May refuses to back Boris Johnson's claim there will be 'Brexit dividend' - Politics live

Netflix has distanced itself from claims that British holidaymakers will lose access to its shows while on vacation in Europe after Brexit.

The question arose three days before an EU “portability” regulation on streaming films and TV comes into force. From 1 April, new rules mean it will be easier to watch films or download books and music using domestic versions of streaming services, while on holiday in the EU.

On Wednesday the European commission issued a technical notice on copyright, which stated that after Brexit UK residents “will no longer benefit from their digital content subscriptions when travelling to the EU”.

The notice generated this headline in the Daily Express: “Brexit PUNISHMENT: Britons blocked from using Netflix on holiday as petty EU cracks down.”

On Netflix, the consequences may not be very dramatic. British residents on holiday in any EU27 country may have to use the local version of Netflix, rather than the UK version, a privilege conferred on EU citizens under the new portability regulation.

Netflix poured cold water water on the notion that consumers would lose out. The company argues that users can already get the local service wherever Netflix is available, stressing that popular programmes such as The Queen or Black Mirror are available everywhere.

Claims about lost access to BBC TV iPlayer have proved misplaced. The TV streaming service, unlike iPlayer radio, is not available outside the UK and that will not change as a result of the EU regulation. A BBC spokesman said:

We are interested in being able to allow UK licence fee payers to access BBC iPlayer while they are on holiday, and welcome the EU regulation to help make this feasible. There are complex technical issues to resolve which we are investigating and it will be dependent on what legislation is in effect in the UK in the future.

British consumers may see changes after Brexit, as companies will have to apply across the EU27 for licences. The commission notice states: “a provider of online content services established in the United Kingdom will need to comply with the rules of the relevant EU member state or states where it wishes to offer services to its subscribers – including the need to clear all relevant rights for that or those member states.”

The rules are likely to come into force in 2021, after a Brexit transition period, although the EU notice is ambiguous on timing.

Netflix aside, the British government still faces a daunting set of issues to negotiate on intellectual property.

A recent paper by an industry body, the Alliance for Intellectual Property, called for “urgent action” to prevent cliff-edge risks. The group, which represents entertainment and publishing industries, as well as anti-counterfeiting groups, said:

There are still a number of concerns for which clear solutions have not yet been explicitly or even implicitly identified. In order to avoid significant damage to IP-rich industries who depend on a world-class (and reciprocal) IP protection and enforcement regime – and to turn the laudable commitments government has made above into practical proposals which can gain consensus from the EU – urgent consideration must be given to such ‘cliff-edge’ risks.

The Ministry of Housing has published right to buy sales statistics today. Under the government’s one-for-one policy, councils which sell a council house are supposed to replace them with an affordable property within three years. As Inside Housing’s Peter Apps points out, the figures show that the government is failing to meet this target.

A government U-turn on welfare will mean 18 to 21-year-olds are automatically entitled to claim housing benefit again, the Press Association reports. Work and pensions secretary Esther McVey said the change “will reassure all young people that housing support is in place if they need it”. Around 10,000 young people would have been hit by the policy to end automatic entitlement for the housing element of universal credit, which was announced by David Cameron and George Osborne in 2014. It was introduced in April 2017 and came with a series of exemptions, with parents, carers and those who could not live with their parents still able to claim. Figures published in January showed in the first three months of the policy, just 90 people had claims turned down - some 4% of 2,090 that applied.

In a press statement McVey said:

We want every young person to have the confidence to strive to fulfil their ambitions. For those young people who are vulnerable or face extra barriers, universal credit provides them with intensive, personalised support to move into employment, training or work experience; so no young person is left behind as they could be under the old benefits system.

As we roll out universal credit, we have always been clear we will make any necessary changes along the way. This announcement today will reassure all young people that housing support is in place if they need it.

Johanna Baxter, who used to sit on Labour’s national executive committee, has joined those like Labour MP Ian Austin (see 2.22pm) saying it is not enough for Christine Shawcroft just to step down as chair of Labour’s disputes panel.

The Labour MP Kevin Baron says Shawcroft should no longer sit on the party’s disputes panel.

And Progress, the Blairite group within the Labour party, is backing a petition saying Shawcroft should resign from Labour’s national executive committee.

Theresa May has given an interview to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, and the BBC have sent out a transcript. Here are the main points.

