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BREXIT

‘Time to think about the 5 million in limbo’: UK parliament votes to delay Brexit

Lawmakers in London voted to delay Brexit on Thursday evening by a majority of 210 to mark the end of three days of fraught debates and votes in which PM Theresa May's deal was firmly rejected as was a no-deal Brexit.

'Time to think about the 5 million in limbo': UK parliament votes to delay Brexit
How long left? Photo: Shebeko/Depositphotos

A majority of Members of Parliament (MPs) in the UK's lower house voted to delay Brexit on Thursday and seek an extension to Article 50 from the EU.

The motion to seek an extension to Article 50 was approved by a majority of 210 MPs. It calls for Theresa May to seek an extension until June 30th 2019 if a deal is approved before March 20th. But the motion also acknowledges that a longer extension may need to be justified if the UK parliament cannot agree on the deal before the EU Council summit on March 21st. 

The lower house also voted on several amendments. Theresa May survived an attempt for MPs to set the schedule for future debates and talks on Brexit, and wrestle control of the process from her hands, by a majority of only two (312 ayes, 314 noes).

An amendment to hold a second referendum was also defeated by a much wider majority of 229.

Some Labour MPs wrote an open letter arguing why they were abstaining even though they support a second referendum “because it isn't the right time.” They hope to be able to achieve a second referendum via other means in parliament. 

While amendments are not legally binding, they offer a barometer of sentiment among MPs. The fact that 332 voted against a second referendum would constitute a majority even if Labour had voted, suggesting more than half of parliamentarians are not in favour of giving the British public a final say on Brexit. 

Desires are nourished by delays?

Senior EU figures have expressed differing positions on granting an extension to Article 50, the clause in the Lisbon Treaty which envisages a two-year window for member states leaving the bloc to agree a framework for future cooperation with the Union. 

Donald Tusk, president of the EU Council – the political body where ministers from the EU meet to agree policy – suggested he was open to granting the UK an extension.

But opposing views in the EU to delaying Brexit were made evident in a tweet by Guy Verhofstadt, the Brexit coordinator at the EU parliament, in which the Belgian MEP appeared to disagree with Tusk.

“Unless there is a clear majority in the House of Commons for something precise, there is no reason at all for the European Council to agree on a prolongation,” tweeted Verhofstadt.

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has made clear he wants Brexit out of the way before European parliamentary elections in late May.

“I would like to stress that the United Kingdom's withdrawal should be complete before the European elections that will take place between 23-26 May,” wrote Juncker in a letter to EU Council President Tusk on March 11th. 

EU Brexit fatigue

The issue of an extension has also sewn divisions among member states, fracturing the united front the EU27 is keen to maintain. French President Emmanuel Macron said the Withdrawal Agreement could not be renegotiated but showed lukewarm signs that he was open to an extension.

Many EU leaders see an extension as justified only if the UK can present a viable plan as to how it will use the time to dig itself out of the Brexit quagmire.

“If the British need more time, we will examine a request for an extension — if it is justified by new choices on the part of the British,” said President Macron. 

READ ALSO: Macron says Brexit withdrawal deal not 'negotiable'

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte echoed Macron's thoughts. 

Chief EU Negotiator Michel Barnier isn't keen on an extension and feels his, and the EU's work, has been done. 

“Prolong this negotiation, to do what?” Barnier asked MEPs at the European Parliament’s plenary session in Strasbourg on the morning of Wednesday March 13th. “The negotiation on article 50 is over. We have a treaty. It is here,” he added. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, like EU Commission President Juncker, has previously suggested a 55 day extension to Article 50 until the beginning of EU parliamentary elections would be “very easy.” Any extension beyond May 22nd would mean the UK would have to hold EU parliamentary elections, Juncker has stated. 

The final countdown

With the next EU Council summit a week away – March 21-22 – Theresa May  and her negotiators now have a week to try and convince her European counterparts to grant an extension and avoid a cliff-edge no-deal exit on March 29th.

