All quiet on the Brexit front

THE Easter break has brought a lull in Brexit News as MPs have been on holiday or have been more interested in other matters such as the sudden call for an election.

Even Gibraltar has been relatively quiet and out of the news for a while, although media there has described a Daily Telegraph poll asking ‘Is Gibraltar British or Spanish?’ as having been ‘hijacked’ as 157,000 people voted for British whilst more than two million (most of whom are Spanish) voted for Spanish!

Cabinet Minister Liam Fox, who has visited potential friends and commercial partners such as India, Malaysia and the Philippines in the last few weeks, hasn’t had a huge amount of success to date in signing new trade deals.

According to research published by the Labour Party, Dr Fox and his team have travelled a total of 240,000 miles (more than the distance to the moon) to 35 different countries and have so far signed not a single trade deal although that could of course change over the coming months

In the meantime, the General Secretary of the German Social Democrat Party, Katarina Barley, whose father is British, has publicly called for Britain to hold a second referendum and is quoted as saying “When the referendum was held, nobody really knew what it would be about – not the British people, not even the political class.”

It appears that the government recognises that the British economy currently needs relatively large numbers of semi-skilled workers especially in the catering and pub trade so that suggestions to allow younger workers in for periods of up to two years are being considered alongside plans to allow skilled workers from the EU into the country.

Things are due to heat up again, but here in Spain there has also been more interest in Semana Santa.