A British government minister has raised the prospect that the U.K. could seek to stay in the customs union even after leaving the European Union, in a further sign that Prime Minister Theresa May’s team may be softening its approach to Brexit. The government is considering keeping membership of the customs union for certain products, Trade Minister Greg Hands suggested in an interview with Bloomberg this week. He said the government is “looking at broad possibilities” for how such unions can operate, as he explained what May meant when she said in November that membership was not “binary.”
“You can choose which markets, which products the customs unions affect and which they don’t -- so there isn’t a binary thing of being inside the customs union or outside of the customs union,” Hands said. “The history of international trade has got all kinds of examples of customs unions.” Europe’s customs union allows members to enjoy tariff-free trade among each other and imposes the same duties on external countries. Hands’s comments signal the U.K. could be planning to seek agreements on duty-free trade with the EU for individual sectors, hoping that the likes of Germany will agree so as to protect access to the British market for their own exporters..
U.K. Could Stay in Customs Union After Brexit, Trade Aide Says - Bloomberg
The government has a less than 50% chance of securing an orderly exit from the European Union within two years and will potentially have to accept a phased departure lasting much longer, prompting “a decade of uncertainty”, Lord Kerr, Britain’s most experienced EU negotiator, has said.
Chance of an 'orderly' Brexit within two years is less than 50% – peer | Politics | The Guardian
Britain's farms face a major labour shortage in the wake of Brexit, according to the country's biggest farming union. A survey by the National Union of Farmers (NFU) and seen by the Financial Times found that half the companies providing UK farm labour were unable to fulfill the horticultural sector's demands for workers between July and September. The UK's horticultural sector — the part of agriculture which pertains to crops rather than animals — relies heavily on seasonal migrant workers to carry out labour-intensive tasks such as fruit-picking. A large majority of those workers come from the EU, and they appear to have been put off by the Brexit vote, and the government's subsequent plans to cut immigration numbers.
Britain's farming industry faces post-Brexit labour crisis - Business Insider