[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s the UK deals with the EU negotiating position, as intransigent as is, is also has to deal with the desperation of the diminishing remainer camp. As the reality of Brexit comes ever closer the truth of the remainer position has become clear. They appear to want to do everything in their power to make post exit Britain a crippled shadow of what it could be as a fully independent state. Some of the things that the Labour party and people like Blair are coming out with are basically just wanting the UK to stay in the EU, with all of its incumbent restrictions and costs, but without any of the benefits. It has been said a lot that out means out, and that is exactly right. There is no such thing as a hard or soft Brexit. Soft means the remainer’s half-way house of continuing EU control, hard means out, which is what the UK voters decided in the referendum. The only differentiation that means anything is a clean or messy Brexit. Again, clean is what people voted for, messy is the remainers muddying the waters with their continued call for transition for an unknown period of time, if it were up to them, indefinitely.
“Funny, isn’t it. You know, when I came here 17 years ago, and I said that I wanted to lead a campaign to get Britain to leave the European Union, you all laughed at me. Well I have to say, you’re not laughing now are you?” Nigel Farage
Some of the stories that I have read are outrageous. I expected such duplicity from the likes of Blair, a known serial liar who wouldn’t get out of bed unless there was a quid in it for him, but for the Labour party to turn their backs on their supporters, ignore their voters who voted for Brexit and do a complete about face because they can see some political mileage in it is disgusting.
The likes of Chris Leslie, David Lammy, Chuka Umunna, Ben Bradshaw, Paul Farrelly and Keir Starmer are doing no service at all to their constituents, their party and the country. Starmer should hand back his knighthood as he is no friend to the UK. They are supposed to Her Majesties Loyal Opposition, there is no loyalty to the UK in any of them.
Why do they fear democracy so much, why can they not stand up alongside Labour politicians like Kate Hoey, Frank Field or Dennis Skinner who understand what democracy means and voted for the repeal bill with a clear conscience and with the best interests of their constituents in mind.
The UK is leaving the EU on the 19th March 2019 and there is nothing the remainers can do except try to make the process as messy as possible. Some of the antics that they are trying are incomprehensible and I cannot believe that the UK voters will be taken in by them. They continually spread myths and lies with the sole intention of undermining the country and making post Brexit UK remain a shackled vassal state.
Whichever way it is looked at the European Single Market was devised to try and boost the EU’s economy, increase competition and allow goods and methods of production to move to areas where they are most valued to try and improve efficiency and allow savings by economies of scale.
It hasn’t really done any of those things and is being heralded as a must have membership for the UK after Brexit. To remain in the single market is a package deal and as such the UK would have to accept everything else such as the customs union (more of that later) and the free movement of people.
There is a lot said about the advantages of being able to trade with the 450m people in the EU when in reality that view is inward looking and a major impediment to trade and lower prices in the UK. In reality the layers of compliance to allow companies to trade in the single market advantage large companies only as they have the resources to navigate regulations and some are so big that they can influence political decision making to the detriment of their competition. Monopolies form which further skews the market towards the larger companies.
The single market was supposed to boost the UK economy but there is ample evidence that the disadvantages of it far outweigh any perceived advantages, and even those advantages have been overblown and have not materialised in the two decades since its inception.
There are reams of documents that prove this but to bring the whole argument up to date we need look no further than the Project Fear hysteria from before the referendum.
“After two years GDP will be 6% lower… the Treasury analysis published today finds that a direct consequence of a vote to Leave the EU would be significant job losses across the UK, within two years at least half a million jobs would be lost – and that’s the lower end of the estimates, across Britain as many as 820,000 jobs could be lost.”
That was according to George Osborne just before the referendum. The reality is that unemployment in the UK is the lowest in the EU and at a 40 year low; GDP growth has been consistently up for the four quarters after the referendum.
The Brexit vote was such a disaster for UK industry that exports have risen by 16% and order books are at a 29 year high.