• May said said leaving the EU would free up money that could be spent on the NHS but she refused to back Boris Johnson’s claim that there would be a “Brexit dividend”. Johnson, the foreign secretary and leading Vote Leave campaigner, repeated this claim just yesterday.

Asked about this, May said:

Of course, when we leave the European Union we’re no longer going to be sending spending vast sums of money, year in and year out, sending that money to European Union. So there will be money available here in the UK for us to spend our priorities , priorities like the NHS and schools.

But Kuenssberg asked three times if there would be a “Brexit dividend” and in her final question she asked specifically if May would used this phrase. May replied:

Look, there’s going to be money that, otherwise we would have been sending to the European Union that we’re going to be able to spend on priorities in the UK.

This is not just semantic trivia. The term “Brexit dividend” implies that there will be a net gain to the UK from leaving the EU. This is a key Brexiter claim, but one that is disputed by most mainstream economists (as far as they can make an assessment, which is only for the short and medium term). Leaving the EU will definitely free up money that otherwise would have been spent on EU contributions for services like the NHS, but economists say this will not compensate for the revenue lost from lower tax receipts resulting from lower growth. It sounded as if May was refusing to say there will be a “Brexit dividend” because she doesn’t believe it exists.

• May refused to rule out putting up taxes to fund the spending increase for the NHS she announced on Tuesday. Asked specifically about the possibility of a tax increase, she just said:

We will, as part of a normal processes, we will look at the funding. But we’ve got to look at the long term plan. You don’t say this is what we’re going to spend. We say, actually. Let’s look at that long term plan. We’re already putting extra money into the NHS. Let’s look at what is needed for that multi year funding settlement.

• She said Britain would be “different” after Brexit. She also said that there were “real opportunities” for the UK, but, when asked if she thought Brexit would be worth it, the most interesting word she used was “different”. This is her reply in full:

I think there are real opportunities for the United Kingdom. I think it’s a bright future out there. And yes, I think Brexit is going to deliver a country that will be different, but I think there are real opportunities for us as an independent nation for the future.

On the “different” point, a lot of diehard remainers would agree. Perhaps May is united the country?

• She refused to say if she had changed her mind about Brexit. When she was asked this question, the “different” line came out again (suggesting very strong that she hasn’t). She said:

I campaigned for remain, but I, as I said at the time, it was a very balanced decision. I said, you know, some were predicting great problems if people voted for Brexit. I said the sky won’t fall in, but it will be different and it will be different. Now, what I’m charged with as prime minister is delivering on that Brexit vote.

The DUP has also issued a press notice to mark Brexit now being just one year away. Here is an extract from the statement from the DUP MEP Diane Dodds, who says “pragmatic solutions” to the Irish border problem do exist.

Ensuring a sensible Brexit for our province requires going beyond simply defending Northern Ireland’s current position. This means finding practical solutions to the emotive issue of the border, which has won many hearts but thus far very few open or practical minds. It is worth remembering that the Irish Republic inspects only 1% of goods reaching their shores from outside the EU - second only to Gambia in the fewest physical checks. Given the UK commitment to lift and shift EU rules into UK law it is hard to see how Brexit could therefore equate to the draconian type of border predicted in some quarters.

In practice it makes little sense for the Irish government to adopt a single-track focus of addressing the land border if far more significant economic frontiers at places like Holyhead and Dover are not resolved. An estimated two-thirds of Irish exports to the continent, including many perishable goods, move via the UK land-bridge. 39% of all Irish containers transit Northern Ireland. Drawing a border in the Irish Sea wouldn’t make their movement any easier. That is why we should look at the border issue in the context of the overall relationship. An ambitious free trade deal covering all goods and separate customs partnership can remove the vast majority of friction as a starting point - at every land, sea and air border crossing. In effect, the fewer trade barriers, the fewer the solutions required.

Pragmatic solutions do exist but they hold relevance beyond simply the Northern Ireland border. Respected international customs expert Lars Karlsson has given evidence in the European parliament and at Westminster. His message very clearly is that a ‘smart border’ concept involving digital technology, electronic declarations and trusted trader schemes can be implemented at every UK-EU border and would work under any political outcome.

Moving away from the notion of special treatment to smart solutions can help to make commitments to Northern Ireland operational in a way that respects both internal markets.

Here is the Karlsson report (pdf) Dodds is referring to. It was commissioned by the European parliament’s constitutional affairs committee. Brexiters often cite it approvingly, although the proposals it advocates would involve some border controls, and therefore it does not on its own provide a solution to the Irish border problem.

