Unbound Briefing Room – W/C 24 August 2026

Our Advisory Council member Richard Johnson has written on how the commentary in the British press on the Canada-US trade war has exposed a Brexit double standard. You can read his piece here.

Continuing a theme, Reuters ran a story on how "Six EU net contributors demand hundreds of billions in cuts to bloc's long-term budget". This is at least one less problem for "Brexit Britain" to worry about. Britain Unbound has written more on the potential costs of rejoining the EU, which you can read here.

There have been more signs of dissatisfaction at the heart of the EU - and in France in particular.Former French economy minister Bruno Le Maire has proposed creating a six-nation European federation among France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and the Netherlands while remaining inside the European Union. He explicitly criticises the European Commission, which he describes as a “technocratic monster” that has moved beyond its proper role…" and argued that the EU’s 27-member structure has become too cumbersome to respond effectively to growing competition from the US and China…". Needless to say, we agree!

There have been a number of stories recently drawing attention to the EU's unscientific approach to food science, which the UK is being pressured to adopt as part of the Brexit "reset". Some examples: "Drought-resistant crops set to be banned under Labour’s EU reset deal" and "Brexit has given British farmers more ways to adapt to climate change".

The Britain Unbound team cannot claim any specific expertise here. But we are happy to quote Professor Johnathan Napier, who has told the Telegraph: “The need for drought-tolerant crops is staring us in the face, with yields this year already significantly decreased. Currently, we don’t know any details about how the new EU regulations might be implemented and we have no mechanism to influence EU deliberations. Crucially, the EU’s new position on gene editing is more restrictive than the UK’s. This seems like a very backward step and one that is depressing for all of us who are trying to develop crops that are resilient to drought and tolerant to more challenging climates.”

Burnham open to cutting university fees for EU students as Brexit bargaining chip

Several news outlets are reporting that the new Prime Minister is willing to bow to EU demands that reset talks cannot go ahead if the Youth Mobility Scheme does not include EU students being charged tuition fees at the home rate of £9,790 per year, rather than the international student rates (typically £15,000 to £65,000 a year, depending on the course). As we have noted before, this would be a very costly concession.

The Russell Group of British universities has estimated that the loss of income and unrecovered costs to the UK's higher education sector from discounting the tuition fees could be as high as £580m per year. The top UK universities are already full-to-bursting by accepting more domestic students to maintain their income levels after international student numbers have fallen. Finding additional spaces for EU students could mean British students missing out on places or numbers becoming even more overcrowded.

Further costs to HM Treasury would include the possible greater loss on unpaid student loans by EU students who leave the UK after graduating and fail to pay off their debts. The issue of financing discounted tuition fees to EU students would therefore add to the mounting pressures on the new Chancellor as he prepares his October Budget.

You can read the Russell Group report here.

On a not unrelated topic, the news was full of stories about the crisis in the graduate jobs market. These headlines were typical: “Graduate job vacancies drop by almost 50% in a year, survey suggests” (BBC) and “Graduate jobs market slumps to new low” (CityAM).

We would just add that now seems a particularly bad time to agree a Brexit “reset” deal that would allow far more EU graduates to come and work here than the number of UK graduates who might head the other way…