Brexit continues its destructive path, knocking entire industries down like a terrible game of ninepins. After fishing, fashion, finance and retailers in Northern Ireland, the creative industries are next to feel the impact. These are the actors, musicians, singers and their supports staff. Equity, the performers union has written to the prime minister urging him to "negotiate new terms with the EU, allowing creative practitioners to travel to the EU visa-free for work." One is bound to say join the queue.
The industry is claimed to be worth £112 billion and is being seriously damaged by the lack of a mobility clause in the TCA. Instead of the visa-free travel they enjoyed before Brexit they now have to "pay hundreds of pounds, fill in form after form, and spend weeks waiting for approval – just so we can do our jobs."
Peter Foster had a long Twitter thread about it yesterday:
Another head-banging day for the £112bn UK creative sector that is starting to ingest how difficult #Brexit is going to make their lives - and how little the government is really willing to do to fix the lack of a 'mobility' chapter in the EU-UK trade deal. Quick update.../1
— Peter Foster (@pmdfoster) February 16, 2021
His thread links to an article on Politico claiming that the Culture Secretary Caroline Dinenage told MPs yesterday that the UK "was not satisfied with the current rules requiring touring artists, sportspeople and other professionals to have visas and work permits to perform in the EU" — but blamed the EU for the lack of a deal on the issue.
The government apparently rejected an EU offer on short-term mobility for touring entertainers because it would have not allowed them to regain control of our borders after Brexit, she said.
I am afraid the creative industries are as guilty as all the others for listening to the charlatans instead of doing their own research and realising what losing freedom of movement actually meant. Presumably, like many other professional people they thought the end of FoM only applied to people coming here. Because of our innate superiority they may have believed the EU would allow FoM to continue the other way.
This is the problem when ideology comes before everything else.
Is there a realistic chance of the deal being renegotiated? No. In giving evidence to the International Trade Committee, Dineage herself admitted that it would be "difficult" and there are no plans to even start talking. She hinted it would have to be done bilaterally and Foster commented:
"Which then raised question of striking bilateral deals with the EU...which the minister said the UK was keen to do...and then quickly said it was "very difficult"...admitting no talks had actually started...tho officials say they are prioritising targets nations...
"The question is whether EU member states and the EU Commission are going to allow individual member states to be picked off by the UK in separate mobility packages, on UK terms - it feels like a long shot on both fronts."
Like the Fishermen, hauliers, the finance sector and NI retailers, the creative industries are finding they have been sold down the river by a government that doesn't even recognise the problem and thought a few jobs is a price worth paying. But they have now set in train events that they cannot control. The few jobs is turning out to be thousands and across all industries.
As full members of the EU we had the automatic right to help decide and influence things in our largest overseas market and Brexit has ended all that. It is a huge price to pay in exchange for - nothing really except regaining the right of others to have a small influence on us, sovereignty in other words.
It is a very hard and expensive lesson.