Jean-Claude Piris, the former head of the EU’s legal service, was also speaking at the UK in a Changing Europe event this morning. He said that negotiating phase one of Brexit was “the easy part” and that he did not know how the UK and the EU would be able to reach agreement on all the remaining issues in just seven months. The UK might have to consider revoking article 50, ie, staying in the EU beyond 29 March 2019, he argued.

Piris recently set out this argument in an article for Prospect. Here’s an extract. Piris says that, even if the UK and the EU can agree a withdrawal agreement by the autumn, it will contain unresolved issues (making it what Emily Thornberry described yesterday as a ‘blah, blah, blah’ divorce). He goes on:

Experts in negotiations of similar agreements think that the 21 month transition, even after informal discussions from now until March 2019, will not be enough for this [resolving all the outstanding issues]. Their advice is to extend the 21 month period by at least two years, or make it renewable. However, this is not legally possible. The agreed transition period does not provide for any renewal. Article 50 is a single-barrelled gun. The EU will not have the legal power to extend the transition period after Brexit.

A failure to have an FTA [free trade agreement] agreed and signed in such a short time, necessary to permit its provisional application, would thus not be surprising. This would entail a cliff edge on 1st January 2021. Again, there is no reason for optimism. The economic consequences would be severe. Political effects could be graver still and long-lasting. As written recently by a Danish diplomat “Britain’s global role depends on being a European power. This could be coming to an end—fast.”

Is there a way out? Yes. The British parliament could find a way. Legally, on 29th March 2017, Britain decided to “notify the European Council of its intention” to leave the EU. Legally, nothing prevents Britain, in accordance with its constitutional requirements, from changing its intention and withdrawing article 50. The current situation would prevail. The UK would remain an EU member State, with its current opt outs.

Is that unrealistic? It is up to the British parliament and people to decide. They are better informed today on what Brexit means than they were in June 2016.

A Labour constituency party near Glasgow has issued a strongly-worded letter to Scottish Jewish leaders stating its members feel a “deep sense of shame” about the anti-semitism row splitting the party.

Eastwood CLP, which covers a large part of East Renfrewshire and Scotland’s largest Jewish community in Giffnock, alleged anti-semitism “is present to an unacceptable level … at all levels” of the party. It was “intolerable” that Jewish leaders felt so strongly about it they needed to demonstrate outside Westminster and publish an open letter.

Their intervention, endorsed by the Labour group leader on East Renfrewshire council, Paul O’Kane, will be seen as a barely concealed attack on Jeremy Corbyn and his allies.

Scottish Labour sources said a previous internal feud over anti-semitism, culminating when Ken Livingston was challenged in April 2016 by the Labour MP John Mann over Livingston’s claims that Zionists cooperated with Hitler, damaged Labour support in several key Scottish seats during the 2016 Holyrood elections, including East Renfrewshire.

Labour’s Eastwood candidate, Ken Macintosh, came third behind the Tories and the SNP, despite being a favourite to win the seat. Macintosh was elected to Holyrood on the regional list, and is now Holyrood’s presiding officer.

Eastwood (later renamed East Renfrewshire for Westminster elections) was formerly represented at Westminster by Jim Murphy, a Scottish secretary under Gordon Brown’s premiership, and is one Scottish Labour’s most centrist, anti-Corbyn CLPs. Its officials include Blair McDougall, former campaign director of the cross-party anti-Scottish independence campaign Better Together.

The letter said:

It is intolerable to us that leaders of the Jewish faith are placed in a position that they feel they have to issue an open letter dealing the hurt our party has caused, and lead a public protest before a meeting of the parliamentary Labour party.

We do not believe that anti-Semitism exists only in pockets, nor that it is a matter of a few bad apples, within the party. We believe that it is present to an unacceptable extent in the party at all levels. We are sorry for this.

In a further statement, Eastwood said:

The motion [passed by the CLP] commits the CLP to hold the national party to account in its work to deal with anti-semitism, to setting up training for local members to enable us to work more effectively on the issue, to adopting a clear definition of anti-semitism to work to, and most importantly to engage with the local Jewish community.

Theresa May told LBC in an interview that she was looking forward to Brexit. Asked if she was looking forward to Brexit next year, and whether it would be like a second Christmas, she replied:

Yes, I am looking forward to it because it presents great opportunities for the United Kingdom.

