Brexit news latest – British patrol boat boards Irish trawler in first post-Brexit fishing clash

WHAT DOES BREXIT MEAN FOR THE UK’S SECURITY?

Boris Johnson has told The Sun he is “absolutely confident” the deal “protects our police co-operation, protects our ability to catch criminals and to share intelligence across the European continent in the way that we have done for many years”.

He added: “I don’t think people should have fears on that score, or indeed on any score.”

The PM said the deal would prioritise the “safety and security of its citizens” – and claimed it offers “streamlined co-operation” on law enforcement to bring criminals to justice.

The latest Brexit documents reveal the UK and EU will work together on security “when in their mutual interest”.

Either side will be expected to share best practices and continue to cooperate, officials say.

WHAT’S CHANGED AFTER BREXIT – IN BRIEF

The UK is free to set its own trade policy and can negotiate deals with other countries – now that we’re out of the EU.

Businesses who trade within the EU and holidaymakers will feel the effects now a Brexit deal has officially been struck and freedom to work and live between the UK and the EU has also come to an end.

In 2021, UK nationals will need a visa if they want to stay in the EU more than 90 days in a 180-day period.

EU migrants who come to Britain from January 1 will not be able to claim benefits – including Universal Credit – for five years.

Talks are being held with the US, Australia and New Zealand – countries that currently don’t have free trade deals with the EU.

HOW MPs VOTED ON THE POST-TRADE BREXIT DEAL

NEW BREXIT RULES MEAN EU MIGRANTS WON’T BE ABLE TO CLAIM BENEFITS FOR FIVE YEARS

EU migrants who arrive in the UK after Brexit will not be able to claim benefits – including Universal Credit – for five years.

Work and Pensions Secretary Thérèse Coffey announced the post-Brexit benefits system this week, which means all migrants are treated the same – no matter where they arrived from.

Under the new rules, child benefits will no longer be paid out for kids not living in the UK.

Ms Coffey said: “It is both right and fair that people making the UK their home should pay into the tax system for a reasonable period of time before they can access the benefit system.”

Previously, Europeans could claim benefits within their first year of living in the UK.

TONY BLAIR SAYS BREXIT WILL LEAVE UK WEAKER

The former Prime Minister Tony Blair has claimed Brexit will leave the UK weaker politically and economically.

He said: “There is nothing that Brexit’s going to do for Britain on its own. It’s going to leave us economically weaker and with less political influence.

“And so the only way I make sense of Brexit is to treat it as shock therapy, that we then realise we’ve got to take certain big decisions as a country, we’ve got to set out a new agenda for the future, but that’s going to be difficult to do.”

Mr Blair added: “The truth of the matter is these so-called freedoms from European regulation that Brexit’s supposed to give us, they don’t really give us anything much at all.

“Because the truth is that decisions for Britain are and always have been resting with the British people and with the British government that they elect.

“But what it does mean, if we just carry on having the same old political debate post-Brexit as we had pre-Brexit, we’re in a lot of trouble as a country.”

EU SUPER-TRAWLERS BANNED FROM PLUNDERING BRITISH FISH

EU super-trawlers are to be banned from plundering fish from British waters.

Ministers will demonstrate they are back in full control of our coasts with a post-Brexit crackdown on factory ships.

The vast vessels — often longer than a football pitch — use nets up to one-mile in length to catch hundreds of tons of fish every day.

But they have been blamed for large numbers of dead dolphins and porpoises washed up on our shores.

Brits also complain they dominate the main fishing grounds, making it difficult for them to compete.

WATCH: BORIS JOHNSON SAYS HE WILL CARRY ON AS PM FOLLOWING BREXIT

BRITS BANNED FROM MADRID FLIGHT OVER BREXIT ID

A total of nine Brits were stopped from boarding a BA/Iberia flight to Madrid after staff said their pre-Brexit residency papers were no longer valid.

Among those banned from the Heathrow flight was journalist and photographer Max Duncan, who was told his green residency paper was no longer valid, even though both the Spanish and British governments have said both the old Foreign National Identification (NIE) document and the new Foreign ID Card (TIE) remain valid.

In a tweet from the British embassy in Madrid, Duncan was assured that the green paper was valid,  reports.

It was not just the Madrid flight that was affected. A person with the Twitter name @daisyqueen wrote: “My daughter and her partner affected. Been in Heathrow for 12 hours – refused travel initial BA flight to Barcelona then told could travel tonight so waited only to be refused as BA say passengers were returned from Barcelona.”

BORIS INSISTS HE WILL STAY ON AS PM 

Boris Johnson has insisted he will continue as Prime Minister in the wake of securing the end of the Brexit transition period.

Pressed on whether he would remain in Downing Street after finally taking the UK out of the EU, the Prime Minister told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show: “Yes.”

DO I NEED A VISA TO TRAVEL TO EUROPE?

