FT Weekend editor Janine Gibson. Picture: Financial Times
When Press Gazette suggested we take FT Weekend editor Janine Gibson to our local Wetherspoons for a “Lunch with the FT”-style interview – emphasising she could have free range on the menu – we were met with a polite counterproposal from the press office.
There are two rules for Lunch with the FT: the guest chooses the restaurant and the FT pays the bill. Perhaps, in the spirit of the now 30-year-old format, we might allow Gibson to choose the venue?
Her choice was The Quality Chop House, a charming, wood-panelled Victorian restaurant in Clerkenwell, north London.
“It used to be such a dump around here,” she says, recalling her days working at the old Guardian offices around the corner, but says the Chop House was always a bright spot. “It’s one of the few restaurants that, when it changes hands, it’s still a really nice thing.”
Lunch with the FT is published on the weekend, which makes it Gibson’s responsibility, and during her tenure the paper has carried lunch interviews with the likes of Elon Musk, Liz Truss and Anna Wintour.
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The waitress asks whether we’d like anything to drink. There is a pause.
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I’m cautious here: I have work to do after this, for one thing, but more importantly I don’t want to make an arse out of myself in front of someone with a Wikipedia page. I respectfully place the ball in Gibson’s court.
“I can’t say ‘no, you can’t drink’ because I always moan when people are too boring,” she says. “Our recurring beef is that people are too sensible now to have a glass of wine.”
We order a glass each of the second cheapest white wine on the menu: a bright, juicy 2020 Dominio de Punctum Lagasca Viognier.
“The business lunch is back,” Gibson pronounces. “People are starting to realise, in this highly automated age, that business lunches form bonds and relationships.
“Like, we’re pals now – it’d be very hard for us to just stitch one another up in print.”
Much of the most recent issue, she says, “is taken up with the rituals, benefits and terrible, terrible downsides of drinking at lunchtime.”
People don’t have to drink for Lunch with the FT, of course, but Gibson says “part of the charm and joy is those moments when people lose inhibition”.
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Gibson refers, as an example, to an infamously negroni-propelled lunch the FT had with the poet Gavin Ewart in 1995.
Ewart’s wife rang his FT interviewer Nigel Spivey the following day, telling him: “There are two things you need to know. The first is that Gavin came home yesterday happier than I have seen him in a long time. The second – and you are not to feel bad about this – is that he died this morning.”
Gibson says: “It’s obviously childish to think that’s cool and funny. Obviously very reprehensible and terrible. Awful!
“And yet it is kind of cool and funny.”
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How to write a Lunch with the FT
I ask Gibson whether she has any advice for me about conducting this lunch.
“Well obviously, in this situation, you don’t need to make much of an effort at all,” she says. “We’ll just have a lovely chat and you should just write some nice things about the FT.”
But she’s good enough to offer some specifics anyway. “It’s a good idea to have three check-ins through the piece about the restaurant”, for example, as well as another two about the food itself. “You must write about the food or the readers will kick off.”
Do not, however, “be mean about anyone that works here”.
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A perfect Lunch with the FT guest has had “three acts” to their career, Gibson says. Those very few people who have had two FT lunches – she mentions Henry Kissinger and Christine Lagarde – “had a whole other act” after their first encounter with the paper.
She says she’s “wary” of lunches with serving chief executives or senior politicians.
“If you have somebody that’s too powerful they’re so limited in what they can say. If they speak too often, it’s very hard to get something new out of them.”
The ideal, she says, “is somebody who has just left or is just about to leave a very significant job”.
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The waitress returns for our order. We both go for the set menu, which that week comprises a sweetcorn soup with bacon and maple syrup, Cotswold Gold chicken with chasseur sauce and a salted caramel brownie with clotted cream. We add bread to accompany the soup and, on Gibson’s recommendation, sides of cod roe and confit potatoes.
“I’d been very, very nervous. I read like three books about them” – although in the event, she says, “they were so kind!”
I have not, regrettably, read three books about Janine Gibson – although she comes up frequently in “Breaking News”, a half-autobiographical book that I have read by her former boss at The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger.
