Markus Andrews

Teachers and council leaders have criticised the government’s approach to school closures amid soaring cases of Covid-19, saying it has “no logic”. About a million primary school pupils in the areas hardest hit by coronavirus will not return to lessons as planned next week, and the expected staggered reopening of secondary schools in England will also be delayed.The announcement by the government on Wednesday, less than a week before the start of the new term, was described as a “last-minute mess” by teachers, who accused the government of failing to heed warnings from school leaders that remote learning may need to be implemented.In London, mayor Sadiq Khan said he was “urgently seeking clarification as to why schools in some London boroughs have been chosen to stay open”, while others “just down the road won’t”.Council leaders in the capital have also been critical of the government’s guidance. Danny Thorpe, the leader of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, which was threatened with legal action by the government earlier in December after it issued advice to schools to move to online learning for the last days of term, said London had been treated as “one area” throughout the pandemic and fragmenting it now would be “a massive step backwards in the boroughs’ combined efforts to fight the virus”.“In a case-by-case comparison, there appears to be no logic to how this list was brought together,” he said.“Kensington and Chelsea has one of the lowest infection rates for the whole of the capital, yet their children and young people are being afforded the extra protection that apparently Royal Greenwich students don’t need.“While we are very glad that they will benefit from these extra precautions, we can only speculate why this borough was included, yet with an infection rate more than 200 cases higher per 100,000, Royal Greenwich was not.”Richard Watts, the leader of Islington Council in north London, said: “We are now seeking urgent clarification from the government about why Islington’s primary schools are to reopen in the week of 4 January, while those in many other London boroughs will not reopen.“It is deeply frustrating that the government has made this announcement at the last minute, just days before the start of term, weeks after it was clear coronavirus cases were surging in London.”Philip Glanville, the mayor of Hackney in northeast London, said the area should be included on the list where primary schools do not have to reopen.Greenwich had 2,176 new cases recorded in the seven days to 26 December, Hackney and City of London had 2,217 and Islington had 1,499, according to Covid-19 rates compiled by the Press Association.By comparison, areas on the list included Kensington and Chelsea, which had just 768 new cases in the same period, while Richmond upon Thames had 1,219 and Hammersmith and Fulham had 1,097.Mr Khan said it was right to delay school reopening for the worst-hit areas but said council leaders, headteachers and governing bodies were not consulted about the decision.A list of 50 areas where it is expected that some primary schools will not open as planned to all pupils next week was published by the Department for Education and featured places in London, Essex, Kent, East Sussex, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire.There are 1.05 million children aged between four and 11 in these areas, according to analysis of population figures by PA.The figures may include some four-year-olds who have not started school or 11-year-olds who are no longer at primary school.Liz Keeble, a headteacher of a primary school in Basildon, Essex, said she learned from the television on Wednesday afternoon that her school would not reopen next week, before hearing from her bosses.“It’s a very difficult situation for everybody, these decisions are made right up to the wire,” she told BBC Breakfast.However, the education secretary said he is “absolutely confident” there will be no further delays to school reopeningsGavin Williamson moved to reassure teaching staff, pupils and parents the rescheduled staggered return dates for England would remain in place, despite concerns about safety and transmission rates among younger people.“We are absolutely confident that all schools are returning,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.“You’re going to see over 85 per cent of primary schools returning on Monday morning, you’re going to be seeing exam cohorts going back right across the country on January 11.”Asked if he can guarantee that, Mr Williamson said: “We are absolutely confident that is what is going to happen.” More

