Brexit going forward: Who are the winners and losers? | DW News

britain will be leaving the european union i'm very clear brexit brexit brexit the uk will be leaving [Music] [Music] we've been covering brexit since the beginning and i'm now joined by brigitte mass our correspondent from london and george matas who is in brussels for us it's a huge story the story of the uk leaving the eu untangling decades of integration we've spent years interviewing politicians campaigners even body language experts and now after traveling across the uk as well as the continent and even the seas we're taking a moment to select our personal biggest brexit losers and some of the winners too maybe we won't have to have gunships maybe we can use diplomacy and allow access maybe to some but not to all paul joy is really fiercely protective about his fish he's a fisherman in hastings that's on the southern english coast and his family have been there for generations for centuries really well if you're looking for the winners of brexit we've met them in the english channel just off the british coast are some of northern europe's richest fishing grounds british fishermen are now able to fish much more freely and that's exactly what paul joy wanted if you take back sovereignty of british waters i'm afraid that's one of the aspects of brexit we take back control of our territorial waters that means that they are kicking out european fishermen the dutch for example and they've been fishing here for hundreds of years they will have less access to the fishing grounds of the british coast so it's four in the morning and we're standing in this huge dutch fish factory some ships there catch up to 80 percent of their fish in uk waters a whole industry relies on this catch and it relies on running at full capacity much less than that and it could collapse but it's also an emotional thing what used to be our colleagues which were our colleagues our friends working together in european fisheries politics and all of a sudden it's turned upside down as if they are strangers as if we are strangers and that is a very very bad feeling in bologna surma which is france's biggest fishing port people very much feel the same way and you know what ironically what saved them is a matter of taste the thing is that british fish eaters don't really like what's in their own waters like herring for example or mackerel or ray that all gets sold to europe but what they do like cod for example for their fish and chips this is something that they have to buy of the european fishermen so europe is really the biggest market and a huge trading partner when it comes to fish british fishermen need the eu they sell i would say about 70 of their catch to the eu market and without a trade deal in place all that fish that british fish would have been subject to massive tariffs and barriers a cliffhatch brexit no deal brexit in other words would have put them straight out of business and still paul thought it was worth the risk brexit is a long-term goal i i think we've got to go a long way before we see gains within any sector in any sector in the industry banking financial monetary economy they're all going to suffer in the short term but it's something we are quite happy to do so that we have a long-term benefit of controlling our own seas and controlling our own destiny his passion for control over the sea was widely shared by uk politicians and we saw that throughout those endless negotiations again and again so it often felt like britain was much more concerned about fishing than for example other much more important parts of the economy like for example the city of london fishing is less than 0.1 of their economy so why all the fuss is something that you might ask i think it took the eu a while to understand what on earth was so important about fish and in the end it was all about patriotic symbolism this idea that britain is an independent coastal state [Music] i just became so aware of it you know you just you run into it you run out of it but it's not a functioning border and if that was to change it changes everything and it changes not just the landscape of the country but it changes the functioning of the country on her run alex has been crossing the border numerous times and without any difficulty it's a completely open border and mostly they're not even signs that tell you that you're crossing an actual border from the republic of ireland over there to northern ireland in the uk [Music] it used to be one of the most famous borders in in all of europe but for the wrong reasons this passionate struggle to keep the places apart or to bring them together costs thousands of lives it's only recently that it's all been quiet with the peace deal but also with eu support and eu integration to grasp what's still at stake in northern ireland just take a look at belfast there are these huge peace walls and like in berlin they've become a tourist attraction only these walls still serve a purpose they keep people apart people who would fight each other over whether to stay part of the uk or to join the republic of ireland it was really chilling to meet dee fennel he was all about fighting for a united ireland meeting him felt like going back in time to the 1970s it was talk about the irish republican army the ira and of dying and of killing for the cause we would commemorate ra volunteers in this community for us our volunteers who were murdered paid the ultimate sacrifice ferrari's freedom um and that he also murdered others well in any war there's death republicans have