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Gibson edited The Guardian in the US as it reported its Pulitzer-winning stories about whistlebower Edward Snowden and surveillance by the NSA, an episode that figures prominently in Rusbridger’s book.
“I haven’t read that,” she says. “I think it’s really bad manners to read your former boss’s book, because all you do is go ‘that’s not what happened’ and then there would be dispute. It’s his story, let him write it!”
The Snowden affair, she says, was “enough attention for a lifetime”.
I ask if Gibson would ever write a book and get a flat, repeated no.
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“Honestly, my main goal is to get out of journalism without causing any further scandal.”
Gibson says the best Lunches with the FT feel “like a real conversation”.
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“I really love it when the readers say ‘I felt like I was there.’
“I don’t mind when they say: ‘Why on Earth have you had lunch with this one?’, because I take that as a compliment that they think it’s such an honour to bestow.”
The readers “feel a lot of ownership” over Lunch with the FT, Gibson says, but “I never think ‘how dare you’ – I always think ‘how lovely that you care’”. Some readers, particularly those who get FT Weekend in print, tell her they spend a week with the interview.
“One of them cost the FT a fortune and the other one – Henry is so clearly very drunk…
“I think if you read those two carefully, you can see everything that you need to know about how to do a Lunch with the FT. They are” – she mimes doing a chef’s kiss.
Scott Thomas, she says, “so obviously terrifies” Mance, while she enjoyed the Wintour interview “because Anna was so on brand that she managed to take a format which has only two rules and ignore both of them”. (Wintour procured the table for the interview, at London’s Ritz hotel, and ate nothing, opting instead for a bottle of San Pellegrino.)
Often, Gibson says, they come up with interviewees by asking FT staff to identify “the most interesting person on their patch”.
“That’s how you get the right mix of politically relevant [and] culturally fun.”
The whole Lunches archive is yet to surface: Gibson says they are “quite hard to find” in the old clippings. The Lunch that saw off poet Ewart in 1995, for example, does not appear to be available online.
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‘You can’t say it’s all very good. What do you think of the combination of flavours?’
The soup arrives, along with the still-warm bread and cod roe. Gibson instructs that I need to “put in a bit of colour about the food” and I ramble a note for later toward the dictaphone, mentioning that it’s “all very good”.
“You can’t say it’s all very good, Bron. What do you think of the combination of flavours?”
(Surprising: I’ve not had a sweetcorn soup before, let alone a soup that features maple syrup, but the sweetness is punctuated nicely by the bacon lardons.)
“Yes, and you notice that I’ve eaten all of mine very quickly.”
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I ask who the FT is still chasing for lunch. They’ve had a few US presidents, she says, but not Obama yet. She’d like to do Rupert Murdoch – or indeed any Murdoch: “I just really think that he would like to talk with us and we’re available at any time.”
She adds that “personally – for me, just for me, as a little treat before I die – I want to do Jeremy Clarkson.
“He’s fascinating and incredibly talented and misunderstood and also very well-understood. I find the body of work extraordinary and almost unique and, I think, under-appreciated. That’s my most controversial opinion.”
There are others she wants to do, Gibson adds, but “I’m not going to tell because of the number of imitations – pallid imitations! – that there are out there”.
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Around the time the chicken lands the waitress asks if we would like more wine. We again stare at each other in silence. This time I take the initiative: yes, we will. The chicken is accompanied by the crisp confit potatoes which, true to Gibson’s recommendation, steal the bird’s scene somewhat.
‘I think print will outlast me and you’
The print version of the FT has come up several times over this lunch, and I ask whether Gibson believes in the longevity of the medium – and indeed whether a long-form interview format like Lunch with the FT will survive the consumption changes heralded by the likes of Tiktok and Instagram. FT Weekend sells around 60,000 copies per week at £5.10 each and the Financial Times in general boasts more than one million paying digital subscribers.
“I think print will outlast me and you,” she says. “If you look at your Enders Analysis or whatever they’ll tell you the same thing.”
She says weekly print products, specifically, have room to run.
