“Improvement of Britain” is not only a promise to voters in the 2019 parliamentary lower house election, but also the goal he vowed to achieve in his first interview after the “Brexit” trade agreement was reached.
However, according to British media such as The Guardian on the 27th, Johnson has to cross two barriers before realizing this ambition, one is the review of the agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Parliament, and the other is the test of the COVID-19 epidemic.
Johnson said in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph a few days ago that the British government has a very clear agenda to unite the people, upgrade the country, and “spread” opportunities nationwide.
The British Prime Minister said that in January next year, the British Treasury will officially abolish the sanitary napkin tax.” Brexit” enabled Britain to abolish the sanitary napkin tax. In addition, the United Kingdom plans to establish a low-tax free port.
Johnson stressed that these changes are only the tip of the iceberg, and many of the reforms he has been planning should be kept secret so as not to endanger trade negotiations.
Some people think that leaving the EU will make Britain “poorer”. Some economic models predict that GDP growth will be reduced by 5 percentage points after Brexit. In response, Johnson said that freedom lies in how you use it.
“Now is the time for us to seize the opportunity. We will do our best, and I think we do have a considerable advantage.”
The British Guardian commented that leaving the EU should make Johnson’s ambition to “elevate Britain” easier to achieve. Although the British Prime Minister did not specifically specify the true meaning of “ascension”, Britain has stimulated economic development at both the domestic and international levels.
In November, Chancellor of the Exchequer Sunak announced that the government would launch a “uplifting fund” worth £4.8 billion to support reconstruction projects in towns and communities, including a total of £4 billion to England and a total of £800 million to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Localities can apply for up to £20 million from the fund. Sunak said that the fund aims to improve Britain’s infrastructure, such as upgrading railway stations and building more libraries.
Britain has started free trade agreement negotiations with many countries. According to Reuters, British Secretary of State for International Trade Trus said on the 27th that the United Kingdom and Turkey are expected to sign a free trade agreement on the 29th, which will help consolidate the trade exchanges between the two sides worth £18.6 billion last year and guarantee thousands of jobs in British automobile and steel industries.
British Foreign Secretary Raab wrote in the Sunday Telegraph on the 27th that Britain is now seeking trade agreements with Australia, the United States and the Indo-Pacific countries as the UK and the European Union have finalized a “Brexit” trade agreement.
“Johnson must survive New Year’s Eve first,” the Sunday Telegraph reported on the 26th that the British Prime Minister will face the test of domestic parliamentarians before he realizes his ambitious ambitions.
Over the next two days, a European research team composed of Conservative MPs will carefully study the “Brexit” trade agreement and will publicly announce the “judgment” to the United Kingdom on Monday local time on whether the agreement has passed the so-called “sovereignty test”.
According to Reuters and Bloomberg, trade in goods after the Brexit agreement, trade in goods after the UK and the EU is duty-free and quota-free, but the agreement does not apply to services, especially financial services, which accounts for about 80% of the British economy. Starting from Friday, financial services companies in the United Kingdom will lose their automatic access to the EU single market.
Both Britain and Europe said that new market access must be negotiated outside the “Brexit” trade agreement. The goal of the two sides is to reach a memorandum of understanding on financial services regulatory cooperation by March next year.
The British Parliament plans to vote on the “Brexit” trade agreement on December 30. According to BBC and other media reports, David, acting leader of the British Liberal Democratic Party, said on the 27th that the agreement was “old” and not conducive to promoting employment.
The SNP Parliamentary Leader Blackford said the agreement was a “scourge for Scotland” to restrict trade, so the party’s MPs will vote against it on Wednesday.
Labour’s shadow cabinet Chancellor of the Exchequer Dodds said on the 27th that the agreement does not protect the financial services industry and is a fragile agreement. However, it is believed that because of the support of Labor Party leader Starmer, there is no problem for the “Brexit” trade agreement to pass through the British Parliament.
The European Parliament will start a review of the “Brexit” trade agreement on the 28th. The Guardian said on the 28th that parliamentarians from all factions of the European Parliament were angry that they could not fully review the agreement in advance, but their possibility of vetoing the agreement was very low, because Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator in charge of Brexit affairs, kept them informed of the whole negotiation process.
According to a report by the Russian Satellite News Agency on the 28th, the European Council has approved the provisional implementation of the “Brexit” trade agreement on January 1, 2021.
With the signing of the “Brexit” trade agreement and the four-and-a-half-year political turmoil in the UK will end, Johnson’s main focus will quickly focus on how to deal with the COVID-19 epidemic.
According to official data on the 27th, the number of new confirmed cases in the UK in a single day is 30,501, with a cumulative cumulative number of more than 2.29 million confirmed cases.
According to a BBC report on the 27th, the real number may be higher because some regions do not release data during Christmas. Some hospitals have warned that the local health system is in a state of severe tension.
On the 26th alone, the number of emergency calls received at the London Ambulance Service Center was close to 8,000, just as many as it was during the first wave of the epidemic peak in mid-March. It is argued that the rapid spread of the variant of COVID-19 is the reason for the increase in demand for first aid vehicles.
