One of the common cries from unreconciled Remainers in Britain is: “Can you give me just one benefit of Brexit?” Well, this week a book is out which gives us 75 of them: 75 Brexit Benefits, by the pseudonymous author Gully Foyle (whom I know in real life and can reassure readers is eminently qualified to write on this subject), sets out 75 changes that have already happened in Britain and which would have been impossible within the EU policy framework. For all the criticisms from people like me that things should have gone faster while we had a chance, it’s nevertheless worth being reminded that quite a lot has already moved.
Britain’s emerging tailored policy framework stands in contrast to the EU’s. I was reading this week an assessment by one of Brussels Signal’s big competitors of the main policy issues facing the EU this autumn. And what a depressing read it was.
After all, Europe is the closest to war it has been for a generation. With only a couple of exceptions, its national economies are slowing fast, and its motor, Germany, has gone into reverse. Social conflict is rife thanks to many years of super-high migration.
Yet what were the main issues we were told faced the EU political class? The Digital Services Act: Not whether it was deterring investment and discouraging free speech, but instead how to enforce it in a tougher way against the horrible Americans. The Digital Markets Act, in contrast, seems in better shape: There, the Americans have already been fined and more is in prospect. And the EU’s so-called Democracy Shield is to take shape this autumn, as the authors put it revealingly, to stop “Europe’s erstwhile ally, the US…bullying the bloc under the premise of protecting democracy.”
Beyond this, there is to be a debate about whether foreign investment rules should get tougher, not just in sensitive areas like semiconductors but in old-economy areas like rail and cars; another go at the endless and unsuccessful process of harmonising capital market rules; a battle between those who want to double-down on net zero and those who want to keep a European car industry; and plans to regulate further one of the EU’s few success stories, air passenger travel.
You really could not wish for a clearer indication of just how inward-looking and defensive the EU has become. What interests its policy-makers is more regulation, more grand projects, and more suspicion of modern technology.
Contrast this with where things stand in the UK. It would of course be foolish to deny that the same controlling instincts exist within Britain, especially under this current Labour government that likes regulating speech and repressing markets. But even within this framework, it has still been possible to tailor a political and economic environment that more suits us, and Gully Foyle’s book explains how this has happened. Whether you like the emerging policies or not, at least they are designed for Britain and delivered by a government elected by its people. Brits aren’t being asked, at the moment anyway, to accept a defensive and inward-looking policy mix, designed by others, for some artificial average of 27 member states.
The UK’s “reset” may of course take us back towards the old world. But for now Gully’s book shows what has already happened. The benefits he sets out vary from the macro to the micro. They include Britain’s fortunate dodging the bullet of the EU’s constant budget increases and baroque off-budget finance arrangements. We dodged nonsense taxes like the plastics levy. We have been able to reduce customs tariffs on products which we do not make and help bring down food costs in Britain (we now have the cheapest bananas in Europe, bent or straight).
We have been able to bring in a set of environment and animal welfare measures that reflect specifically British preferences: Banning sand eel fishing in the North Sea; removing loopholes on testing cosmetics on animals; prohibition of live animal exports; banning pet smuggling; and more.
We have been able to deregulate in areas that make a difference: We can have longer trucks than the EU, so we don’t have to have so many on our roads; reduced bureaucracy on licences for trailers and HGVs; better procurement and state aid rules; the removal of the cap on bonuses on pay; and less restrictive rules on novel foods.
And again we have avoided, admittedly as much by luck as judgement, the EU’s disastrous innovation-killing rules on AI, enabling the huge UK-US tech deal announced last week covering not just that area but quantum computing, nuclear power, and enabling £150bn (€172 billion) of investment. Britain’s controversial departed Ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, highlighted in one of his last public comments that without Brexit this deal would simply not be happening. Contrast this open British approach to the US with the suspicious, hectoring one currently being pushed by the EU establishment.
Now you may or may not agree with all the measures British governments have taken. I am personally a little doubtful about some. But the point is that they reflect UK preferences. We have an alternative option – even if Labour’s “reset” will start to squeeze out policy freedom in some areas before long. EU member states don’t.
One must wonder how much longer the EU’s member states and peoples will put up with their establishment’s effort to screen themselves off from the world into their own walled garden. After all, the trade-off at the heart of the EU has been to accept more centralised control in return for a larger market and more investment and growth. But if the economic side of the bargain is not being provided, and the political one is ever more constraining on free speech, independence of action, and relations with the rest of the world, how long will the bargain last? The current arrangements are plainly under strain, shifting and cracking under the subterranean pressures for a different kind of politics. It would obviously be wise to allow for more flexibility, but sadly wisdom has not been a characteristic of the EU’s establishment class over the years. Maybe von der Leyen can hold things in place for a few more years, but after her, the deluge?
The Rt Hon Lord Frost of Allenton CMG was Britain’s chief negotiator for exiting the European Union
‘We are the people of England, and we have not spoken yet’