“Ten, 15 years ago, people would say all the time: ‘Oh, I worry so much for access to quality information in the digital era and all the good stuff will be behind expensive journals at The Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times or whatever.
“But actually new things pop up all the time. That’s the way the communications industry is – if everything gets too closed up, then something new will pop up for the young people, like Buzzfeed or Vice or whatever in their heyday.” This point is perhaps somewhat undermined by the sign of the cross Gibson makes following her mention of Buzzfeed: she was editor of Buzzfeed News in the UK from 2015 to 2019, helping it win a clutch of awards before it closed in 2023.
The real threat to Lunch with the FT, she says, “is this thorny question of drinking at lunchtime”.
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‘This interview is a disaster’
As I just about see away the generously-portioned brownie dessert it comes time to pay.
The FT press office had suggested the bill be split down the middle – Gibson, however, is having none of that and springs for the reader with her company card. The rule is, to be fair, that the FT pays, but I am nonetheless presently in contact with the PRs about Monzo-ing them £60.
The waitress leaves us two cubes of fudge as a parting treat: I eat mine, Gibson leaves hers.
Gibson mentions in an off-hand comment that, after five years there, she is “relatively new to the FT”.
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Is that not quite a long time?
“I think we’re a cradle-to-grave employer.”
Asked whether she would stay at the FT until the end of her career, she laughs that “it’s very indelicate to refer to a lady’s age, Bron”.
She will remain at the FT, she says, “as long as they will have me. It’s a wonderful publication and a real privilege to have a bit of time at it.
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“I genuinely think I have the best job in journalism. I try to keep it very quiet – this interview is a disaster.”
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our “Letters Page” blog
THE tiny Scottish island of Cumbrae has the UK’s smallest cathedral – and it’s just a eight-minute ferry journey from the mainland.
Located on the Ayrshire Coast in Western Scotland, Cumbrae, also known as Great Cumbrae, is just four miles long and two miles wide.
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Cumbrae is a tiny Scottish island that’s just 10 minutes from the mainlandCredit: Alamy
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Millport is the only town on the islandCredit: Alamy
It is perhaps because of its small size that Cumbrae is overlooked compared to other more well-known isles like Skye, Islay and Mull.
The island is home to just 1,500 residents, with day-trippers visiting Cumbrae from the likes of Glasgow in the summer months.
Despite its small size, Cumbrae is often regarded as Scotland’s “most accessible island” because it takes just 10 minutes to reach the island via ferry from the mainland.
Ferry company Caledonian MacBrayne operates a direct service between Largs in North Ayrshire and Millport, Cumbrae’s only town.
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The seaside town is home to the Cathedral of the Isles, which claims to be the UK’s smallest cathedral.
Designed by architect William Butterfield, the Cathedral of the Isles was built in 1851, with worshippers flocking there ever since.
Hidden behind a cluster of trees, the cathedral is just a seven-minute walk from the heart of Millport.
Holidaymakers can learn more about the history of Cumbrae at the Museum of Cumbraes, which has a mixture of permanent and temporary exhibitions.
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Located in Garrison House, entry into the museum is free.
Cycling is another key tourist activity, with visitors able to cycle around the entire circumference of the island in under two hours.
Four of Scotland’s beaches you have to visit
Visitors will be able to take in views of the North Ayrshire Coast and the Isle of Bute.
Cumbrae has a sandy beach that is popular with families, surfers and canoeists.
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A large painted, plastic, crocodile sits on a rock at the beach, which is considered to be a good spot for crab hunting.
There’s also Newton Beach – an award-winning beach that’s said to have fine white sand.
Wildlife-watching boat trips also take place around the island with daily sightings of Seals, Oyster Catchers, Gannets, Cormorants in the surrounding waters.
Holidaymakers who don’t want to get the ferry back to Largs on the same day will be able to stay overnight at a handful of hotels.
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Stays at the Millport Pier Hotel start from £90 per night, based on two people sharing a room.
There are plenty of other lesser-known islands to explore in Scotland.
OTHER ISLANDS TO VISIT IN SCOTLAND
Isle of Erraid
The tiny, and stunningly beautiful, Inner Hebridean Isle of Erraid is tidal island, just a mile square located just off the tip of the Ross of Mull.
