Brexit in a year | Divide and wait

The fishermen can’t wait, the public don’t want to wait, but Prime Minister Theresa May says she might need more time.

Just like Brexit itself, the question of how long the U.K. should spend getting ready before finally leaving the European Union’s political and legal structures is dividing the country. First there was the argument about the transition period, which was agreed to last week.

Brexit-backing fishermen aren’t happy that the U.K. won’t “take back control” of its waters – escaping the quotas of the Common Fisheries Policy – until Jan. 1, 2021. Yet it could have been worse for them, as May was exploring a longer transitional phase.

Now the question is what kind of future customs arrangements will apply to trade between the U.K. and the EU (and how will this help avoid a hard border with Ireland). May suggested earlier this week that designing a new customs regime and getting everything ready was turning out to be quite a time-consuming task.

“What’s become clear is that sometimes the timetables that have originally been set are not the timetables that are necessary when you actually start to look at the detail and when you delve into what it really is that you want to be able to achieve,” May said.

The prime minister’s candid comment to Tory MP Nicky Morgan, in evidence to the Commons Liaison Committee, might be seen as a hint that she’s planning something. Will the U.K. ultimately want a longer period of implementation once a new customs plan has been drawn up? Some Brexit watchers are already saying so, and May did little to suggest she’s in a hurry to switch to a new regime.

For 52-year-old Angela Dunstan, a store manager in Lancaster, Brexit “seems like it’s taking a long time” already. She’s one of more than 130 people in nine locations across the country whom Bloomberg reporters interviewed for a state-of-the-nation portrait of Britain with one year left until exit day, on March 29, 2019.

It’s back to the 80s for broadcasters without deal

For U.K.-based international broadcasters like Discovery Communications Inc. and Walt Disney Co. concerned about the consequences of Brexit, the European Union has some rather unhelpful advice: look to the 1980s.

If broadcasting isn’t covered by a negotiated free-trade deal between Britain and the EU, the fallback is the 1989 European Convention on Transfrontier Television, the European Commission said in a notice on March 19.

Signed in the very year in which Tim Berners-Lee wrote his proposal for what would become the World Wide Web, that convention probably isn’t enough to stop the broadcasters from relocating staff and operations to the EU. The treaty excludes seven member states, including Ireland and the Netherlands, lacks a mechanism for dispute settlement and of course doesn’t cover online streaming, which is a rapidly growing source of revenue for broadcasters.

“It’s a major problem,” said Alice Enders, a former economist for the World Trade Organization and head of research at media research firm Enders Analysis. “The online transmission point is a killer.”

At stake for the U.K. in resolving the broadcasting issue is about 1 billion pounds (USD1.4 billion) of annual investment on content, production facilities, wage costs and technology, according to research by media analysis firm Oliver & Ohlbaum Associates commissioned by the Commercial Broadcasters Association.

Akin to global banks, media companies that use London as their European hub are weighing relocating staff and operations due to Brexit. The likes of Sweden’s Modern Times Group AB and Time Warner Inc.’s Turner International currently broadcast channels into the EU using U.K. licenses, a permission that will end when Britain leaves the European single market.

The inadequate contingency plan provided by the 1989 convention has media companies fretting because there’s little precedent of the sector being included in free-trade deals. Broadcasting is one of the least liberalized sectors in global trade. Countries like France seek to limit what can be beamed in from overseas on cultural grounds and broadcasting was excluded from the EU’s recent trade accord with Canada.

Countries such as Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium are all trying to woo companies considering a move. The Irish broadcasting regulator met with company officials in London earlier this month, while the President of Estonia will make a direct pitch to media executive yesterday.

A transition agreement between the U.K. and the EU announced earlier this month gives the companies some breathing space, but some will still want to relocate operations well in advance of Britain’s departure to guarantee transmission of their channels, said Helena Brewer, chief executive of RedBerry Media Ltd, a consultancy.

“It’s not possible for all broadcasters to sit on their hands and play the waiting game,” Brewer said. “They are more likely to move to provide certainty.” Tim Ross, Bloomberg

Brexit latest

BORDER PATROL – The U.K. plans to hire an extra 1,000 customs and immigration staff to ensure the security of the country’s border after Brexit.The extra workers will be funded from an additional 395 million pounds (USD560 million) pledged to the Home Office, Philip Rutnam, the top civil servant at the department, told lawmakers on Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee yesterday [Macau time]. They’re supplementary to 300 new workers recruited in the fiscal year that’s about to end, he said.

BREXIT VOTE ‘CHEATED’ – Whistle-blower Christopher Wylie told a parliamentary committee in London that the 2016 referendum could have gone the other way if rules hadn’t been broken during the campaign. “I think it is completely reasonable to say that there could’ve been a different outcome in the referendum if there hadn’t been, in my view, cheating,” said Wylie, a former contractor at Cambridge Analytica who is now at the heart of a scandal over alleged misuse of Facebook data. Brexit campaigners have denied wrongdoing.

VOW OF SILENCE – The Conservatives’ chief Brexit champion outside the government, Jacob Rees-Mogg, said past examples of prime ministers relying on the votes of opposition lawmakers did not end happily. It was seen as a veiled warning to Theresa May not to use Labour to push through some kind of soft Brexit. Rees-Mogg also revealed that if the referendum result had been different, he might have become a Trappist monk, Alex Morales reports.

IRISH BREAKTHROUGH – The Times reports that a new proposal from the U.K. government for the Irish border question is expected to be announced “imminently.”

TERROR THREAT – Prime Minister May warns in a report that the threat to the U.K. from terrorism will stay at its current level of “severe” for at least another two years. She wants a close security partnership with the EU after Brexit.

BUS TIMETABLE – Boris Johnson’s NHS bus pledge might finally arrive. The foreign secretary has been pushing for May to give the health service a huge boost in funding, after painting a pledge to spend GBP350 million on the NHS instead of sending it to the EU on the side of a big red bus during the referendum campaign two years ago. It looks like she’s on board.

MIGRATION NATION – U.K. businesses have become reliant on European Union workers and are concerned about restrictions after Britain leaves the bloc next year, according to a government-commissioned study published this week. “Employers were fearful about what the future migration system might be,” the Migration Advisory Committee said in an interim report.

PAPERING OVER CRACKS – The European Commission is considering diverting profits made by the European Central Bank from printing bank notes to plug a hole in the EU’s long-term budget once U.K. leaves in 2019, the Financial Times reports.

MAY HOLIDAY – It’s been nearly a year since Theresa May took the fateful walking holiday with her husband in Wales during which she decided to call a snap general election. A lost majority later, she told MPs that despite the picturesque scenery, a follow-up visit might be difficult. “I do see the value of Welsh agriculture to the Welsh landscape quite often when I go walking in Wales,” she said. “Although, given the decision I took last year when I did that, I’m not sure many would welcome my reference to walk in Wales again.”