemployment levels would more than double – as this report acknowledges.“The scheme has already delivered over 100,000 new life-changing jobs for young jobseekers on Universal Credit who were at risk of long-term unemployment and will continue to deliver opportunities for young people.” More

Boris Johnson has turned his back on pleas to provide safe routes for refugees to reach Britain from continental Europe, following the tragic deaths of 27 people attempting the perilous crossing of the English Channel by inflatable dinghy.Campaigners accused the government of being “complicit with the people-smugglers” by relying on security measures which force migrants into ever more dangerous routes to reach the UK.And a Tory peer and former senior adviser to the Foreign Office branded the UK’s approach to the small boats crisis “shameful”, saying the migrants were being treated as “nameless zombies” rather than “people like you and me”.French authorities said that 17 men, seven women and three children – mostly Kurds from Iran and Iraq – died in Wednesday’s disaster, which rescuers were told was caused by their flimsy craft being struck by a container ship. One of the women who died was pregnant.Home secretary Priti Patel told the House of Commons that “in terms of toughness… I have not ruled anything out” in her efforts to stem the growing flow of people crossing the Channel in small boats, which has surged to 25,776 so far in 2021, three times its level last year and more than ten times the 1,835 recorded in 2019.Ms Patel confirmed that she has authorised Border Force officers to use “push back” tactics to drive boats back towards France, and was continuing to explore the idea of “offshoring” the processing of asylum applications despite her failure so far to find a third country willing to house refugees outside the UK.In a phone call with French interior minister Gerald Darmanin, she made an offer of plain-clothes UK police or border officials to take part in joint patrols around the beaches used by people-traffickers to launch overcrowded boats. Operating without a warrant, officers would be able to assist with surveillance and tracking, but would have no powers of arrest, in order to get round Paris’s objections on sovereignty grounds to uniformed British agents being deployed on French soil.Ms Patel, who will travel to France on Sunday for an emergency summit of European nations called by Emmanuel Macron, also offered assistance with technology including automatic numberplate recognition, radar and sensors to be installed on the remote roads and dirt tracks used by smugglers to avoid detection as they deliver their human cargo to the coast. Mr Johnson wrote to the French president with a five-point package, including joint patrols on French beaches, more advanced technology, reciprocal maritime and aerial surveillance, intelligence-sharing and a bilateral returns agreement. “If those who reach this country were swiftly returned the incentive for people to put their lives in the hands of traffickers would be significantly reduced,” said Mr Johnson. “This would be the single biggest step we could take together to reduce the draw to Northern France and break the business model of criminal gangs.” Mr Macron has warned the prime minister not to “exploit a tragic situation for political ends” after Mr Johnson complained in the immediate aftermath of Wednesday’s horror that France had not done enough to crack down on gangs who were “getting away with murder”.But the president later said he was asking for “extra help” from the UK and hoped to “better integrate” cross-Channel operations against smuggling networks. A senior UK source told The Independent that the tragedy appeared to have triggered an acceptance in Paris that a shift in strategy is needed. British officials and law enforcement were travelling to France on Thursday evening to meet with their counterparts.The Commons heard calls from Tory MPs for the suspension of the Human Rights Act, offshore processing of asylum claims and physical interventions to turn back boats in the Channel. Former minister Sir John Hayes said: “People who voted to take back control have every right to ask the question: If you can’t protect the integrity of the borders, what can you control?”But humanitarian organisations said that the tragedy should be a spur for the government to move away from its punitive deterrence approach, and to ditch elements of Ms Patel’s Nationality and Borders Bill which would criminalise people fleeing persecution and give UK personnel immunity for breaching duties under International law to rescue those in distress at sea.“The deaths of 27 men, women and children trying to cross the English Channel are a tragic reminder that harsh migration policies do not work,” said Sophie McCann of Medecins Sans Frontieres.“Measures in this Bill are harmful, cruel and discriminatory. It will further push people into the hands of smugglers and could have irreversible and fatal consequences for people fleeing persecution and violence, as well as undermining basic human rights and contravening the UK’s legal obligations.”Zoe Gardner of the Joint Council for Welfare of Immigrants said the disaster should mark a “point of change” for the government.