Sign up here to receive the daily news briefing in your inbox every morning with exclusive insight from the BrexitCentral team Liam Fox says Irish border won’t be resolved until EU-UK trade deal is struck… There can be no final decisions on the future of the Irish border until the UK and the EU have reached a trade agreement, Liam Fox has said. The UK’s international trade secretary also blamed the EU for Brexit delays. The comments came after the Irish Republic’s EU commissioner said Dublin could veto Brexit trade talks. The EU has said “sufficient progress” has to be made on the Irish border before negotiations on a future relationship can begin. Downing Street has said the whole of the UK will leave both the customs union and the single market when it leaves the EU in 2019. – BBC News Ireland accused of ‘blackmail’ as Liam Fox signals Britain will not meet EU’s 10-day deadline to resolve border issue – Telegraph (£) No final answer to Irish border question until ‘end state’ known, says Liam Fox – Belfast Telegraph Irish PM ‘doing everything he can’ to avoid election – Reuters Political deadlock continues in Dublin over whistleblower row – Belfast Telegraph Ireland: The Brexit riddle Britain forgot – Sky News …as Irish European Commissioner calls for Northern Ireland to remain in the Customs Union… Phil Hogan has piled further pressure on the British prime minister over the future of the Irish border before a crunch meeting of the European Council next month. The Irish EU agriculture commissioner said that the problems around the border, which is one of the key obstacles blocking talks on a trade deal between the UK and the EU, could be solved by Britain remaining in the customs union and single market or allowing Northern Ireland to do so. – Times (£) …while Owen Paterson slams ‘myth’ of Irish border chaos as part of anti-Brexit ‘blackmail’ The former secretary for Northern Ireland hit out at claims that the fate of the Irish border could spark revive old conflicts and trigger a political crisis. Speaking to BBC’s Sunday Politics, Owen Paterson said the talk of a crisis surrounding the situation was a complete “myth” and amounted to “blackmail” from European leaders. He pointed out that several borders already exist between Northern Ireland and the Republic, and a post-Brexit electronic border was just a matter of will from both sides. The Tory Brexiteer responded to a report from Irish MEP Mairead McGuinness who urged Britain to stay in the single market for the sake of Ireland. Mr Paterson was baffled by this request and later branded this “absurd” since only five per cent of Northern Irish trade goes across the border. – Express Big pharma to unveil £1bn boost for May’s post-Brexit vision… Theresa May’s vision of a vibrant post-Brexit economy will receive a much-needed boost today when two large pharmaceutical companies unveil more than £1bn of investment in research hubs creating up to 1,750 high-skilled jobs. The commitments by German-headquartered Qiagen and MSD, the company known as Merck in North America, come as ministers publish an industrial strategy intended to reassure business about the UK’s prospects as it prepares to leave the EU. MSD will develop a research facility in London by 2020 aimed at finding new drugs. The investment, worth around £1bn, should support 950 jobs. This includes 150 research roles that the company said should attract “the brightest and best” scientists to the capital. – FT (£) https://www.ft.com/content/d94fbeba-d102-11e7-b781-794ce08b24dc …as Ministers publish long-awaited ‘Industrial Strategy’ for the post-Brexit economy Business Secretary Greg Clark said the industrial strategy – set to be published later today – was “even more important” as the country faces Brexit. The plan is designed to lift growth and improve productivity – both of which were revealed to be struggling at the Budget last week. US healthcare firm MSD – known as Merck in the US – has agreed to build a life sciences discovery centre in Britain as part of the strategy – thought to be worth 950 jobs and £1bn in investment. The move is a “huge vote of confidence” in Government plans to boost the economy post-Brexit, ministers said. – PoliticsHome Finance sector makes record tax payment despite Brexit jitters The financial services industry contributed a record £72.1bn to the Exchequer last year, in further evidence of the importance of the sector to the UK economy. The sector was behind 11pc of the Treasury’s tax receipts, according to annual research put together by accountants at PwC for the City of London Corporation. The figure was up 1pc on the prior year and was the highest recorded in the 10 years PwC has run the survey. – Telegraph Record tax take from financial services as City lobby group urges government to stop Brexit divorce bill penny-pinching – City A.M. Project Fear fails again as international students apply in record numbers despite Brexit scaremongering Universities saw a record number of international student admissions this year – despite fears they may be put off by Brexit. Official figures show the number of foreign students applying to British unis was