Shadow chancellor’s remarks mark shift in tone for party, which has preferred to not talk about Brexit so far

Labour would try to improve elements of the UK’s trade deal with the EU, Rachel Reeves has indicated, saying also that most financial services companies have “not regarded Brexit as being a great opportunity for their businesses”.

While Labour remains committed to not making any major changes to Brexit, the shadow chancellor’s comments show the party could nonetheless make more policy moves on EU trade links than previously believed.

Blow to London’s fashion scene as British creatives find it makes commercial sense to move shows to Italian city

Milan men’s fashion week is where all the big Italian names converge. It’s where Prada dictates what trouser shape everyone will one day be wearing and where Gucci drops the next it-bag. But as the shows got under way at the weekend an unexpected new trend was emerging: the great fashion Brexit.

Just four months after making his debut as creative director of Dunhill at London fashion week, Simon Holloway instead chose the Italian capital for the brand’s spring/summer ’25 show. On Sunday he aimed to recreate “the sense of a beautiful spring day in England” by showing in a garden in Milan.

Survey finds more people blame Brexit than anything else for supply problems

Almost half of adults in the UK have struggled to get medicine they have been prescribed – and more people blame Brexit than anything else for the situation, research shows.

Forty-nine per cent of people said they had had trouble getting a prescription dispensed over the past two years, the period during which supply problems have increased sharply.

One in 12 people (8%) have gone without a medication altogether because it was impossible to obtain.

Thirty-one per cent found the drug they needed was out of stock at their pharmacy.

Twenty-three per cent of pharmacies did not have enough of the medication available.

Dutch hauliers say facilities at border posts where some trucks are held for up to 20 hours are inadequate

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Lorry drivers could start rejecting jobs bringing goods from Europe to the UK unless delays are reduced and driver conditions improved at post-Brexit border posts, the biggest trade body for Dutch hauliers has warned.

Transport en Logistiek Nederland (TLN), which represents 5,000 Dutch transport companies, said its members were facing average waits of more than four hours in Britain because of the new checks brought in after the UK’s exit from the EU, with some being held at border posts for up to 20 hours.

Brexit border checks are just the latest hurdle placed before British farmers. Labour must do more to back our food producers

Just before the election was called, news broke of Sue Gray’s so-called “shit list”: an inventory compiled by the Labour leader’s chief of staff of the immediate challenges an incoming Labour government would face. They include the potential collapse of Thames Water, prison overcrowding and chronic-acute issues with the NHS. One challenge was notable for its absence: the very real risk of empty supermarket shelves. The fact is British agriculture is in crisis. Its absence from the list is not entirely surprising. Historically, Labour has been an urban party. At the 2019 election it won just three of the 100 most rural seats. It has never quite grasped the importance or complexities of agriculture and the food supply chain.

That said, the Tories won 96 of those 100 seats, have many farmer MPs and have still made a bloody mess of it. The first challenge they will bequeath to Labour, should it win, involves untying the tangled knot around imports and exports. The confused introduction of hyper-bureaucratic and horrendously expensive border checks is the result of hardcore Brexit ideology. Boris Johnson could have negotiated alignment with the EU on food standards and animal welfare. Then we would simply be doing internal checks as before, and trade would flow freely.

Although barely visible on TV, the UK’s 700,000-strong community has a growing presence in music, books and film. We meet some of its hidden stars

With its high-tempo use of Multicultural London English and blend of drum’n’bass and acoustic guitar, the song Five by Bedford-based rapper Pat is instantly recognisable as a product of the UK’s contemporary rap scene. Yet even the most fast-mouthed stars of British grime would probably struggle to integrate the word niezapowiedzianych (“unannounced”) into their rhyme schemes.

Born in Silesia, western Poland, Patryk “Pat” Wojcik moved with his family to England in 2007, three years after Poland joined the European Union. He learned to speak English by listening to British rappers such as Jme and Devlin, and makes music that pays homage to his native country and his adopted home, with lyrics such as “I chase cash like I’m Mateusz Gotówka” – a nod to the Anglo-Polish Aston Villa footballer also known as Matty Cash.

The once defining issue in British politics has barely featured in this summer’s campaign

“Get Brexit done” was the promise, repeated to the point of tedium, that took Boris Johnson’s Conservatives to a landslide victory in Britain’s 2019 election. But four and a half years later, the subject – for so long the defining issue in UK politics – has barely featured in this summer’s campaign.

Keir Starmer, whose Labour party is 20 percentage points ahead on the average of opinion polls , hardly mentions Britain’s relationship with the EU, to the point where he had to deny in a recent interview that he was scared of talking about the issue.

Exclusive: Visas created hastily to solve labour shortages expose people to ‘hyper-precarity’ and exploitation

Visas created hastily to solve labour shortages as a result of Brexit have put workers at greater risk of modern slavery and exploitation, research has found.

Strict conditions on agricultural and care visas created after Britain left the EU expose workers to “hyper-precarity” and increase their vulnerability to exploitation, a study by a coalition of leading universities and charities has concluded. Since Brexit, farm workers and care home workers have had a route to Britain on time-limited visas with stringent conditions.

Sevington site was never designed to handle volume of imports envisaged by post-Brexit changes due in April, port’s health chief warns

An inland facility set up to carry out checks on nearly all EU meat and dairy imports coming through Dover will be unable to cope when post-Brexit rules come in next month, the port’s health authority has warned.

The Dover Port Health Authority (DPHA) said the Sevington facility in Ashford, which is 22 miles inland, had not been designed to handle the scale of imports expected, and claimed its geographical position would “create an open door for disease and food fraud”.