For an hour or two either side of low tide, it’s linked to the mainland by a broad expanse of sand which you can cross.
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It’s been home to a small group of members of the Findhorn Foundation for over 40 years after they were given it by Dutch owners the Van der Sluis’ to look after, on condition that for one month during the summer, they would return to enjoy the freedom and adventure of the island.
A small group of intrepid members moved to the island, restored the cottages and started a spiritual community. But Erraid’s major claim to fame is its inspiration for the famous novel ‘Kidnapped’ by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Foula
The island of Foula really is remote. Found 20 miles west of the Shetland and 100 miles from the mainland, it was known in Roman times as ‘Ultima Thule,’ which roughly translates as ‘the edge of the world.’ In 1936, the classic movie of the same name was made there.
So what do you get in return for making the effort to get to Foula? It’s not big, at just five square miles, but it is dramatic, with one of the highest sheer sea cliffs in Britain, Da Kame, standing at an impressive 1,233ft.
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It’s home to around just 35 islanders, mostly crofters who make a living from farming the rare and colourful Foula sheep. Its old Norse name was Fugla-ey, meaning ‘bird island’’. It’s still a haven for sea and moorland birds, including Great Skua, which divebomb anyone walking too close to their nests, so be careful!
What’s it like to visit Cumbrae?
THEIR silky backs sparkle in the sunshine as they leap from the waters.
Dolphins are not a regular sight when you’re cruising the Scottish Isles, but here they were, literally out of the blue, dancing in the wake of our boat.
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The pod of four 8ft-long bottlenose dolphins were obviously showing the ropes to a smaller, paler calf.
Our skipper, Ted Creek, a marine biologist explained that the pod were usually spotted travelling up and down the west coast but had stuck around the Clyde Bay since the youngster was born last year.
Ted has been running Argyll Cruising since taking over the business last year, having previously ferried travellers from the bottom tip of South America to Antarctica.
Our home for the four-day trip around the isles of Bute, Arran and Cumbrae is an elegant, repurposed fishing vessel, a vintage 1950s trawler called Splendour.
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There’s room for just eight guests, offering an intimate opportunity to sail the stunning waters in style.
Ted gave us a safety briefing as we set sail from Holy Loch Marina, Dunoon.
While we sipped champagne and tucked into baked treats, he explained our route.
After the debrief, we were taken to our charming cabins with wood-panelled walls and porthole windows.
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There was also tartan pillows and blankets, as well as central heating and en-suite bathroom.
After a gorgeous meal cooked by the chef Tom Canning, we were gently rocked to sleep in the comfortable bed, with nothing but the splashing of water and surrounding wildlife to listen to, after docking next to Arran overnight.
In the morning, we headed to Holy Isle — a tiny island inhabited solely by residents of a Buddhist monastery.
They share the land with wild animals, including Eriskay ponies and Saanen goats.
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But it is perhaps most famous for its sea life, as seen in David Attenborough’s BBC documentary Wild Isles.
Trump is accused of working to “exploit” a riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021
Donald Trump’s alleged criminal efforts to overturn his 2020 US election defeat are described in detail across 165 pages of a new filing from the federal prosecutor investigating him.
The filing, released by a judge on Wednesday, lays out in depth how Special Counsel Jack Smith would pursue his case if it ever comes to trial, which is uncertain. Since Trump is expected to end the prosecution if he returns to the White House, Mr Smith may never be able to make an opening statement or call a witness.
The Supreme Court ruled this summer that Trump cannot be prosecuted for official acts carried out as president, forcing Mr Smith to change the historic case and argue that Trump committed crimes as a private citizen.
Trump denies any wrongdoing in trying to deny Joe Biden’s certification as the election’s winner and his campaign called the document “falsehood-ridden”.
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Here are five key points detailed in the prosecutor’s arguments and evidence released on Wednesday.
1) Trump planned to claim victory no matter what
“It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election,” Trump allegedly said at some point after the election. “You still have to fight like hell.”
