The London Times

Food prices to finance: what a no-deal Brexit could mean for Britain

If Theresa May fails to get her deal through parliament in January, the prospect of the UK leaving the EU without a deal becomes more likely. Here, Guardian journalists examine what a no-deal Brexit could mean for the country, sector by sector.

British and EU nationals

In a no-deal scenario, the rights of British nationals in Europe to work and reside there will fall away unless a member state has contingency plans in place. For this reason many Britons have taken the precaution of becoming citizens of the countries in which they are settled.

In its latest no-deal planning paper, published this month, the European commission urged member states to take a “generous” approach to protect the rights of 1 million Britons living in the bloc. It said governments should consider granting temporary residence permits to allow time for people to make applications to secure their long-term status.

Campaigners say the EU’s decision to leave the issue of citizens’ rights up to individual states means the 3.5 million EU citizens living in the UK and the 1 million Britons in Europe have been “abandoned”.

Concerns have been raised over the readiness of a British firm contracted by the government to run extra ferries in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Seaborne Freight was awarded a £13.8m contract this week to run a freight service between Ramsgate and Ostend.

The firm has never run a ferry service and a local councillor said it would be impossible to launch before Brexit.

The government said it had awarded the contract in "the full knowledge that Seaborne is a new shipping provider".

The Department for Transport said that "the extra capacity and vessels would be provided as part of its first services".

"As with all contracts, we carefully vetted the company's commercial, technical and financial position in detail before making the award," it added.

Jean-Claude Juncker has told the UK to “get its act together” in the run-up to the delayed House of Commons vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal.

The European commission president said the EU could not be expected to resolve the problems that continue to make it likely the British government will suffer a heavy defeat.

“I find it entirely unreasonable for parts of the British public to believe that it is for the EU alone to propose a solution for all future British problems,” Juncker said in a wide-ranging interview with the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. “My appeal is this. Get your act together and then tell us what it is you want. Our proposed solutions have been on the table for months.”

May is set to put her deal, including the contentious Irish backstop, to MPs in the week beginning 14 January, following a week of debate in the Commons.

The prime minister pulled a planned vote earlier this month when it became clear the government was likely to suffer a heavy defeat.

Senior Brexiteer minister Liam Fox says there is a 50-50 chance the UK will not leave the EU on 29 March if MPs reject Theresa May's Brexit deal next month. The international trade secretary told the Sunday Times it would only be "100% certain" if MPs back the deal.

He said if the deal is rejected, that "would shatter the bond of trust between the electorate and Parliament". MPs are due to vote on the withdrawal agreement in January, with the UK scheduled to leave the EU on 29 March.

The agreement negotiated by Mrs May with the EU - which sets the terms of the UK's exit and a declaration on future relations - will only come into force with a majority backing in Parliament. The Commons vote was due to be held on 11 December but the PM postponed it once it became clear it would be defeated by a large margin.

The former Ukip leader said that while a new political party is “not my first priority”, he insisted it is important that Brexiteers “prepare for what comes next”. Speaking to Express.co.uk from a Leave Means Leave rally in December, Mr Farage said: “There may well be a realignment of British politics coming out of all of this. The splits are so great now within the Conservative parliamentary party and out there in the country with many Labour voters too.

The Brexiteer has also come out to warn that the prospect of a second Brexit referendum is now more likely than ever before.

Mr Farage said: “I fear when it really comes to it, Parliament may well force us into a second referendum. Most of my colleagues say ‘Nigel, don’t say it – it’s all going to be fine’. But I’m not sure it is going to be fine.

“My message now is – let’s get ready just in case.”

Theresa May suffered a brutal blow this month when she failed to gain the backing of 117 MPs during a vote of confidence in her premiership.

The Brexit debate may have split the country amid fears of economic turmoil or concerns that the democratic will of the people is being usurped; but look on the bright side, at least it's provided plenty of material for the most creative contributors to British newspapers - the political cartoonists.

In the offices of the Evening Standard, Christian Adams has chronicled the increasingly chaotic events at Westminster, caricaturing the key players.

He scratches an outline of Theresa May using a nib and ink. "She has this stoop...little bump in the nose...always looks unhappy. Not surprising..."

You know you’ve hit rock bottom when the Germans mock you on primetime TV and the jokes are actually quite funny. Giving Britons this year’s “golden dumbass” prize, Oliver Welke, the German equivalent of Dara Ó Briain, describes how Theresa May “can’t get out of the EU and can’t even get out of her bloody car”, over pictures of Angela Merkel waiting embarrassedly outside her Berlin residency as the door of our prime minister’s limo fails to open.

“Just go!” the host yells. “Hard Brexit, soft Brexit, liquid Brexit, just fog off!” Next, he shows a cartoon of a man in a bowler hat repeatedly burning his hand on a hot stove, then stabbing his eye with a fork. The audience is falling about laughing. Welke’s Heute Show on ZDF may not have the cachet of the US equivalent, the Daily Show, but it is good at reflecting the moment.