From next year you will have to pay £6.35 for a new Etias visa waiver to enter Europe on holiday.

Travellers can apply online for the permit, which will last up to three years or until your passport expires.

The waiver, which the UK helped create before voting to leave the bloc, will require information such as your age, any past criminal convictions, and the name of the hotel or address at which you plan to stay during your visit.

HOW LONG HAS IT TAKEN BRITAIN TO LEAVE THE EU AFTER BREXIT VOTE?

The EU referendum took place on June 23, 2016 – which was exactly 1,654 days ago.

That’s the equivalent to four years, six months, and ten days.

Three Prime Ministers have lead the country since the Brexit vote – David Cameron, who resigned in July 2016, Theresa May, who called it quits in July 2019, and the current PM, Boris Johnson.

Brexit negotiations began on June 19, 2017, with David Davis and Michel Barnier meeting to begin the historic talks in Brussels.

But it took until Christmas Eve in 2020 for the deal to be made.

ITALY GIVES UK’S FINANCE COMPANIES 6 MONTH EXTENTION

Italy has permitted UK financial companies to keep operating in the country post-Brexit for another six months till 30 June.

Italy’s Consob bourse watchdog said firms that had applied before the end of 2020 to keep operating in the country would be given a six-month extension.

“During such periods, operations are limited to activities for which an authorisation is sought and to outstanding contractual relationships,” Consob said.

BUM DEAL ON BREXIT BIKE SADDLES

Great British bottoms are at risk after being slapped with Brexit bureaucracy on bike saddles, it has emerged.

Brooks England, makers of hand-crafted leather bicycle saddles, have had to suspend all new orders for seats from British cyclists, despite their saddles being made at their factory in Smethwick, West Midlands.

The firm, which has been making saddles for the nation's cyclists since 1882, has halted direct-to-consumer sales in the UK, citing Brexit as the reason.

In a statement, first reported by Forbes, the firm said: "Ongoing changes in the Brexit situation have made it necessary to temporarily suspend all new orders to the UK.

"We appreciate your patience while we analyse this situation and plan the proper administrative steps moving forward."

BRIT EXPAT WANTS MORE ASSURANCES OVER FLYING TO SPAIN

A Brit now living in Spain who was barred from boarding a flight to Madrid has said he wants more assurances about flying to Spain.

Sam Dakin, a 32-year-old English-language teacher based in Barcelona for the last four years, and his partner, who has been in the Spanish city for 8 years, said they needed more assurances before they could rebook flights.

The couple had been blocked from flying Saturday morning despite carrying their certificate and then were refused boarding on another flight Saturday evening that British Airways had initially said they could take.

"Just because the government adviser said that we could travel, we don't know whether that will happen when we turn up at the counters," Dakin said.

"We just don't know where we're going to get answers."

EXPAT PENSIONER STOPPED FROM BOARDING FLIGHT TO SPAIN

Patricia Moody, a 69-year-old retiree who has called the southern Spanish town of Zurgena home for nearly four years, was among a group of at least nine people unable to board a Madrid-bound BA/Iberia flight from London's Heathrow Airport on Saturday.

Moody said she and her husband, who she says needs to see his doctor back in Spain, have spent £1,900 on getting tested for the virus, traveling to the airport and booking new tickets after they were refused boarding.

Their second attempt was also futile.

"Throughout all the months of negotiating Brexit, we were always assured that nothing would change for us," she said.

Referring to the airlines and authorities in both countries, she added: "It's horrendous and we are suffering because of their incompetence."

BAN SUPERTRAWLERS NOW TO PROTECT MARINE AREAS, GREENPEACE SAYS

Greenpeace UK has urged the Prime Minister to ban supertrawlers in the UK's network of marine protected areas.

Speaking on BBC's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, Boris Johnson said after Brexit the UK "will be able to ban these huge hoover trawlers that come in and hoover up everything off the bottom of the sea".

Greenpeace UK's head of oceans Will McCallum said: "The Prime Minister has just claimed that now the UK has left the EU, the Government will take action against the large-scale destructive fishing that is hoovering up fish at an unsustainable rate, often in some of the UK's most sensitive marine environments.

"If he meant what he said, he should take the immediate step of banning bottom-trawling and supertrawlers over 100 metres long from the entirety of the UK's network of marine protected areas.

"Unless we start properly protecting these fragile habitats from the most damaging examples of industrial fishing, the UK cannot lay claim to being a world leader in ocean protection."

BREXIT WILL LEAVE UK WEAKER, CLAIMS BLAIR

The former Prime Minister Tony Blair has claimed Brexit will leave the UK weaker politically and economically.

He said: "There is nothing that Brexit's going to do for Britain on its own. It's going to leave us economically weaker and with less political influence.

"And so the only way I make sense of Brexit is to treat it as shock therapy, that we then realise we've got to take certain big decisions as a country, we've got to set out a new agenda for the future, but that's going to be difficult to do."