Tied to the single market is the customs union. Simply put this is an extension of tariffs borders covering the whole EU and ensures that goods coming into the EU from outside are taxed at the same rate. In reality it is a burden on the British high-street of over £3 billion a year. That is money that consumers pay extra on their budgets to protect Spanish orange growers or German coffee roasters. Over ⅓ of that is put onto clothing and footwear often made in developing countries. The EU Customs Union is protectionist and has the effect of undermining those countries efforts to industrialise and raise the standard of livings of their own people.
Belonging to it prevents individual governments from adjusting their own tariffs for the benefit of their people, or the elimination of them all together for at least developing countries to encourage their own exports with the added benefit of cheaper goods for UK consumers.
As an indication of how ridiculous these tariffs are, and there are over 12,500 categories of them, here are some of the weirder ones:
4.20% – Sub-orbital space vehicles
15.00% – Unicycles
10.20% – Tomato Ketchup
4.70% – Umbrellas with telescopic shaft
0.00% – Green coffee beans – the EU produces no coffee at all
7.50% – Roasted Coffee beans
The German Coffee roasters make more money from importing raw coffee, roasting it and exporting it again than the producing countries combined.
502.26% – Fish and crustaceans, molluscs and other aquatic invertebrates
613.72% – Preparations of vegetables, fruit, nuts or other parts of plants.
Food doesn’t actually play a large role in the tariff charts. Of the nearly ₤200 billion per year spent on food in the UK, nearly ₤40 billion comes from the EU. This is an artificial trade based on lower prices, but those prices are only lower because of tariffs protecting EU producers. It is not competition and it is not a free market.
Brexit means leaving the EU’s single market and Customs Union, it is as simple as that. There is no half-way house of transition or staying in a bit. Leaving the EU is like pregnancy, it either is or isn’t, there is no partial.
There has been much talk of sanitary products and the tax imposed at 5%. Many governments have made mileage about getting rid of that tax, as they rightly should, and others but the fact is that they cannot. Because the EU will not allow them to, it is forbidden, sanitary products must be taxed at 5% by EU regulation. What is even more insidious and not mentioned is that the raw material to make tampons, six ply yarn of bleached cotton, is not only subject to tax at 20% but also an import tariff of 4%. And then they put the 5% on top. All because of the Customs Union, its protectionism and the artificial inflation it causes. The remainers never mention these things, the real tangible evidence of how the EU interferes in everything, without benefit.
By not being honest about these things, by pretending that there is a half-way house option to prevent a ‘cliff-edge’ withdrawal the remainers are undermining the very reason people chose to leave. Even worse they are undermining the huge advantage that await the UK on the other side of a clean Brexit. There is no cliff-edge exit, but what the remainers are trying to set up is a murky swamp that the UK will have to drag itself through to try and reach the solid ground on the other side.
The Labour manifesto at the last election clearly stated that: ‘Labour accepts the referendum result and a Labour government will put the national interest first’
They aren’t, not even close. If they were they would not be insisting in remaining in the Single Market and Customs Union to the detriment of the economy and UK consumers. They would not be insisting that the European Courts of Justice has primacy over UK law in certain areas – what other country in the world allows another states’ courts to dictate the law. I can think of – none. They would not be insisting on a indeterminate transition period, while the EU sucks more wealth from the UK and the remainiac quislings work in the background.
In their manifesto they accuse Brexiteers in the government of trying to ‘…to tear up regulations and weaken hard-fought rights and protections’ while it was a Blair Labour government who allowed unrestricted immigration which completely undermined hard-fought rights and protections of workers at the behest of their overlords in the EU.
Would you believe that I am pro-Brexit and I believe that the UK will be better for it. Stronger, wealthier, more inclusive and fairer than it can be now under a supra-national dictatorship. Bring it on, but a clean break without the 5th column tactics of these duplicitous remainers.