Here are the main points from what Tony Blair said at the UK in a Changing Europe event. He was not giving a speech, but was instead taking part in a Q&A with Prof Anand Menon, director of UK in a Changing Europe.

• Blair said the Labour plan for a Commons vote that could lead to a renegotiation of the Brexit withdrawal deal was unrealistic. Labour has put great stress on its demand of a “meaningful vote” on the final Brexit deal and, as Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, said in a speech this week, it wants to ensure that if MPs vote down the deal, they can get ministers to go back to Brussels to renegotiate. But Blair said this was unrealistic. He said:

You could say [if MPs vote down the deal in the autumn] the government has then got to go back and renegotiate. But I just don’t think that’s realistic. If you manage to get all 27 European governments and parliaments and the European parliament behind it, it strikes me as unlikely you can renegotiate. I think the question would have to be whether you prefer this deal to staying.

On this point, Blair is siding with Starmer’s Tory opposite number, the Brexit secretary David Davis, who has also suggested there is not much chance of a renegotiation succeeding. Blair is in favour of parliament having a meaningful vote. But he wants a vote that would lead to the public having the final say in a second referendum.

• He said the rest of the world does not believe the claims ministers make about Britain’s future outside the EU. He said:

This is only anecdotal, but I worry about the spirit that we have given off since Brexit. One of the things you do as a former prime minister is you visit different parts of the world, you see different people ... We shouldn’t kid ourselves - the rest of the world do not see this as globally ambitious Britain. They really don’t. They think, ‘Brits, you guys were always common sense people’.

And that’s what they think. They may all be wrong. And if we leave, we will have to prove them wrong. But there is a really quite fundamental mismatch between the rhetoric the prime minister and other ministers are using around this, and how the rest of the world sees it. If you are in China, do you think it is sensible for Britain to leave the European Union?

Blair was referring to comments like Theresa May’s today about the UK having “real opportunities” outside the EU. (See 10.16am.) But a better example might be Boris Johnson’s column in today’s Daily Express. In it, the foreign secretary says:

Our national journey out of the EU is almost over - and a glorious view awaits.

• He said that he thought both main parties were wrong to argue that the EU referendum result could not be overturned. This is from the Telegraph’s Peter Foster.

• He said as a former prime minister he did not accept that the EU was stopping the UK from making its own laws. He said:

And when we talk about control over our laws - one of the things I say to the Brexit people is, I was prime minister for 10 years, I can’t remember a single law I thought I’ve really got to pass in Britain, but I can’t because Europe is stopping me. Or one that Europe made me pass.

And, by the way, I look back over the last seven years of Queen’s speeches and budgets and financial statements, with the exception of a few things around VAT, not once does the prime minister or the chancellor get up and say, ‘You know what, we do have this amazing new future but we can’t get there because Europe is stopping us.

Blair said this was one reason why, if Brexit did happen, people would end up feeling disillusioned, because it would not bring the benefits that were promised.

• He defended the decision of his government not to introduce transitional controls when the Eastern European countries joined the EU, giving their workers free movement access to the UK.

• He claimed the EU leaders might be willing to allow the UK some form of emergency brake on immigration to help keep it in the EU.

This is an argument he made at length in a Today programme interview earlier this month.

• He refused to discuss what he thought of the prospects of a Corbyn government.

Theresa May started her one year to Brexit tour of the UK at a textile factory in Ayr, Scotland. She said Brexit provided “real opportunities” for the UK. She said:

I believe there are real opportunities for the United Kingdom when we leave the European Union, we are starting now the negotiations on what our trade arrangements and arrangements overall in our economic partnership will be with the EU 27 once we leave.

I believe we can negotiate a good agreement which is tariff-free and as frictionless trade as possible, so we maintain those markets in the EU, but also that we open up markets around the rest of the world.

Brexit provides us with opportunities. I want to see us coming together, the four nations across the United Kingdom we have a very a strong union, that is in our interests and it is in our interests to come together and really seize these opportunities for the future.

At his UK in a Changing Europe event Tony Blair dismissed May’s Brexit policy as “cakeism”. He said there was an inherent tension between wanting to be out of the single market and wanting to have frictionless trade with the EU. He said that when the government says it wants trade to be as frictionless as possible, it is not resolving the dilemma, just stating it.

Blair has now finished his talk. I will post some highlights shortly.

And Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, was on the Today programme too. When asked about the transition period being extended beyond 31 December 2020, the date it is due to end, he said that he was not in favour and that this was “not likely to happen”, but he did not rule it out. He claimed the EU were ruling it out, but he did not say the UK government were definitely ruling it out too.