He is the newspaper editor who famously fell out with his source. A decade later, Alan Rusbridger’s personal feelings for Julian Assange, someone he described as “a narcissistic egomaniac”, have changed remarkably little. There is no indication Assange’s opinion of Rusbridger has altered much either.Yet, as the world awaits a court decision in London that will determine whether Assange, 49, is extradited to the US to face espionage charges that could land him in jail for 175 years, the former editor-in-chief of The Guardian has emerged as one of the most strident defenders of the WikiLeaks founder.He has said the US’s pursuit of Assange, aided by the British authorities, represents a threat to all journalists, and should alarm anyone concerned about defending free speech. “[The charges are] for things that were recognisably what journalists do. He had a great story, and he had a great source,” Rusbridger, 67, tells The Independent. “It is dangerous that they are trying to pick him off, and lock him up for a long time, on a story that leaps over any public interest hurdle.”He adds: “And it’s a shame people got hung up on whether he’s a real journalist, or the other things he does in his life which we may or may not like, and have sort of shrugged their shoulders at protesting the way they’re attacking him for things that journalists do, that will have big implications for journalists.”Assange’s relationship with The Guardian began in 2007, when Rusbridger says he started receiving documents and information from the Australian hacker. One of those documents allowed the newspaper to publish a story in August that year showing former Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi had been siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars and hiding them in foreign bank accounts. More

Stanley Johnson told broadcaster RTL on Thursday that he was in the process of “reclaiming” his French identity.“It is not a question of becoming French. If I understand correctly, I am French. My mother was born in France. Her mother was completely French, as was her grandfather,” he told RTL, which said Johnson is putting together a French citizenship request. “So for me it is a question of reclaiming what I already have.”The elder Johnson, 80, is a former member of the European Parliament who backed remaining in the EU in Britain’s 2016 membership referendum. He has since expressed support for his son as the prime minister led the U.K. out of the bloc.Once Britain leaves the EU’s economic embrace at 11 p.m. (2300GMT) on Thursday, Britons will lose the automatic right to live and work in the 27 EU countries, but those with dual nationality will still be able to do so.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekday“I will always be European. That is certain,” Stanley Johnson said. “You cannot tell the English: ‘You are not European.’ Europe is always more than the common market, more than the European Union. But having said that, yes, having a link like that to the European Union is important.” More

There will be no triumphant scenes, such as those in Parliament Square marking the UK’s political exit from the EU back in January, but Brexit supporters are determined to mark the moment the long, messy process finally becomes real on New Year’s Eve.Four-and-a-half years on from the referendum, Britain will exit the EU’s single market and customs union at 11pm on Thursday night.In no mood to find fault with the last-minute trade deal struck by Boris Johnson, Brexiteers told The Independent they will happily celebrate the final outcome at home.Former UKIP deputy chair Suzanne Evans – a former favourite of Brexit figurehead Nigel Farage before the pair fell out – said her own festivities will involve a bottle of “the beautiful Winbirri English sparkling wine”.
Lance Forman, a former Brexit Party MEP, has thought very, very carefully about his choice of drinks to mark the big moment at 11pm. “I shall pour myself two glasses of fizz – one French champagne and the other English sparkling. First, I shall drink the French to say goodbye and then the English, to say hello.”Emily Hewertson, a Brexit backer who rose to social media fame after appearing on BBC’s Question Time, said she wasn’t fussy about the origin of her tipple – and would open a bottle of Moët while breaking into patriotic song. “I’m gutted that we can’t celebrate in style due to Covid, but I will be popping open a glass of champagne and will have a gold old sing to Rule, Britannia,” she said. More

Boris Johnson’s Brexit trade deal with the EU has been branded the worst UK negotiation in at least 40 years by Tony Blair’s former chief of staff and the chief negotiator of the Good Friday Agreement.Jonathan Powell said that a series of British blunders allowed the EU to get its way “on every major economic point” in the negotiation, while the UK was left with “a few sops” on state aid and the role of the European Court of Justice.He urged Downing Street to learn from its missteps before embarking on proposed trade talks with countries like the US, as well as the “decades of permanent negotiation” with the EU which Brexit has made inevitable.Mr Powell, who was involved as a diplomat in negotiations on the return of Hong Kong to China and German reunification before taking a lead role in the Northern Irish peace process and later becoming David Cameron’s envoy to Libya, said the UK side made a series of fundamental errors in the Brexit talks.“I have spent the last 40 years involved in international negotiations of one sort or another, and I have never seen a British government perform worse than they did in the four years of negotiations that concluded with the Christmas Eve Brexit deal,” he said.“Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of Brexit, purely in terms of negotiating technique, it is an object lesson in how not to do it.”Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayUnder Theresa May, the government was wrong to trigger the formal Brexit process in 2017 before working out its own position, and wrong not to develop a strategic plan for the negotiations, he said.The UK “massively over-estimated the strength of our negotiating position” when dealing with its “larger and more powerful neighbour” and forfeited trust by threatening to renege on its agreement with Brussels on the Northern Ireland border, he said.As a result of these mistakes, Britain had to “back down every step of the way” in talks with EU negotiator Michel Barnier and was constantly confronted with self-inflicted deadlines by which it had to concede ground or face severe economic damage.Crucially, Johnson’s government “prioritised principles of sovereignty over economic interests”, putting “a theoretical concept we don’t actually want to use” ahead of practical benefits for the UK.“In any international agreement, from the Nato treaty to the Good Friday Agreement, a state limits its sovereignty, but it usually does so in return for practical benefits,” wrote Mr Powell.“With this agreement with the EU, we have done the opposite. “We have defended the theoretical possibility of doing things we don’t actually want to do, like lower our environmental standards or support failing industries, in return for giving up measures that would increase our prosperity.”The result was an agreement, sealed by Mr Johnson on Christmas Eve, ratified by parliament in the early hours of New Year’s Eve and due to come into effect at 11pm today, which delivers “mostly what the EU wanted”.“It is worth learning from these failures in negotiation strategy because we are embarking on a series of trade negotiations with countries around the world,” said Mr Powell. “If we want to do more than simply replicate existing agreements those countries have with the EU, we are going to have to do a lot better.” More

Like a separated couple still living together, Britain and the European Union spent 2020 wrangling and wondering whether they can still be friends.On Thursday, the U.K. is finally moving out. At 11 p.m. London time — midnight in Brussels — Britain will economically and practically leave the the 27-nation bloc, 11 months after its formal political departure.After more than four years of Brexit political drama, the day itself is something of an anticlimax. Lockdown measures to curb the coronavirus have curtailed mass gatherings to celebrate or mourn the moment, though Parliament’s huge Big Ben bell will sound the hour as it prepares to ring in the New Year.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson — for whom Thursday represents the fulfilment of his promise to “Get Brexit Done” — said the day “marks a new beginning in our country’s history and a new relationship with the EU as their biggest ally.”“This moment is finally upon us and now is the time to seize it,” he said after Britain’s Parliament approved a U.K.-EU trade deal overnight, the final formal hurdle on the U.K. side before departure.It has been 4 1/2 years since Britain voted in a referendum to leave the bloc it joined in 1973. The U.K. left the EU’s political structures on Jan. 31 of this year, but the real repercussions of that decision have yet to be felt, since the U.K.’s economic relationship with the bloc remained unchanged during an 11-month transition period that ends Thursday.After that, Britain will leave the EU’s vast single market and customs union — the biggest single economic change the country has experienced since World War II.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayA free trade agreement sealed on Christmas Eve after months of tense negotiations will ensure Britain and the 27-nation EU can continue to trade in goods without tariffs or quotas. That should help protect the 660 billion pounds ($894 billion) in annual trade between the two sides, and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that rely on it.But firms face sheaves of new paperwork and expenses. Traders are struggling to digest the new rules imposed by a 1,200-page deal that was agreed just a week before the changes take place.The English Channel port of Dover and the Eurotunnel passenger and freight route are bracing for delays, though the pandemic and the holiday weekend mean there will be less cross-Channel traffic than usual. The vital supply route was snarled for days after France closed its border to U.K. truckers for 48 hours last week in response to a fast-spreading variant of the virus identified in England.For now, freight companies are holding their breath. U.K. haulage firm Youngs Transportation is suspending services to the EU from Monday until Jan. 11 “to let things settle.”“We figure it gives the country a week or so to get used to all of these new systems in and out and we can have a look and hopefully resolve any issues in advance of actually sending our trucks,” said Youngs director Rob Hollyman.The services sector, which makes up 80% of Britain’s economy, doesn’t even know what the rules will be for business with the EU in 2021 — many of the details have yet to be hammered out. Months and years of further discussion and argument lie ahead as Britain a nd the EU settle in to their new relationship as friends, neighbors and rivals. Hundreds of millions of individuals in Britain and the bloc also face changes to their daily lives. After Thursday, Britons and EU citizens lose the automatic right to live and work in the other’s territory. From now on they will have to follow immigration rules and obtain work visas. Tourists won’t need visas for short trips, but new headaches — from travel insurance to pet paperwork — still loom for Britons visiting the continent.For some in Britain, including the prime minister, it’s a moment of pride, a reclaiming of national sovereignty from a vast Brussels bureaucracy.For others it’s a time of loss.Roger Liddle, an opposition Labour Party member of the House of Lords, said Brexit severed Britain from “the most successful peace project in history.”