Politics

Nearly 30 years-worth of Britain’s net EU budgetary contribution was lost in one click this week after Barclays announced it is to move €190 billion (£166 billion) worth of assets from the UK to Ireland in preparation for a possible no-deal Brexit. The bank said it "cannot wait any longer" to implement its Brexit contingency plan, which was approved by the high court on Wednesday. Assets linked to around 5,000 clients will be moved to a Dublin-based unit, which is expected...

Leave.EU and an insurance company owned by Arron Banks have been fined £120,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for serious breaches of electronic marketing laws during the referendum campaign. The ICO announced an audit and an intent to fine Leave.EU and Eldon Insurance in November 2018 as part of its investigation into data analytics for political purposes. After considering the companies’ representations, it has now issued the fines, which total £120,000. The ICO investigation found that Leave.EU and Eldon Insurance were closely linked and...

Ex-Football legend and TV presenter Gary Lineker joined a host of politicians to write an open letter to Germany, in their national newspaper, Die Welt, which featured on the front page. With the UK set to leave the EU next month, the group wrote: "We still want to be friends. We love your beer, your football, some of us even like your cooking. "Given the challenges we face we need to stand together to champion the values of tolerance and...

Labour MP Jess Phillips received a rapturous response in parliament after she lamented the proposed £30,000 salary test for immigrants. The government published a heavily-delayed immigration White Paper last month setting out requirements for workers hoping to move to the UK. In what Sajid Javid described as the "biggest shakeup to the UK immigration system in a generation", workers from across the world would be subject to the £30,000 minimum salary threshold in order to prove they are "skilled" in their trade. The...

Investment in the UK car sector has dropped by almost £2 billion in three years as Brexit fears put firms on "red alert", the industry's trade body said. In 2015, car manufacturers invested £2.5 billion in the UK. Since then it has fallen ever year and in 2018 was just £589 million. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) say the fall-off in inward investment is down to Brexit uncertainty, which has "done enormous damage" according to SMMT chief Mike Hawes....

A major new report has found refusals of Freedom of Information requests are at record levels. According to the Institute for Government (IfG) think tank government departments refused to give any information in response to almost half (45 per cent) of FOI requests in the first quarter of 2018. Analysis of the data shows the first three quarters of 2018 had the highest proportion of requests withheld in part or in full – more than half – since the introduction...

The Tab Hull editor Christian Calgie, 21, wrote a comment piece for the website and hit out at the behaviour of Young Conservatives

Gerard Batten has claimed just 100 lorries cross the Republic of Ireland–United Kingdom border a day and that Guinness accounts for half of them in an astonishing Twitter rant. The UKIP leader was responding to a James O'Brien segment on LBC radio discussing why Brexiters hate the Irish backstop so much. O'Brien said: "How can it be that the people saying the solution is easy - 'oh we just need some cameras' - are the same people who say we couldn't possibly...

Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab were both spectacularly shut down on live television last night. The former Foreign Secretary was dubbed "deluded" by Sky News reporter Beth Rigby after he insisted Prime Minister Theresa May is now in a position to “go to Brussels and get the freedom clause that the UK needs.” The incredulous Rigby interjected: “Just as she rides off on her unicorn to Brussels, the reality check landed in my phone, this is from ’s spokesperson: ‘The backstop is...