A lot of Brexitologists do think an extension will eventually be necessary. The Institute of Directors has spoken about the need for an “adjustment period” after the transition and the Telegraph’s Europe editor Peter Foster recently said in an article (paywall): “The politicians won’t want to talk about it, but the reality is that a “post-transition, transition” is almost inevitable.” Theresa May’s comment on Tuesday, when she hinted that setting up new post-Brexit customs arrangements would take much longer than the government originally expected, will intensify speculation that Foster is right.

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, has been giving interviews this morning. With the Labour antisemitism crisis now leading to the resignation of a key Corbyn ally from her post as chair of Labour’s disputes panel, and shadow cabinet ministers contradicting each other over one aspect of the party’s stance on Brexit, McDonnell had quite a lot to tidy up. Here are the main points he made.

• McDonnell said that Emily Thornberry’s suggestion yesterday that Labour would “probably” vote for the final Brexit withdrawal deal was just “sarcasm”. Asked about the shadow foreign secretary’s comments, McDonnell said:

[Thornberry] responded [to a question] in a personal way with a level of good old-fashioned British sarcasm and said exactly as she said ‘look, for goodness sake, you know what our position is’. She was being sarcastic in Emily’s style.

• McDonnell said Labour was “nowhere near” being able to vote for the withdrawal deal. Asked if Labour vote for the deal in the autumn, after it has been negotiated and when it is due to be put to parliament, he said:

What was said very clearly, and you’ve got it from me and you had it from Keir Starmer and you’d get it from Jeremy as well as Emily, we have six tests. At the moment those tests are nowhere near being met ...

I think if the government are sensible and they negotiate properly, and if it was us negotiating, we would get a deal that met the six tests. But, at the moment, they are nowhere near that.

• McDonnell implied Iain McNicol, who has just stood down as Labour’s general secretary, was partly to blame for the party’s failure to tackle antisemitism. He said the party should have implemented measures to deal with antisemitism in the party “ages ago”. He went on:

We launched the Chakrabarti report. They have not been implemented effectively. We’ve now brought in a new general secretary. They will be implemented.

He said a recommendation in the Chakrabarti report for a legal panel of advisers to be established was not implemented. “It will happen now,” he said.

McNicol became Labour’s general secretary in 2011 and was never fully trusted by Jeremy Corbyn and his allies who believed (rightly) that McNicol was not an enthusiastic supporter of the party leader. He resigned this year after Corbyn supporters secured a clear majority on Labour’s national executive committee (NEC), making his position vulnerable. The Labour MP John Mann responded to McDonnell’s comment by saying he hoped the Commons home affairs committee would invite McNicol to give his side of the story.

• McDonnell said Labour would not tolerate antisemitism. He said:

Any form of anti-Semitism will not be tolerated in our party. We are bringing forward mechanisms. They should have been implemented ages ago but they will be now under the new general secretary. We will kick out anyone who has perpetrated anti-Semitism or any form of racism, for that matter.

• He refused to back calls for Christine Shawcroft to resign from Labour’s NEC. Shawcroft resigned as chair of the NEC’s disputes panel after it emerged she backed a council candidate suspended for alleged antisemitism. McDonnell said Shawcroft had not “properly” looked at the evidence in the case and that “as soon as the evidence was pointed out to her, she stood down at Jeremy’s request, quite rightly so.” But when asked if she should stand down from the NEC, he replied:

Well, no, Jeremy has asked her to stand down as the chair of the disputes committee. She’s not at the head of that committee [the NEC]. It is an elected position and it is up to the electorate to decide whether or not she should be elected again.

The Labour MP Wes Streeting says she should resign from the NEC.

HuffPost’s Paul Waugh says the Corbynites do not want Shawcroft to resign from the NEC because she would be replaced by someone more centrist, Eddie Izzard.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Tony Blair, the former prime minister, speaks at a UK in a Changing Europe conference on Brexit. Prof John Curtice, the psephologist, and Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, are also speaking later in the day.

9.30am: Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

After 11.30am: MPs begin a backbench debate on autism.

During the day Theresa May is also touring the UK to mark Brexit now being just one year away. She starts in Scotland before going to Newcastle, then Belfast, then Barry in south Wales, and ending in west London.

As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I plan to post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.

You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.

Here is the Politico Europe round-up of this morning’s political news from Jack Blanchard. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’ top 10 must reads.

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