“Today is a victory for a poisonous nationalistic populism over liberal rules-based internationalism and it’s a very bad, and for me very painful, day,” he said.That sentiment was echoed by France’s Europe minister, Clément Beaune.“It’s a day that will be historic, that will be sad,” he told broadcaster LCI.”But we also have to look toward the future. A number of lessons must be drawn from Brexit, starting with lies, I think, that were told to the British. And we will see that what was promised — a sort of total freedom, a lack of restrictions, of influence — I think will not happen.”Associated Press Writer John Leicester in Le Pecq, France, contributed to this story.Follow all AP stories on Brexit at https://apnews.com/Brexit More

Negotiators from Spain and the United Kingdom are in a race against the clock to clinch a deal on the post-Brexit future of Gibraltar a speck of British territory on the southern tip of the Spanish mainland.In the U.K.’s 2016 Brexit referendum, 96% of voters in Gibraltar supported remaining in the European Union. But they face the possibility of entering the New Year with tight new controls on what for decades has been an open border with the bloc.Officials from Madrid and London have until midnight (11 p.m. in the U.K.), when the Brexit separation comes into force, to find an agreement. Gibraltar wasn’t part of the Brexit trade deal between the EU and the U.K. which was announced on Christmas Eve. The territory was ceded to Britain in 1713, but Spain maintains its claim to sovereignty over it. That dispute has occasionally flared.Neither side has commented publicly on the talks this week. Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya said on Monday that keeping the issue out of the media spotlight was a sign of determination to find common ground. But she has warned that long lines of trucks could form if a hard border with police and customs checks is installed.A lot is riding on the outcome for Gibraltar, which needs access to the EU market for its tiny economy. The territory known as The Rock is home to around 34,000 people.Inside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayInside Politics newsletterThe latest news on Brexit, politics and beyond direct to your inbox every weekdayMore than 15,000 people live in Spain and work in Gibraltar, making up about 50% of its labor market.Follow all AP stories on Brexit at https://apnews.com/Brexit More

The year from hell is almost over. 2020 began with a mind-numbing argument about whether under-repair Big Ben would bong for Brexit. It ends with Big Ben finally restored and bonging again. The clock will chime at 11pm tonight, as the UK leaves the single market and customs union – not as a statement of triumph, but as a test for the timepiece tolling at midnight. It will be a sombre moment for many, not least because another 20 million people have been moved into the toughest Covid tier.Inside the bubbleDeputy political editor Rob Merrick on what to look out for today:Parliament will be back in recess and all will be quiet as the New Year approaches. In fact, after all the Brexit drama, the government has tabled a motion extending the recess until 11 January. Businesses will be enjoying their last-ever day of frictionless trade with the EU, before a blizzard of expensive paperwork and bumper-to-bumper queues in Kent becomes the new reality.Daily briefingLET THEM EAT CAKE: It’s almost over. Four and a half years after the referendum, Brexit finally becomes real at 11pm tonight. Boris Johnson may have to keep his celebrations muted this evening, but he is clearly feeling triumphant. Asked if his deal was a case of having your cake and eating it, the PM told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg: “You said it … this is a cake-ist treaty.” Johnson also claimed it was “wonderful” for British exporters – despite the new customs declarations they’ll be filling out from tomorrow. “They’ll now have the advantage that they’ll only have one set of forms they have to fill out for export to around the whole world … I think it’s a wonderful thing.” The deal was signed into law after MPs backed it by 521 to 73 votes. Keir Starmer made sure to criticise the “thin” agreement – warning of the “avalanche of checks, bureaucracy and red tape” – but 37 of his MPs still rebelled. And three of the rebels – Helen Hayes, Florence Eshalomi and Tonia Antoniazzi – all quit their junior frontbench positions.TIERS BEFORE BEDTIME: Another 20 million people have gone into tier 4, leaving 78 per cent of England under the highest restrictions. Johnson hailed the good news about the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine approval and said the government was “shifting heaven and Earth” to roll it asap. But the PM warned that we should not “in any way think that this is over”, since the