Gavin 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇫🇷 🇪🇺 #FBPE

🇬🇧🇪🇺 Britain aligning food standards with the EU again. The ridiculous “Not for EU” labels may soon disappear and 👉 Britain can then begin to rebuild its food security 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 After years of arguing that Brexit meant escaping EU rules, Britain is now negotiating to align with them again to make trade easier, strengthen biosecurity and reconnect our food system with Europe. On 20 November, Britain and the EU are hoping to agree something genuinely significant. This could mean fewer physical border checks, the removal of costly veterinary export certificates and the beginning of dismantling the Brexit barriers we erected between ourselves and our largest, closest food market. The Government estimates the SPS deal could ultimately be worth up to £5.1 billion a year to the food and drink sector. Britain imports a substantial proportion of the food we eat. We cannot pretend our food system exists independently of Europe. And at a time of war, energy disruption, climate shocks and increasingly fragile global supply chains, putting barriers between Britain and the enormous food-producing region immediately beside us never made strategic sense. And EU alignment would mean Britain moving back towards European rules governing food safety, animal and plant health and imports from third countries. This matters when Britain has signed post-Brexit trade deals opening greater access to agricultural imports produced under different systems. Trade deals should not give anyone a legal right to sell unsafe food in Britain. But standards are only as good as the system that enforces them and since Brexit, we have had little control over imports.

🇬🇧 🇪🇺 @AldiUK understands what Government appears to be missing. While Government responds to rising food prices by making some imports cheaper, Aldi is investing long-term in British production. Julie Ashfield puts it perfectly: “The ability to produce [food] belongs in the same category as water and power.” And: “Building capacity takes years… decisions must be made before the next shock, not after it.” Exactly 👍 Orchards, breeding herds, farmers and processing capacity cannot be recreated when a crisis arrives. Food production is national infrastructure. Food security is national security.

Rejoining the EU won’t have to mean joining the euro or Schengen. Two EU officials have told POLITICO that Brussels could be flexible, taking Britain’s circumstances into account. This isn’t a formal offer: the EU has no official position as the UK has not applied. But it challenges the claim that Britain would have to accept every aspect of deeper integration to come back. The choice should be put honestly to the public. And with 55% wanting to reverse Brexit, the case for discussing our future in Europe is getting harder to ignore.

🤣 Even the Brexpress is having to confront the new Brexit reality. 🥧 Its own headline warns of the “huge Brexit battle” now facing Brexiteers. And you can see why. New Ipsos polling: 🇪🇺 Apply to rejoin EU: 56% 🙋‍♀️ UP 4 🇬🇧 Stay out: 30% 🙅‍♀️ DOWN 3 Among likely referendum voters it is 63% to 34%. For years we were told Britain mustn’t talk about Brexit again bc the public didn’t want to hear it. Now Britain IS talking about Brexit again and support for rejoining has risen 🚀 while support for staying out has fallen 🛝 Even the Express can’t ignore the numbers any longer. The Brexit debate is back and Britain in 2026 looks very different from Britain in 2016.