The EU's apparent reluctance to unanimously agree to an extension may just be posturing. Brexit has dragged on for nearly three years, yet as a former senior EU Commission official recently told told The Local “twenty four hours is a long time in Brexit politics.” 

Rights advocacy group British in Europe, formed in 2016 to defend the rights of UK nationals in the EU caught on the front lines of Brexit, repeated its call for the rights of 3.6 million EU nationals in the UK and 1.2 million UK nationals in the EU to be ring-fenced. 

READ MORE: 'We choose France': Dordogne Brits still in Brexit limbo as clock ticks down

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BREXIT

British actor married to Swedish pop star gives up post-Brexit fight to stay in Sweden

Former Bollywood actor Kenny Solomons' imminent return to the UK after failing to get post-Brexit residency has made national news in Sweden thanks to his marriage to the singer from the band Alcazar. He tells The Local why he's leaving.

British actor married to Swedish pop star gives up post-Brexit fight to stay in Sweden

The QX gala – Sweden’s glitzy, televised celebration of gay culture – is not the first place a man in his 20s would go to find a future wife. 

But that’s what happened to British actor Kenny Solomons.

Solomons, now 37, was already a well-known face in Sweden after playing the superhero in adverts for the internet provider Bredbandsbolaget. He was there to give out an award. Tess Merkel, singer for the nu-disco band Alcazar – one of Sweden’s most successful ever groups – was there to receive one.

“It was utterly insane,” Solomons remembers. “I had had a few drinks and then I woke up the next day in this typical Swedish apartment with kids’ toys everywhere. I was like, ‘what the fuck is going on?'”

“The kids were away with their dad, and Tess went off to work the next day and she left a note – as a joke – on the kitchen table that said ‘sorry I left you, but I took off to plan our wedding’. I thought it was a one-night stand. I was 25 years old and she was 17 years older. I didn’t expect to be married.”

The actor Kenny Solomons (right) arrives at the QX Gala in 2016. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT

But in 2015 they got engaged and then in 2017, they married in the Indian holiday paradise of Goa, making it legal for Sweden with a ceremony in Stockholm City Hall the next year. 

By then, Solomons was so deeply embedded in Stockholm’s celebrity whirl that everything from the Brexit referendum to the deadline for post-Brexit residency had more or less passed him by. It was only when he took a trip to Greece in the summer of 2022, his first international trip since the pandemic broke out, that he realised the mistake he had made. 

“We flew back through Serbia, which is outside the European Union, so as we were coming in through the Swedish border, they said ‘hey, you do realise that you’re going to need to send in a whole load of information’, and I was completely shocked. I had no idea. I mean, to some people, I might sound like an absolute moron, but I just wasn’t aware of it.” 

In some ways his ignorance was unsurprising, given the Swedish authorities’ decision not to contact British citizens directly, even digitally, to inform them of the need to apply for post-Brexit residency by the end of 2021, although there was information published online.

READ ALSO:

Unlike many Brits in Sweden, Solomons was at that point completely integrated, living in the upmarket Stockholm district of Hammarby Sjöstad, and speaking almost exclusively Swedish.   

“It wasn’t originally the plan to do everything in Swedish. It was after I started working and running a business here, that it just sort of kicked in,” he remembers. “After three or four years, I suddenly was like, ‘ah, OK, I’m speaking Swedish. My mother would be very proud, that me, a dyslexic boy from Southend-on-Sea in Essex, could speak even one word in another language!”

Because he only hung out with Swedes and rarely met other Brits, he had simply not heard about the Brexit deadline. 

“All of my friends are in the industry. I socialise among those who also work as artists here in Sweden,” he explains. “When you work as an entrepreneur or an artist, there is nobody to give you that little nudge and say, ‘hey, there is a thing going on called Brexit and it’s going to affect your status here in Sweden’. I had absolutely no idea that it would affect me in this way, and would still be affecting me four years on.”