traditionally saw that as long as um the occupation remains in play as saying the irish people have their right to resist that occupation by any means by any means also with arms well that would include with arms that's traditionally been the republican viewpoint well the majority of people in northern ireland voted to remain with the eu those who voted leave did so because they saw this as an opportunity to show that they are part of the uk and separate from the republic of ireland it was all about leaving one union in order to stay in another union but some are now regretting that move if i had the opportunity to turn back time and rerun the brexit vote i would be encouraged to change my mind and vote remain simply because the issues that already existed in northern ireland have been compounded by the brexit vote and we fought long and hard in this country to deal with sectarianism try and make a better future for all our our citizens and the brexit issue has re-polarized a community [Music] while they were part of the european union people in northern ireland didn't have to choose whether they were british or irish or both they didn't have to choose one identity over another and trade between northern ireland the republic of ireland the uk and the eu used to be very easy but not anymore a hard border between northern ireland and the republic of ireland could be avoided but it has been replaced by a border basically in the irish sea between the uk and northern ireland and we are bound to see some form of custom controls so we found frustration and even bitterness in the republic among people who will now face more obstacles when they are selling things like for example forklift trucks to great britain and also to the rest of the eu if you ask anyone in the irish population of course this has been imposed on the irish population and in that sense it is madness but the problem is of course we did not have the control on this the control belonged to the uk voters for this result so it's not a result that the irish population would have wanted for as for northern ireland brexit may have actually helped those who want to see northern ireland cut itself loose from the uk so the republican cause may be the winner of brexit so irish reunification is suddenly not an unrealistic prospect anymore and it's new and it's a direct result of brexit there's a real possibility that brexit could trigger the end of the united kingdom scotland very much has a strong identity and a big part of that is not being english scotland just had an independence referendum just six years ago and they voted to actually stay in the uk but that was before brexit many scots really really don't want to leave that club and they resent the english for voting for brexit it still gives me shivers when i think about that chilly morning last winter we met up with some very brave scottish souls they were winter swimmers and they were braving the waters off the coast of edinburgh all year round they are not a political group and on the whole they were extremely polite but they had very clear words for the english who had voted for brexit sodoff england and unfortunately the hall of england now um yes give us our independence you can we could look after ourselves feeling ignored and feeling that we're being torn out of the eu without our our our without a consent really and it's horrible the mp tommy shepard represents the scottish national party in the uk parliament and we saw him in his constituency office in edinburgh we now have had a lot of extremely uh generous and friendly overtures from other european governments saying that if things pan out that britain leaves the european union and scotland takes political control of its own affairs then scotland would be welcome in the european union so the scottish nationalists are a clear winner here all recent opinion polls say that the scottish people the majority of them want to go their own way and that they want to be independent now the waters in the caribbean are not half as chilly as in scotland but when we traveled thousands of kilometers to the island of anguilla what we found is that people there were just as annoyed about brexit as people in edinburgh and williams should have had a chance to participate in the brexit vote and that no other people should decide and grow on state well it puts us in a precarious position right because um economically might be outside this advantage right um it does not make us feel as though we are part of um the british territories right we we are part of the european union under britain right and we probably would suffer an end most of them have british passports but because anguilla is a british overseas territory and only partly governed by the uk the 15 000 or so islanders didn't have a brexit vote we were there just after a big hurricane had hit in 2017 but people reckon brexit will do much more damage than that what we already know is that anguilla lost all eu subsidies which made up a big part of the island's budget all relations with its next door neighbor somewhat are now much more complicated because samota is part of france and therefore it's still part of the eu anguillans rely on zamata for trade transport and healthcare and the eu passports gone they as well as the scots are being pulled out of the eu against their will so the losers here are the ordinary people and just like in scotland brexit has boosted those in anguilla who won independence so there we were georg and i in the city of london it's europe's biggest financial hub and the city is