Pollution in Delhi has reached its worst level this year in the past two days, prompting authorities to rate conditions as “severe to emergency”, which indicates the potential for a public health crisis.

Senior government officials said the main reasons for the increase in smog were unusually cold air, fog and a lack of wind.

Such conditions trap vehicle fumes and pollution from coal-fired power plants, industry and domestic fires over the city.

Data from the government’s Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) showed the air quality index, which measures the concentration of poisonous particulate matter, was an average of 449 on Monday, only slightly better than 450 on Sunday.

The holiday season and record warm temperatures don't normally go together.

But on Saturday, Environment Canada made note of double-digit readings across the Atlantic region that made the late-December day feel much warmer than usual.

The highest daily temperature was recorded at 17 C in Greenwood, N.S. — a whole degree warmer than the previous record set 69 years ago.

In all, Environment Canada reported broken records at 19 weather stations in the region.

The following are new maximum daily records compared to the old records set for Dec. 22. According to Environment Canada, these records are from a selection of historical stations in each area that were active during the time records were kept.

Nova Scotia

Brier Island: New record of 12.6 C/old record 11.1 C set in 2015.
Greenwood: 16.8 versus 15.6 set in 1949.
Halifax: 13.6 versus 13.3 set in 1949.
Port Hawkesbury: 12.9 versus 11.1 set in 1902
Yarmouth: 12.9 versus 11.7 set in 1949.

Nobody was happier to take credit for surging stocks than Donald Trump, who touted and tweeted each leg up. Now the bull is on life support and the search for its killer is on.

And while many on Wall Street share the president’s frustration with the man atop his markets enemies list, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, they say Trump himself risks making things worse with too much aggression when equities are one bad session away from a bear market.

“You would think that after coming off of the worst week for the markets since the financial crisis in 2008, he would look to create some stability,” said Chuck Cumello, CEO of Essex Financial Services. “Instead we get the opposite, with this headline and more self-induced uncertainty. This coming from a president who when the market goes up views it as a barometer of his success.”

During Donald Trump’s presidential campaign he talked often about his determination to win one particular war. A war that had been raging for years, he said. Specifically: the war on Christmas.

But despite Trump’s repeated claims that “people are saying Merry Christmas again” instead of the more inclusive “happy holidays”, there are several places where the Christmas greeting is absent: Trump’s own businesses.

The Trump Store, for example. Instead of a Christmas gift guide – which surely would be more in keeping with the president’s stated desire for the phrase to be used – the store offers a holiday gift guide.

Best for Britain, a group which campaigns for a second referendum, examined more than 20 Freedom of Information request responses from police forces across the UK and found a huge number of crimes committed in the name of Brexit.

In total, 500 crimes were committed from 2016 to 2018 with the words 'Brexit', 'EU' or 'referendum' contained in the corresponding police report. This includes a massive 253 cases reported by the Metropolitan Police alone between April and July 2016.

The British Transport Police logged 43 crimes involving Brexit, Hertfordshire Police were involved in 30 incidents and Police Scotland logged 75 incidents.

Some of the more severe crimes to have been committed include two rape incidents, affray, drug trafficking and a number of arsons.

Don’t panic! Don’t panic! You need not spoil your Christmas by worrying that Britain is walking the Brexit tightrope without a safety net because the defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, has announced that the armed forces are on standby.

Standing by to do what exactly? That is not clear. Penny Mordaunt, the international development secretary, is redeploying civil servants with expertise in disaster management to no-deal emergency planning. And Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has declared himself the world’s biggest purchaser of fridges so that the NHS has somewhere to keep stockpiles of critical medicines. He recently told colleagues that, in the event of a bad Brexit, he could not guarantee that people would not lose their lives. Choose Brexit – and you may die. They certainly didn’t put that on the side of their campaign bus.

Pharmaceutical organisations working with Whitehall to maintain medicine supplies in the event of a no-deal Brexit have signed 26 “gagging orders” that bar them from revealing information to the public.

Figures show that 16 drug companies and 10 trade associations have been asked to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) which prevent them from revealing any information related to contingency plans drawn up with the Department of Health and Social Care.

It means that the government has now asked at least 60 partners working on no-deal preparations across Whitehall to sign such agreements, angering transparency campaigners and MPs.

Melania Trump's cranberry topiary trees may have left some of her critics seeing red, but they turned out to be a Christmas hit — one of several new ideas the Trumps introduced this holiday season.

In a four-week stretch of 21 holiday parties, the president also did fewer official photo ops and largely froze out the media. But in time-honored tradition, though, politicos still used the celebrations to squeeze in some last-minute deal-making.

Many of the soirees unfolded under the threat of a partial government shutdown that took effect Saturday.

A stalemate with Congress over Trump's demand for $5 billion to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border forced the president to delay his plan to shift the merrymaking to his Florida estate on Friday. He remained in Washington while his wife and son, Barron, flew to Palm Beach without him.