the highest ever at 70,945 – a two per cent rise on last year. Ucas said there was a five per cent rise in students applying from outside the EU like the US and China and a small decrease in students from countries like Germany France and Italy. Overall 2,090 more international students – who pay higher fees – applied to start undergraduate courses this autumn, a 2.8 per cent hike on last year. They more than made up for the number of EU students applying that fell slightly by 650 students to 30,700. International students pay much more than British and EU students currently – an average of £13,000 a year but the costs of doing a degree like medicine can rise to around £24,000 a year. – The Sun Brexit is boosting the hotel sector The weakened pound has helped to attract large numbers of tourists to the UK — boosting the fortunes of hotels, according to a new report. There has been an 18 per cent fall in the number of hotel insolvencies in the past year, from 98 to 80, according to accountancy firm Moore Stephens. The trend coincided with an increase in the number of international visitors — up by nine per cent in the first six months of the year to 2.5 million. More British people are also staying in this country for holidays, giving more custom to hotels. – The National EU officials are not always honest about how far Brexit talks have progressed, says Ruth Davidson European officials are not always honest about how far the Brexit talks have progressed, Ruth Davidson has claimed. The Scottish Tory leader said members of the European Commission have a “stated position to defend” and that EU negotiations were always a “five-past-midnight job.” She claimed that a last-minute deal would be agreed and acknowledged it would be a setback if there was not progress at the December summit. Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, she said: “The people that walk up to the microphones and speak to their home audience don’t always reflect the negotiation and the progress that is going on in the room. – Telegraph (£) Sir Vince Cable sparks fury by saying there is a one in five chance Brexit will not happen Sir Vince Cable sparked fury today after he said there is a one in five chance Brexit will not happen. The Lib Dem leader repeated his vow to fight for an ‘exit from Brexit’ as he warned that Tory political infighting is harming the UK’s chances of getting a good deal. But the arch-Remainer, 74, ducked questions about why his party’s poll ratings are so abysmal if his pledge to to keep Britain in the Brussels club is popular. Tory MP and leading Brexiteer Peter Bone told Mail Online the Lib Dem leader is part of an establishment clique who are ‘whinging and moaning’ to try to keep Britain in the EU. – Daily Mail EU’s plan to ‘brainwash curriculum’ that pushes the dogma of Europe Plans to establish a European Education Area that would see pupils taught pro-EU rhetoric in schools have been dubbed “ever closer union on steroids”. In yet another sinister sign of the creeping federalisation of the EU, Brussels chiefs have cemented plans to spend billions developing a joint EU curriculum, creating a new network of EU universities and introducing a new EU student card. The blueprint, rubber-stamped in Strasbourg on November 14, also called for a cross-bloc education policy which “fosters a sense of European identity and culture” and focuses on “the European dimension of teaching”. – Express Juncker urged to intervene to keep Dundee’s European culture bid alive Jean-Claude Juncker has been urged to intervene to allow a British city to be named the European Capital of Culture despite Brexit. British entrants for the 2023 honour, including Dundee, have been deemed ineligible because the UK will not be part of the European Union or European Economic Area by then. But in a letter to European Commission president Mr Juncker, MPs representing the five areas which have submitted bids for culture capital status urged him to allow the process to continue. – Scotsman Matt Ridley: Dear EU, please accept this charitable £20bn I enclose a cheque for £40 billion as agreed. However, you will notice that it is post-dated March 30, 2019, and that it will bounce without a free-trade agreement between us, as I mentioned on the telephone. We are delighted to be in a position to be so unilaterally generous, and sorry that you find yourselves in such dire need of our help. As you will recall, under the Lisbon Treaty, the European Union is a legal “person” responsible for its own financial commitments, so we legally owe you not a penny after the current budget ends in 2020, a fact confirmed by a House of Lords committee. You may remember that your opening request for approximately €100 billion was taken apart line-by-line in a three-hour presentation at one of the bilateral meetings by one of our better civil servants. – Matt Ridley for The Times (£) Trevor Kavanagh: Theresa May has a week to cough up more cash, surrender to EU justice and sort the Irish border — but that’s a picnic compared to dealing with Remainers Brussels has given Theresa May a week to cough up more cash, surrender to EU justice and sort out