The filing cites these comments – reported by an unnamed assistant who overheard Trump speaking to his family – as evidence he was trying to overturn the result.
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And the document says Trump laid the groundwork for challenging the election even before polling day.
It alleges the Republican had been told that the results would not be known on the day that most Americans voted – but that he might have an early edge before rival Democrats benefited from mail-in voting, which took longer to count.
Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, many voters had voted by mail.
Trump allegedly told advisers that he would “simply declare victory before all the ballots were counted and any winner was projected”.
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The former president’s allies were clear on what that meant, according to the filing.
“He’s going to declare victory. That doesn’t mean he’s the winner, he’s just going to say he’s the winner,” a Trump adviser is quoted telling a private gathering of his supporters.
2) He thought others’ fraud claims were ‘crazy’
The filing shows how Trump allegedly carried out his plan to claim victory in several battleground states before votes were fully tallied by spreading false claims of fraud.
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Yet he is said to have characterised fraud claims made by some of his allies as unbelievable.
The filing quotes him telling aides that one unnamed lawyer – who appears to be Sidney Powell – was making “crazy” claims, which he likened to sci-fi series Star Trek.
“Nonetheless, the defendant continued to support and publicise” such claims, the document says.
On another occasion, a White House official reportedly told Trump that his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, would not be able to prove his election fraud theories in court.
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“The details don’t matter,” he reportedly replied.
3) Pence repeatedly told Trump to move on
The world has seen the deep rift between Pence and Trump that developed after the election. The filing includes new details on supposedly how their relationship deteriorated.
Mr Smith argues that since they interacted as election running mates, Trump’s communication with his vice-president did not count as an official act.
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Pence, according to the filing, “gradually and gently” tried to convince Trump to accept the election results, “even if it meant they lost”.
As Trump continued spreading false fraud claims and filing legal challenges, Pence reportedly suggested on 12 November a “face-saving option”: “Don’t concede but recognize the process is over.”
Days later, he encouraged Trump to accept the loss and run again in four years, to which Trump supposedly responded: “I don’t know, 2024 is so far off.”
Eventually, on 1 January 2021, Trump allegedly told Pence that ”hundreds of thousands” of people “are gonna think you’re stupid” for wanting to acknowledge their loss.
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Less than a week later, Trump supporters called for Pence to be hanged as they stormed the US Capitol building in the 6 January riot, because he planned to sign off on Biden’s election win. Pence fled to safety in a parking garage.
The filing says that when Trump was informed Pence might be in danger, he allegedly asked: “So what?”
Reuters/Shannon Stapleton
Supporters of Trump attacked the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021
4) Campaign staff created ‘chaos’ during vote count
Mr Smith’s team alleges Trump’s campaign sowed “chaos” in battleground states that risked triggering violence.
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When a large batch of ballots in the Democratic stronghold of Detroit, Michigan, seemed to put Biden ahead, a Trump campaign operative allegedly told his colleague to “find a reason” that something was wrong with them.
The colleague then suggested that could cause unrest.
According to the filing, the operative answered: “Make them riot.”
Campaign officials in another swing state, Pennsylvania, allegedly provoked confrontations, which were then used to claim that observers were not given proper legal access to the vote counting.
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5) Trump sought to ‘exploit’ the Capitol riot
The prosecutors allege that Trump incited the 6 January Capitol riot by telling a crowd “many of the same lies he had been telling for months”.
In a speech in Washington that morning, Trump “made clear that he expected his supporters to take action”, according to the filing.
Mr Smith has made this allegation before, but he now contends that Trump fired up supporters as a political candidate, not president, and the speech was part of a rally.
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His team argues that Trump “directed his supporters to go to the Capitol and suggested he would go with them” to provoke further action.
Then, Trump and his allies allegedly sought to “exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol” to try to delay the election certification.
Trump watched the riot unfold on Twitter and Fox News, says the filing, citing information from his phone and former White House staff. He also allegedly used social media to target Pence and repeatedly “refused” advisers’ requests to “issue a calming message and make efforts to stop the riot”.
More on US election
North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his weekly US Election Unspun newsletter.