The red trees featured on a green carpet along the East Wing colonnade turned out to be quite the attraction: Pedestrian traffic jams formed as Trump's many party guests clamored to be photographed in front of the unusual holiday landscape.

WOW Air has confirmed it is axing service to at least four more U.S. cities as it restructures amid a cash crunch.

“We have decided to stop serving Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York JFK and Dallas/Forth Worth, so they will not feature in our schedule for 2019,” WOW Air spokeswoman Svanhvít Fridriksdóttir said in a statement to USA TODAY’s Today in the Sky blog. “Having said that we will continue to serve our other destinations in North America.”

It remains to be seen if WOW will be able to do that. The Icelandic carrier says it will cut its fleet nearly in half, going from 20 planes to just 11 as it seeks to cut costs and raise cash. The fleet reduction has led to speculation about cuts to other U.S. destinations.

WOW made its latest downsizing move as it entered into talks with Indigo Partners to take an undisclosed stake in the carrier. Indigo has developed a successful niche in the budget airline space. It owns Frontier in the USA and has stakes in a number of other global discount carriers.

More than 164,000 pounds of raw ground turkey have been recalled amid an ongoing salmonella outbreak that has now sickened 216 people since November, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Friday.

Jennie-O Turkey Store Sales, Inc. said Friday that it is recalling ground turkey packaged in 1, 2.5 and 3 pound containers. The affected products are labeled as ground turkey, taco seasoned ground turkey, Italian seasoned ground turkey and Stater Bros. all natural ground turkey. The products come in several lean/fat proportions.

The recall comes as 52 new illnesses associated with the salmonella outbreak were announced. In total, 216 people in 38 states have been sickened since the CDC began tracking in November 2017. Eighty-four people have been hospitalized and one person has died, the agency reports.

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has led criticism of Jeremy Corbyn after the Labour leader re-committed his party to going ahead with Brexit if he became prime minister.

In a newspaper interview, Mr Corbyn stressed that even if Labour won a snap general election in 2019 he would seek to "go back and negotiate" a Brexit deal with the EU in time for the UK to still leave the bloc on 29 March next year.

He also failed to commit Labour to backing Remain if there were a second EU referendum.

Mr Corbyn's refusal to budge from his party's manifesto commitment to respect the result of the 2016 Brexit vote has prompted anger from among both his party's MPs and high-profile supporters.

Rowling mocked Mr Corbyn's position - and his supporters - in a biblical-style series of Twitter posts she titled "The Visitation of The Corbynites".

Jeremy Corbyn is facing a storm of criticism from Labour activists and MPs after suggesting he would press ahead with Brexit if the party won a snap general election.

In a sign that he is losing backing among overwhelmingly pro-Remain Laboursupporters, Corbyn was also accused of betraying the party membership by appearing reluctant to back the idea of supporting Remain in a second referendum.

The first signs of a serious internal revolt from party members on the left, who helped propel him to the leadership, came after Corbyn gave an interview to the Guardian in which he suggested he thought Brexit should go ahead and said EU state-aid rules would prevent a Labour government intervening to support UK industries.

The Christmas decorations are up, the fridge is stocked and we are nearly ready to relax and overindulge on this most wonderful time of year.

But those festive treats and knick-knacks can be harmful to our pets - with one vet saying she treats three times the number of animals in December than any other month.

BBC News spoke to the vets who treat our beloved, if slightly gluttonous, pets when things go wrong.

The London Times

Food prices to finance: what a no-deal Brexit could mean for Britain

British and EU nationals

No-deal Brexit ferry contract sparks concerns

UK needs to get its act together before Brexit vote, Juncker says

'Brexit 50-50' if May's deal rejected, says Liam Fox

Farage reveals exactly when he'll launch NEW pro-Brexit party - 'It’s entirely possible!'

Brexit, May and Trump gave political cartoonists plenty to draw on in 2018

Brexit has made the UK a global joke. How will we rebuild our reputation?

Fears of health crisis as Delhi suffers worst air pollution this year

Record-breaking temperatures set across Atlantic region

Nova Scotia

Trump's Two-Year Stock Honeymoon Ends With Hunt for a Betrayer

Trump's 'Merry Christmas' pledge fails to manifest at his own businesses

At least 500 Brexit-related crimes since referendum, figures show

Bluff, blackmail and brinkwomanship: the ‘madman theory’ of no-deal Brexit

Drug firms preparing for no-deal Brexit told to sign 'gagging orders'

Melania Trump's controversial red trees a hit at White House Christmas parties

WOW Air dropping four more U.S. destinations

Latest ground turkey recall: 164,000 more pounds impacted in ongoing salmonella outbreak

JK Rowling leads criticism of Jeremy Corbyn over Brexit with biblical tweets

Corbyn faces furious Labour backlash over backing Brexit

The vets who treat poorly animals at Christmas