“When we try to close down routes for people to seek asylum, all we do is lose control of the situation and hand it over to the smugglers,” she said. “This government, this new bill that’s in front of Parliament right now, is complicit with the smugglers who are bringing people across the Channel.“Now is the time for the government to stop, turn around, completely change their approach, get their head out of the sand and give people ways to travel to the UK for the purpose of seeking asylum safely.”Amnesty International UK’s migrant rights director Steve Valdez-Symonds said the perilous Channel crossings were happening “because the Government provides no safe alternative”.And Tory peer Arminka Helic, who served as then foreign secretary William Hague’s special adviser after fleeing the 1990s war in Bosnia, said the approach of both London and Paris was “shameful”.“Don’t think of these people as these nameless zombies that are crossing different countries,” she told Times Radio. “They at some point had a home and their children went to school, they had a street that they lived in, they had friends and relatives, they probably played football just like you do.“They’re people just like us. Think of them as another human being and think of yourself as being lucky to have been born in this country because it could have been you, it could have been me, it could have been any one of us.”Mr Johnson’s official spokesperson said the prime minister believed that establishing safe routes for migrants to reach the UK from northern France would simply increase the “pull factor” attracting them to the Channel.And a government source told The Independent: “It would be completing the smugglers’ job for them, telling them ‘You go ahead and take the money and we’ll look after the most difficult part of the trip for you’.”Labour challenged Ms Patel to reopen the Dubs Scheme for resettling unaccompanied child migrants, which was closed in 2017 after helping only 480 of the promised 3,000 children. And shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds pointed to statistics published on Thursday showing that a new scheme intended to resettle 5,000 people a year had so far helped just 770.Ms Patel also came under pressure to name a date for the commencement of an operation to resettle 20,000 Afghans, announced in August as the Taliban took over the country but yet to assist a single vulnerable person.She told the Commons that there was no “silver bullet” solution to the problem, which would take a “Herculean effort” involving “addressing long-term pull factors, smashing the criminal gangs that treat human beings as cargo and tackling supply chains”. More

The Brexit heat is still firmly lodged on the government as negotiations and discussions around next steps continue.Only this week it emerged that before Brexit Britain’s chief Brexit negotiator warned that leaving the single market and customs union would cost £1,500 per person.Lord Frost is now among the hardest of Brexiteers in the government – arguing this week that the UK needs to ditch a European-style economy entirely.Meanwhile, French fishermen have said they plan to blockade the channel tunnel in protest at Britain’s refusal to issue them with work licences.The running dispute over the post-Brexit fishing rights is expected to boil over on Friday and cause even more disruption to UK supply chains.The channel tunnel is a vital artery and carried vast volumes of freight and passenger traffic between the continent and the UK.Not only that but in a week when 27 people died while trying to cross the English Channel, it is also clear that Britain leaving the EU’s sphere of cooperation has made it harder to police Britain’s sea border, not easier.So where does all this leave when it comes to the Brexit deal and what is likely to happen next?To answer some of your latest Brexit questions we have got a Brexit economics expert on hand.Victoria Hewson is the Institute of Economic Affairs’ Head of Regulatory Affairs and Research Associate. She will be on hand to answer your Brexit questions in the comments section below on Friday, 26 November, between 1-2pm.Victoria is a lawyer and practiced for 12 years in the fields of technology and financial services, before joining the Legatum Institute Special Trade Commission to focus on trade and regulatory policy. She has published work on the implications and opportunities of Brexit in financial services and movement of goods and the issues in connection with the Irish border. Before entering the legal profession Victoria worked for Procter & Gamble in the UK and Germany.Register to submit your question in the comments box under this article. If you’re not already a member, click “sign up” in the comments section to leave your question.Don’t worry if you can’t see your question – they will be hidden until Victoria joins the conversation to answer them.Then join us live on this page from 1-2pm as Victoria tackles as many of your travel queries as she can within an hour. More