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The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House
Republican Senate candidate Larry Hogan has attacked JD Vance’s refusal to acknowledge Donald Trump’s 2020 election defeat as “crazy”, and warned it puts Republicans running for Congress at risk of losing their races.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Hogan, who is running for a vacant Senate seat in Maryland, said he is also concerned about the former president questioning the results of next month’s presidential election.
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“It’s crazy, I mean, Trump obviously lost the [2020] election,” Hogan said. “I was the first Republican in the country to congratulate [Joe] Biden and to say to Trump that he should concede, and I was the first to send state troopers and the National Guard to the Capitol on January 6 [2021].”
At the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday, Vance, Trump’s running mate, was asked by Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick Tim Walz whether the former president had lost the 2020 election. Vance replied he was “focused on the future” and made allegations about censorship during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hogan, a moderate Republican who served two terms as governor of the traditionally Democratic state of Maryland, is one of the few members of his party who has been willing to publicly criticise Trump, particularly over his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
He is running for the Senate in a hotly contested race in his home state that could determine the balance of power in Congress after the election.
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Unlike other Republican candidates, Hogan has sought to distance himself from Trump’s Maga movement. He confirmed this week he would not vote for the former president in November, even though Trump has endorsed his candidacy for Senate.
“My message to Trump would be to focus on the issues and stop with the divisive rhetoric,” Hogan told the FT.
He has also distanced himself from Trump and the more protectionist wing of the Republican party on economic policy. The former president has proposed a 60 per cent levy on goods originating from China, as well as a 20 per cent tariff on all imported goods.
“I’m very concerned about the tariffs and I’ve said I’m going to stand up to Trump on areas we disagree,” he said. “I don’t think it’s good for our economy.”
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The latest opinion poll from the Washington Post and the University of Maryland showed Hogan trailing his Democratic opponent Angela Alsobrooks by an 11-point margin. But the Senate race looks significantly closer than the presidential ticket in the state, where the same poll showed Harris with a 30-point lead over Trump.
While describing the presidential race nationwide as a “toss up”, Hogan said down-ballot Republican candidates may be in danger as a result of Trump’s polarising rhetoric.
“I think there’s a real possibility that [the GOP] could lose the House [of Representatives] . . . that’s why it’s important to have people like me in the Senate,” he said.
Hogan, who left the governor’s mansion with one of the highest approval ratings in the country, has pitched himself as a moderate and said he would support abortion rights as a senator.
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But his opponent has warned a vote for Hogan would help Senate Republicans secure a majority in the upper chamber of Congress and either enable a second Trump presidency or stymie a Harris White House.
“The question is not whether or not we like Larry Hogan,” Alsobrooks said at a recent campaign stop in Columbia, Maryland. “The question we are answering is, who should have the 51st vote?”
As well as appealing to moderate voters, Hogan has to win the support of Maga-aligned Republicans who take issue with his anti-Trump stance.
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“I’m going to convince them,” he said. “We haven’t elected a Republican [to the Senate] in 44 years from our state and I’m the same person they voted for overwhelmingly for governor.”
Plus, John Lewis, Waitrose and Homebase confirmed they will shutter down all their stores on Boxing Day.
It’s worth bearing in mind, almost all stores close on Christmas Day every year, but a handful of retailers usually shut the following day.
Last year, dozens of chains across the country made the decision to adjust their opening hours to give their workers a well-earned break on December 26.
B&Q opened nine of these new stores in the UK last year and said it had plans to open more.
Why do retailers close on Boxing Day?
BOXING Day is one of the busiest shopping days of the year.
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So why do retailers decide to close? Senior Consumer Reporter Olivia Marshall explains.
Closing on Boxing Day allows staff to have a well-deserved break after the busy Christmas period.
This can help improve staff morale and reduce burnout.
It also provides them with an opportunity to spend time with their families and friends during the festive season.
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For some retailers, the cost of opening on Boxing Day, including staffing and operational expenses, may not be justified by the expected sales revenue, especially if customer footfall is low.
With the rise of online shopping, some retailers may focus on online sales and promotions rather than opening physical stores on Boxing Day.