Mr Blair added: "The truth of the matter is these so-called freedoms from European regulation that Brexit's supposed to give us, they don't really give us anything much at all.

"Because the truth is that decisions for Britain are and always have been resting with the British people and with the British government that they elect.

"But what it does mean, if we just carry on having the same old political debate post-Brexit as we had pre-Brexit, we're in a lot of trouble as a country."

'EXTREMELY DIFFICULT' TO CHALLENGE SNP ON INDEPENDENCE

Tony Blair said it is "extremely difficult" to challenge the SNP on independence when the party is "virtually uncontested" in Scotland.

He said: "You've got to look at the ways which we make the case in articulate and sensible ways as to why Scotland is stronger and better off inside the UK.

"But I come back to the point which is nothing to do with Boris Johnson, it's actually more to do with the Labour Party.

"How do you make the Labour Party back into a credible opposition in Scotland? Because while the SNP are able to govern virtually uncontested, then it's extremely difficult to dent their position on independence.

"But that's for us to decide as the Labour Party how we're going to do that."

BORIS INSISTS HE WILL STAY ON AS PM 

Boris Johnson has insisted he will continue as Prime Minister in the wake of securing the end of the Brexit transition period.

Pressed on whether he would remain in Downing Street after finally taking the UK out of the EU, the Prime Minister told BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show: "Yes."

NORTHERN IRELAND HAS 'GATEWAY OF OPPORTUNITY' FOLLOWING BREXIT

Northern Ireland has a "gateway of opportunity" following Brexit, the First Minister has said.

Arlene Foster pledged to mitigate the worst effects of the protocol requiring checks on some goods coming from Great Britain.

The DUP leader said the country had left the EU's common policies on farming and fishing.

She added: "What we have is a gateway of opportunity for the whole of the UK and for Northern Ireland and it is important that in this centenary year that we look forward to that and step through that gateway and take all the opportunities that are available for our people."

SPAIN CLAIMS TO HAVE FINAL SAY ON GIBRALTAR ENTRY

Spain’s foreign minister said that Spain will have the last word on who can enter Gibraltar after the post-Brexit deal was announced this week.

“Schengen is a set of rules, procedures and tools, including its database, to which only Spain has access. Gibraltar and the United Kingdom do not,” Arancha González Laya told Spanish newspaper in an interview over the weekend.

“That is why the final decision on who enters the Schengen area belongs to Spain.”

ITALY GIVES UK'S FINANCE COMPANIES 6 MONTH EXTENTION

Italy has permitted UK financial companies to keep operating in the country post-Brexit for another six months till 30 June.

Italy’s Consob bourse watchdog said firms that had applied before the end of 2020 to keep operating in the country would be given a six-month extension.

“During such periods, operations are limited to activities for which an authorisation is sought and to outstanding contractual relationships,” Consob said.

SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE REFERENDUM SHOULD BE 'ONCE IN A GENERATION' VOTE, SAYS PM

The Prime Minister has reiterated his position that a Scottish independence referendum should be a "once-in-a-generation" vote.

Speaking on the Andrew Marr show, Boris Johnson said that the gap between referendums on Europe - the first in 1975 and the second in 2016 - was "a good sort of gap".

However, Mr Marr suggested that now "things had changed" for Scotland, after leaving the European Union and the coronavirus pandemic.

He asked Mr Johnson what a voter in Scotland should do if they decided that a second independence referendum was now something they wanted, what were "the democratic tools in my hands to now do that?"

Boris Johnson said: "Referendums in my experience, direct experience, in this country are not particularly jolly events.

"They don't have a notably unifying force in the national mood, they should be only once in a generation."

UK GETTING 'SUBSTANTIAL' MONEY DUE TO BREXIT

Boris Johnson said that ";substantial sums of money" are coming back to the UK due to Brexit.

He told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme: "For instance, they've already got substantial sums of money coming back into this country as a result of leaving the EU.

"We've got control over our borders, a points-based immigration system has already been established.

"And then when it comes to areas in parts of the country that feel that they've been left behind, one of the things that you can do for instance, to say nothing more (of) the regulatory changes you can make, one of the things you can do is have free ports."

He added: "You can use tax systems and subsidies in order to drive investment."

SCOTS UNLIKELY TO GET SECOND INDEPENDENCE VOTE

Boris Johnson has said that referendums should only be held "once in a generation".

He told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme: "Referendums in my experience, direct experience, in this country are not particularly jolly events.

"They don't have a notably unifying force in the national mood, they should be only once in a generation."

Asked what the difference was between a referendum on EU membership being granted and another on Scottish independence being requested, he said: "The difference is we had a referendum in 1975 and we then had another one in 2016.

"That seems to be about the right sort of gap."

The last referendum on Scottish independence was in 2014.