Looking back, he remembers spending much of 2020 and 2021 desperately trying and eventually failing to save his chain of barbershops and hair-replacement therapy centres from bankruptcy due to the pandemic.

READ ALSO:

When he did apply for post-Brexit residency – nearly a year late – he was rejected as the Migration Agency does not treat ignorance as “reasonable grounds” for missing the deadline. He appealed the decision to the Migration Court, but this month decided he had had enough of waiting, given that rejection was “inevitable”. 

“It’s now 19 months since I sent in my appeal to the Migration Court, and the pressure of not knowing, every day, and the pressure of having to say ‘no’ to career opportunities outside of Europe, and the pressure of not knowing with 100 percent certainty that I can live and work in Sweden in the long run was just affecting my health, and my mental health as well,” he says.

“I hit the wall, was suffering with anxiety, and was incredibly unhappy. So I made the decision.” 

He’s now going to return to the UK and apply for spousal reunion with Merkel. As he has no young children of his own, there is little chance of getting granted the right to do this from within Sweden.

Since he left the UK as a young man, his mother has died, and his 60-year-old father has left their childhood home in Essex and moved to Chester on the other side of England, somewhere he has never been. 

“I guess I’ll go and sleep on his couch,” he says. “I can moan and be upset and say all these awful things. But I have my health and I have a place to go. There are people in a similar situation that don’t have any connections or ties left in the UK any longer, so I’m very grateful to at least have a couch to crash on while I figure out this next step.” 

His father got married in the middle of June, and Solomon’s plan is to return for the wedding party on August 24th, handing in his application for spousal reunion in Sweden within days of arrival. He has no idea if he will then have to wait six months, or two years, before he is granted the right to live again in Sweden.  

“My wife and I, we really always try to make the best out of a bad situation, whatever it is, so when I leave Sweden and start my process from my dad’s I want to continue to be able to give back to this country.” 

READ ALSO:

His next plan is to return to India, where he spent several years before coming to Sweden working as an actor in Bollywood films. 

“You’re gonna think I’m completely nuts. I want to fly to the most northern part of India and run from North India to South India, the whole way, and raise money for Läkare Utan Gränser [the Swedish arm of the global medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)].” 

He says that one of the silver linings to his situation is that as someone involved in Swedish showbusiness, his case has received media coverage, unlike hundreds of other British citizens who have been victims of Sweden’s strict application of the EU Withdrawal Agreement. 

“It’s a very, very great luxury and something I don’t take for granted that I have a platform that can be used for to spread my thoughts and my opinions,” he said, adding that he has also enjoyed sharing information with and trying to help other British people in the same situation. 

Tess Merkel’s band Alcazar performed at the Eurovision Grand Final in Malmö in 2024. Photo: Jessica Gow/TT

Now he’s looking forward to returning back to the UK, where family and friends were in May blown away by the surprise appearance of Merkel and the rest of Alcazar at the Eurovision Grand Final. 

“I had to keep it a secret from my family in England. I couldn’t tell anybody because Alcazar had written a contract with Eurovision,” he remembers. “So my family didn’t know, and they were just shocked when they came on. They Facetimed me just afterwards and said, ‘they really made fun of Alcazar. I felt really sorry for them’.”

But Alcazar, he said, had no issues with being made the butt of a joke about their ‘reunion’ not quite being the hoped-for Abba appearance. The are, he says, “a playful band”. 

“She is that person in real life. She’s absolutely fantastic. She’s an absolute gem. She’s my best friend,” he said of Merkel. “She might say to you, ‘it will be quite nice to have a bit of a break from Kenny. He’s a pain in the ass’. But taking this step is like losing my right hand, because we are so co-dependent on each other – in all the best ways.” 

Membership+ subscribers can listen to the full interview with Kenny Solomons in the Sweden in Focus Extra podcast, which will be available from Wednesday, June 26th.   

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