enormously important for the uk we have the skills and the knowledge and the culture you know to to handle um the financial sector and perhaps other countries in within europe don't have that financial services contribute over 10 of the tax revenue for the uk i can still see her standing there at this desk surrounded by glass in this imposing skyscraper that says you know power it was just after the brexit vote that we went to see inga bill the head of lloyds of london the insurer ingerbil told us that they had four billion euros worth of business with eu clients well financial services were largely left out of the trade talks and so she was hoping for what is called passporting the right to continue to trade with the eu if we can continue with passporting that is our ideal situation we've been talking about that even before the referendum we said it's so important because that's really that gives us the ability to provide insurance to our customers in the eu 27 so if that could continue that would be just tremendous but now there is no passporting whatsoever and financial firms have really been hammered by brexit it's estimated that already about 10 000 jobs have been relocated to other places in the eu and more than a trillion pounds in assets have been moved from the uk to other destinations in the eu that's about one tenth of all the assets that are managed in the uk even though it's still the most important financial hub in europe the city of london is clearly a brexit loser and its position is likely to diminish further the winners are other financial centers dublin frankfurt amsterdam luxembourg they all have already profited from think we will brexit teresa your leadership it's a fast a fast are complete and fast um i'm doing it for my country i'm doing it for um my generation because i passionately believe in the european project and i passionately believe that brexit is going to damage um our our society [Music] teresa your leadership is she was fighting really desperately for a second brexit referendum she turned herself into an eu supergirl and she camped outside parliament she really put her life on hold she stopped studying she only wanted to stop brexit there were others like herv for example femi or lubale they both had a big presence on social media but it didn't do the trick so the problem was that young people came too late they voted overwhelmingly in the referendum to stay in the european union but not enough of them came and showed up to vote so they lost and they lost a lot they simply can't do what their parents were able to do which is to just easily live work travel study on the continent in the eu [Music] and that also works in other directions for eu citizens i met for instance this polish accountant shimon he's one of three million eu citizens who have made the uk their home so now they can stay in the uk they can register with the government's eu settlement scheme but it's just not that easy they can't just come here and work as easily as they used to be able to do the idea of european union was that you can move from one city to another that would be from country to country like you're moving in just your your your country internally and that that's that was the idea and everyone who came to uk came with that idea and suddenly you moved to a different city and suddenly you're saying oh sorry you cannot live in that city you have to go back you have to do something else which you haven't been prepared when you've been moving to this to this country many other people who tried to make a life in the uk decided to go home and basically take their expertise with them [Music] rosa mcnamara is a friend of mine she had been working as a consultant emergency doctor in london and i caught up with her as she and the children packed to move back to dublin for me the uncertainty around trying to plan for their future if we were to stay here is one of the big motivators but for the two of them i don't really know what the implications are for them if they stay on here for secondary for third level what are they going to be allowed to do will it disadvantage them thousands of eu nurses and doctors have now gone home and it's a massive problem for the uk health service especially with the corona pandemic there are around 100 000 unfilled positions in this sector and that means patients are losing out the winners here are the committed brexiteers they could not have foreseen the pandemic of course but any short-term disruption was always going to be worth it for them for a moment it seemed uncertain whether the decision to leave might be reversed so they showed up outside parliament clearly upset and determined that brexit should mean brexit and it wasn't just older people by the way there were also young people that had campaigned for brexit like alice grant and her sister beatrice they were both still at school at the time noble ideas like democracy and something you can't take those for granted and i think yeah you know i had friends saying yeah but i won't be able to do my erasmus and it's like well you know 17.4 million people did vote leave some people aren't as privileged farmer stephen batts was so proud of his product of what he has achieved we spent half a day on his lattice field and that's when he voiced his frustration that how people had voted in the referendum i don't think that people realized how much we depend on foreign labour coming in [Music] most farmers actually did vote for brexit even though many of them depend quite heavily on eu subsidies and during the referendum the