For some businesses, it may also be a a long-standing tradition for them to remain closed on Boxing Day.
From a practical perspective, the day after Christmas can be used for inventory checks, restocking, and preparing for post-Christmas sales.
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This can be more effectively done without the distraction of serving customers.
A group of wild boar have been spotted wandering past a pub.
The footage was captured outside the Golden Lion in Cinderford, Gloucestershire, on 2 October.
Boar were hunted to extinction 700 years ago, but became established again in the Forest of Dean in the 1990s.
Forestry Commission wildlife rangers monitor numbers in the Forest of Dean each spring and carry out culls, if necessary, to keep the target population to about 400.
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The boars have been known to go hunting for food in the local neighbourhoods when foraging becomes harder in the nearby forest.
This article is an on-site version of our The State of Britain newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every week. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newsletters
Good afternoon and welcome back to The State of Britain newsletter.
It was all rather overshadowed by the growing conflagration in the Middle East and squabbling at home over Sir Keir Starmer’s acceptance of freebies, but this week EU-UK relations took a small but important step forward.
After his meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen yesterday, Starmer gave a press conference (flanked with Union Flags, not a joint affair) at which he said simply “Ursula and I have agreed we can do more together”.
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Regular readers won’t be surprised if we don’t get too starry-eyed about that statement, but after all the madness of the past eight years, the significance of the moment should not go unremarked upon.
As one senior EU official put it, the meeting doesn’t “wave a magic wand that makes the last eight years go away” but it does signal the start of “a conversation in a dramatically changed global context, between two like-minded partners, who have much to gain and nothing to lose by seeing where this leads”.
This wide-angle view, which seeks not to put too much pressure on the nitty-gritty of the relationship, is summed up by David Henig, the longtime EU watcher, as a move aimed at “stabilising, normalising and deepening” relations between the two sides.
Tough decisions
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Hard to disagree with any of that, including the welcome news that both sides agreed that, not before time, there should be regular “leader-level” EU-UK summits. The first of these is slated for early 2025.
But to be clear, all of the above is the easy part. Indeed, the biggest threat is that politics on both sides of the Channel mean that the EU-UK reset gets stuck in the comfortable waiting room of an annual leaders’ summit, rather than both sides taking tough decisions that make a difference.
The joint statement between the two sides made clear that the (wholly inadequate) Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) remains the core basis for the relationship, while making no explicit mention of UK offensive priorities on a veterinary deal, professional qualifications or touring musicians.
The communique also noted that any moves to deepen co-operation in areas of the economy, energy and security would happen “in full respect of their internal procedures and institutional prerogatives”, which is Commission-speak for “no cherry-picking”.
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That line also reflects the concerns of EU member states that any concessions to London must be squared with their own offensive aims on securing fishing rights in UK waters and freer access for their young people to study and work in the UK.
That, as we reported, was made very clear in the hastily arranged EU ambassadors’ meeting ahead of Starmer’s visit, which put clear markers down to the EU commission negotiating team not to get too far ahead of itself.
What this exposes is the gap between the politics on both sides and the demands of businesses impacted by a trade deal which — lest we forget — the Office for Budget Responsibility continues to say will lead to a 15 per cent long-run hit to the UK imports and exports.
Two weeks before Starmer and von der Leyen met, impacted businesses and society groups — represented via the external Domestic Advisory Group (DAG) that advises on the implementation of the TCA — set out a joint list of what they wanted to see improved.
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It’s worth a read. Some of the ‘asks’ are about generally making better use of the specialised committees that govern the TCA and doing more to co-ordinate on Brexit 2.0 regulatory issues, like carbon border taxes and supply chain due diligence, that impact trade.
But other areas, like demands for a youth mobility deal and deeper co-operation on chemical data sharing (not really possible, according to EU internal documents, if the UK remains outside the single market) are already the subject of political and legal blockages.
Meanwhile, in the Midlands
This week I was in the Midlands on a reporting assignment talking to manufacturing businesses and it didn’t take long for managers to raise their concerns about the costs and frictions caused by the TCA.