virus is “really surging”. The Independent can reveal that critically-ill patients are being “evacuated” from the south of England to hospitals hundreds of miles away, as NHS bosses in London said the capital is set to run out of critical care beds within a week. NHS England will announce plans today to reopen the Nightingale Hospital in east London on 4 January. Matt Hancock told MPs two million people a week could soon be vaccinated, promising to work with AstraZeneca “make that happen”.ANOTHER FINE MESS: Another extremely predictable U-turn on schools, as education secretary Gavin Williamson said he was “determined to act to preserve lives”. Secondary schools across most of England will remain closed for another two weeks, although exam-year pupils will go back on 11 January. In a few pockets with the very highest infection rates, primaries would remain closed temporarily. The National Association of Head Teachers said it was yet another “last-minute mess”. Union leader Paul Whiteman said: “If we’d had the freedom to take action before the holidays, we might have been in a position to have more schools open … School leaders will be baffled, frustrated and justifiably angry.” Elsewhere, the Home Office has produced a gleeful end-of-year report card, telling The Telegraph more than 1,100 foreign criminals were deported this year. A Home Office official boasted that protests by Labour and “do-gooding” celebrities had failed. So there.NOT TOGETHER IN ELECTRIC DREAMS: Brexiteers aren’t in the mood to do so, but experts have spent the festive period picking apart the deal and have found some interesting stuff in there. It’s emerged that the EU secured the ability to shut off gas and electricity supplies if the UK tries to seize control of disputed fish stocks in future. The little-noticed clause allows Brussels to kick the UK out of its electricity and gas markets in June 2026, unless a fresh deal is agreed for fishing rights. “This is just another reason why the UK will likely struggle to take back control of any more of its waters in the years to come,” the Institute for Government told The Independent. Meanwhile, Labour’s Yvette Cooper said the loss of the Schengen Information System II database meant our security response was going to get “weaker” from Friday. She called for the police to be given more resources to adjust to the new normal.WHERE DID IT ALL GO GONG: Great news for the former attorney general Geoffrey Cox QC. The Tory MP received a knighthood for in the new year honours – despite his prominent role in last year’s shutdown of parliament. Remember when Cox branded parliament a “disgrace” during the prorogation debacle? He is knighted for his “parliamentary” service. The irony. Meanwhile, veteran Labour MP Angela Eagle will get to raise a glass after getting a damehood. What about our politicians’ new year celebrations tonight? No 10 is keeping quiet about Johnson’s plans, and the Brexit Party won’t get to hold a shindig in Parliament Square as they hoped. But Brexit backers are determined to have a good time at home, nevertheless. Former Brexit Party MEP Lance Forman told The Independent he would pour himself two glasses of fizz – one French champagne and the other English sparkling. “First I shall drink the French to say goodbye and then the English, to say hello,” he said.I HAVE A CUNNING PLAN: Donald Trump’s New Year’s Eve plans? The outgoing president is cutting short his Florida holiday to return to Washington a day earlier than expected, for reasons officials did not explain – so he won’t be partying at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach after all. Could it be he is scheming up one last big stunt next week? Republican senator Josh Hawley has revealed he would raise objections when Congress meets to affirm president-elect Joe Biden’s on 6 January. A group of Republicans in the Democratic-controlled House have also said they would object on Trump’s behalf during the count of electoral votes. Meanwhile, the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell shut the door on Trump’s push for $2,000 Covid relief checks – declaring Congress has provided enough pandemic aid. He said it would be “another fire hose of borrowed money”.On the record“Sovereignty does not mean isolationism, it does not mean we never accept somebody else’s rules – it does not mean exceptionalism.”Theresa May offers the PM a warning on partnerships with the EU.From the Twitterati“Whilst Margaret didn’t live long enough to see this day, I am sure that she is rejoicing in heaven. At last we ‘got Brexit done’!”Tory MP Sir David Amess is triumphant – celebrating with a cardboard cut-out of Thatcher…“The liars, the xenophobes, the tax dodgers (and the voters who more genuinely believed in it) have their Brexit … But, we, the internationalists, the believers in cooperation and truth WILL be back.”…while the Lib Dems’ Jonathan Banks is defiant.Essential readingJohn Rentoul, The Independent: Johnson hopes and Starmer fears that Brexit will go on foreverSandra Khadhouri, The Independent: We can reduce Brexit sorrow by building new connections with EuropeAnand Menon, The Guardian: Brexit is far from done – the deal is no game, set and matchJohn Cassidy, The New Yorker: How to Trump-proof the presidencySign up here to receive this daily briefing in your email inbox every morning  More