brexiteers had promised that this money would be replaced and that nobody would be out of pocket through brexit but now it looks like within the next three years farmers could lose at least half of what they received under the eu system that would be a disaster particularly for small farms we could easily see a very substantial percentage of farmers disappear family farms just gone and that won't be something you can decide in five or ten years time perhaps politically we got that wrong because it will be done and once farmers leave the land and go off and find something else to do they generally don't come back i'm afraid [Music] frank language and son edward are sheep farmers in suffolk and southern england they are the third fourth generation to form this really beautiful spot and they hope that one day edward's children will take over the farm they sell most of their land to france the french like a lamb like this which has a good confirmation they want them weighing around about 18 to 20 kilos as a carcass not too much fat just a little fat and that's that's the ideal and that's the highest value market they did not vote for brexit frank was just laughing at the idea that brexit would cut red tape from brussels will there be any less no there won't be any less no our civil servants still like paper so we will still have lots of paper in fact the farmers incorrectly blamed europe for the paper when it was actually our own people that created lots of paper big farms will be able to deal better with the paperwork and even buy up land from small farms who go bust so at the end of the day they may be the big winners of brexit to run on our own to run away away from europe i think is is a is a better thing for us as a country and we're in a world market anyway and that's of course true for all exports but for manufacturers like the auto mobile industry for example brexit produces really huge problems the advantage that british and european manufacturers had they could move car parts between them really easily and really quickly and that will be gone at the moment we're selling to germany france anywhere in europe like we're selling in the uk if we outside of the european market it will be an export for export we've got a lot of export paperwork we've got a lot of money tied up and we'll have to get clearance in the ports we'll have to do a lot of things that today we don't do gamil magal is a real self-made man his company was selling parts to daimler and bmw and we interviewed him just before the vote for brexit and like absolutely every executive in the car industry who was very very worried about brexit investment in the uk car industry has plummeted since then it's 80 percent down and covet has made things just worse but if we look purely at the brexit effect some eastern european countries are winning because some manufacturers and some in the car industry have already relocated some of their production to eastern europe we're looking over at the uk from europe i can't help but feel frustrated [Music] brexit was sold in the uk as this big win-win and and what we have now is a lose-lose so it's very hard to see any significant advantages in all of this after all the people we met after all the places where i've traveled these people have basically mainly lost out tensions are clearly running high at westminster we've had these pro-european protesters here for months so i'm a german i'm living in the uk my children were born here and i feel at home here but for me the eu is also important and it's important as a peace project these are the roots of the eu but that doesn't really resonate here in the uk and i remember when i was talking to a friend about this before the referendum i explained this to her and it was a completely new idea for her and she voted for brexit i'm quite confident that over the years we'll manage to form a new relationship like becoming friends after divorce but what we will not have is this institutional pressure which we have in the eu to solve problems to to tackle problems together in today's world you need to team up to tackle global issues like the environmental crisis like regulating tech giants like migration and without the uk a team europe lacks a key player we can take back control as the phrase goes of our money our borders our laws so the brexiteers now need to define what actually is global britain what do they mean by it and how will it work and they need to prove that this acrimonious divorce process that is really worth it and that there are new opportunities for the uk because the brexit that we're seeing now is much much harder than what was originally promised tears were shed when the uk flag was lowered outside the european parliament that night and and i remember i was moved too and i kept thinking the only positive thing that comes out of this is that the rest of the eu will see what the uk is walking away from and treasure it more [Music] you

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Keywords: DW News, brexit, brexit talks, backstop, trade deal, brexit deal, brexit negotiations, brexit no deal, no deal brexit, trade talks, brexit trade, boris johnson, eu britain, britain eu, european union, europe, brexit news, brexit latest, no deal, Brexit, brexit negotiations 2020, brexit 2020, bussels, uk eu, britain trade talks, eu, eu trade talks, britain european union, brexit agreement, brexit europe, uk, uk brexit, eu brexit, ursula von der leyen, brexit uk

Id: BZGfDNLDzDI

Length: 28min 38sec (1718 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020