a border with troublesome Ireland. It is a triple nightmare for a PM facing 27 adversaries across the Channel. But it is a picnic compared to her battle at home against Remainers still determined to throttle Brexit at birth. Chancellor Phil Hammond and the anti-Brexit Treasury are backed by Cabinet mandarin Sir Jeremy Heywood, head of the civil service. They want Britain to remain in lock-step with Brussels even after we leave, crippling our freedom to compete as an independent trading nation. “The Treasury is politically and institutionally opposed to Brexit,” one Whitehall insider says. – Trevor Kavanagh for The Sun Fraser Nelson: No, the Kremlin is not behind Legatum – or Brexit I’ll tell you why I am confident that Legatum is free of Kremlin influence: in 2011 it hired Anne Applebaum. She’s one of the most brilliant politics writers of her generation (Gulag, Iron Curtain, Red Famine) and while at Legatum she exposed ways in which Putin is trying to influence the West. So Legatum would hold titles like “Putin’s Useful Idiots: Russian Media and the European Far Right” and the “Beyond propaganda” project monitoring other forms of Russian manipulation. Fiery, impassioned, effective: she is the last person on earth that the Kremlin would choose as a stooge. She was the power behind Legatum until she quit last year. She was (and remains) deeply opposed to Brexit, a project to whose success Legatum is now committed. But she was on to the “fake news” phenomenon before anyone else. – Fraser Nelson for the Spectator The Mail on Sunday’s groundless attack on the Legatum Institute – Tim Montgomerie for UnHerd Juliet Samuel: Is Ireland really willing to put watchtowers on our border to inspect a few milk churns? Britain is being painted as an irresponsible dilettante with no plan for one of Brexit’s most controversial issues. The UK position paper outlines some vague “potential technical solutions” to the border issue, but our government also argues, with good reason, that it is quite pointless to discuss the Irish border before knowing much about how the general EU-UK relationship will work. Unfortunately, this argument isn’t working. Ireland is now demanding that Northern Ireland be separated from the UK and kept inside the EU single market and customs union. That is a measure not just of Irish anger and EU dogma but of the failure of British diplomacy, which might have headed off this row. To move on from it, the UK should make two things clear: Britain will not be the one recreating Northern Ireland’s old, hated border, and the future of the six counties will be decided by their own people. – Juliet Samuel for the Telegraph (£) Niall Fitzgerald: An Irish border solution offers a template for post-Brexit trade A template that keeps Northern Ireland’s borders open now holds the key to the future. The route to this is a new customs partnership between the UK and the EU. This involves choices between competing ideals and specifically between controls on free movement and on the pursuit of independent global trade deals. But we must move fast before the UK crashes deal-less out of the EU. The consequences of that would be disastrous, with damage to the EU, of course, and to Ireland in particular. But by far the greatest damage will be to the jobs and wellbeing of families throughout the UK who depend on them. – Niall Fitzgerald for the FT (£) Ranil Jayawardena MP: An all consumer Brexit Protectionism doesn’t work. It stalls innovation, stifles enterprise and harms consumers. Not only can people be stuck in less advanced jobs, but consumers face higher prices, less disposable income and a lower quality of life. Instead, through free trade, prices go down, choice goes up and people have a greater chance to live a good life. Let’s put this in context; our trading position is already a success. Post-referendum, over £32 billion of big trade and investment deals in the UK have been announced, while China’s Ambassador called 2017 a year for consolidating the China-UK “Golden Era”—and the manufacturing sector has reported orders are at a historic high. – Ranil Jayawardena MP for PoliticsHome Brexit in brief This government has a plan to boost productivity – and build a Britain fit for the future – Greg Clark for the Telegraph (£) All business wants for Christmas is progress on Brexit – Stephen Martin for the Times (£) Rumour has it that Jeremy Corbyn has changed his mind about Brexit – just in time for Kezia Dugdale’s jungle outburst – Matthew Norman for the Independent Let’s get serious about leading the fourth industrial revolution – Alan Mak for City A.M. Yes, Singapore really is a example we can learn from. But not for the reasons some Tories give – Andrew Wood for ConservativeHome The collapse of traditional parties on the continent – John Redwood for John Redwood’s Diary Guy Verhofstadt: Citizens’ rights at risk in Brexit talks – Politico Zimbabwe opens talks with Britain over return to the Commonwealth – Times (£) Five overseas Welsh government offices to open in 2018 – BBC News Angela Merkel’s CDU party agrees to work towards grand coalition with the SPD after holding talks in Berlin – City A.M.