The request by officials to shift the current 2023 deadline to remove some 4,000 EU laws from the British statute books by three years is a headache for the prime minister, who said over the summer the legislation could be repealed or reviewed within 100 days.
Data this week show immigration reaching a record in the first year of Britain’s post-Brexit regime, despite the referendum promises that the EU divorce would allow Britain to regain control of its borders and get numbers down. The US trade deal once touted by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson as a great prize of Brexit is nowhere in sight, and Sunak last week didn’t even bother to bring it up in a meeting with President Joe Biden at the G20 summit in Indonesia.
Migration is a case in point. While Home Secretary Suella Braverman talks tough on people who cross the English Channel in small boats, the country’s new border controls allowed net migration to hit 504,000 in the year to June, the highest figure ever recorded, according to Office for National Statistics data on Thursday.
The Brexiteer vision of a low-tax UK and deregulated City of London has also been challenged by the Sunak government.a plan to give politicians an intervention power over financial regulators. The plan for so-called “call-in” powers to be added to legislation on the UK’s post-Brexit framework for banks, insurers and asset managers, had stirred controversy.