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One advanced manufacturer whose products feed into EU supply chains, explained how the frictions caused by rules of origin, customs and more recently the introduction of reporting requirements for the EU’s new carbon border taxes were impacting their competitiveness.
The company has kept its place in the supply chain due to the sunk costs, but is painfully aware that when it comes to future contracts, it will struggle to compete with rivals inside the EU single market.
The business, which has an EU parent company, also wants support from HQ to expand into a larger factory in the UK but isn’t getting any encouragement from across the Channel. “You can feel the tension, we’re well aware of where we now stand,” the manager said.
Given the political constraints noted above, it is not at all clear that the envisaged Brexit reset will come anywhere close to removing the marginal competitive disadvantage faced by such companies.
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For the UK’s diplomats, summits to discuss security and geopolitics are more comfortable places than the hard trade-offs that were always presented by Brexit, but have been persistently ignored.
There is a danger that Labour’s Brexit policy echoes the Conservative one in its indecisiveness. The Tories talked big about divergence but then did little to create the regulatory environment to make things happen. It was largely performative.
Labour risks falling into a similar trap of triangulating to satisfy competing domestic political interests rather than confronting the logical limits of their own red lines, and what they mean for business and the investment proposition offered by the UK.
The bald fact remains that Starmer derides Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal while largely sticking to the same political red lines — no single market, no customs union, no free movement — that created it.
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The manifesto talks about “tearing down the barriers to trade” but the prospectus for doing that will remain limited unless Starmer raises his ambitions and prepares to make compromises on mobility and alignment for which he has done little to prepare domestic audiences.
That’s why in the EU ambassadors’ meeting in Brussels this week several member states questioned whether ‘reset’ was even really the right word to describe what was being attempted.
If they’re right, then Starmer might do better to be honest, accept that the UK is ‘never going back’ and make actual decisions about which direction the UK should exit the economic halfway house the Conservatives created.
Based on past experience of the UK Brexit debate, the risk is that Starmer finds it easier not to choose.
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I am away next week so will leave you in the capable hands of my colleague Laura Hughes, our public policy correspondent, who specialises in healthcare policy and the NHS.
This week’s chart comes from a timely Resolution Foundation briefing paper on apprenticeship levy reform that cites ONS data showing that a “lack of qualified applicants” was a growing challenge for businesses looking to recruit in 2022-2024.
The paper by Sofia Corcoran and Louise Murphy makes the point that since the apprenticeship levy was introduced in 2017 — making all larger businesses pay a 0.5 per cent charge on salary bills over £3mn — it has had the perverse effect of reducing the number of young people getting on-the-job training. The result is that since its introduction the number of under-19s starting an apprenticeship has fallen, while the number of older starters has risen.
In numerical terms, that means the number of under-19s starting an intermediate apprenticeship fell by 30,000 between 2017 and 2023, while higher-level starts among over-25s increased by 45,000 over the same period.
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That is surely not what the apprenticeship levy was intended to achieve in terms of widening opportunity to young people who were not taking the university route into work.
Labour is promising to address this problem as part of its “youth guarantee”, offering all 18- to 21-year-olds access to training, an apprenticeship, or support to find work, but industry is still awaiting details of how a new “growth and skills levy” will work.
More flexibility is promised in how to spend the levy but the early indication on apprenticeships is that this will mean refocusing existing budgets on more entry-level apprenticeships.
The first sign of that came in Starmer’s conference speech, when he announced new Level 2 (GCSE equivalent) “foundation apprenticeships” to support the bottom end, while crimping funding for Level 7 (masters degree equivalent) at the top end.
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But as Corcoran and Murphy argue, the government must guard against a more ‘flexible’ levy being used by industry to in effect subsidise substandard courses, or fund more general compliance training that businesses would have paid for anyway.
Given the persistent failure of industry to spend the levy contributions in full, a difficult balance will need to be struck between making the system more permissive without sacrificing the quality that the UK needs to genuinely narrow its skills gaps.
The State of Britainis edited by Gordon Smith. Premium subscribers can sign up here to have it delivered straight to their inbox every Thursday afternoon. Or you can take out a Premium subscription here. Read earlier editions of the newsletter here.
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