Sometimes “f*ck business” is the right approach

By Pete North - February 24, 2021

We campaigned to stay in the EEA. We said that leaving it would be a disaster for British exporters and it rather looks like we were right. You didn’t need to be Nostradamus, you just needed to read the Notices to Stakeholders. It was all there.

The mistake this government made was believing that something akin with CETA would be adequate, and that with bolt-ons we could arrive at something halfway between an FTA and the single market. But no such arrangement exists. The closest is the Swiss “model” which is not likely to be replicated and certainly not inside a decade – if not for technical reasons then for political reasons.

The government prioritised sovereignty in defiance of all the known rules of trade, and though you can question the wisdom of doing so, that’s where we are. Accepting, then, that trade as we have known it with the EU has come to an end, we do not have the luxury of wishing it were otherwise. The government is obliged to explore every possible avenue – including the long shots.

Starting from that point, we have certain advantages. We are no longer bound by EU rules. The TCA encourages continued alignment with the implied threat of punitive tariffs for divergence, but as we are now finding non-tariff barriers are so exclusionary that tariffs are neither here not there. It’s not ideal to write off our nearest and largest market but if maintaining that alignment for no real gain in any way inhibits us, then that is precisely what we must do.

Here we have to go back to basics. Brexit was always more than a question of trade. The single market may be good for business, but I don’t like what it turned us into. We became slaves to GDP rather than architects of our own society.

The single market is not just a framework of trade governance. It is a full stack operating system to facilitate the full spectrum of commerce across the EU/EEA. The problem with that is that it puts the requirements of business first. That, therefore, is a governance philosphy. Environmental and social considerations are brought in, but these aspects are more to do with competition policy rather than the welfare of citizens.

We therefore have the opportunity to rethink that governing philosphy. Starting from the basics we get to ask what regulation is for and what we expect it to do. With the single market, the primary function of regulation is to promote European integration and harmonise rules for the expansion of trade. Actually regulating things effectively is a distant second.

Since we have said “fuck business” we now have the opportunity to switch the priorities around. We want regulation to effectively regulate business activity and curb its excesses, be it pollution, food contamination, waste or basic labour rights abuses. You don’t need me to point out the many examples of EU rules failing to do this – often for decades without meaningful correction.

What we had, prior to the EU was a regulatory system that served the requirements of people. Waste policy was there to keep the streets free of fly tipping, not to stimulate an EU wide market in recyclable materials. Food safety policy was just about food safety for its own sake, and not a weapon of European harmonisation.

Democracy, if it means anything, is people dictating their own environment through their own laws, creating the boundaries that business must operate inside. The moment regulation became multifunctional was the moment we surrendered those essential rights. We put the cart before the horse so that the needs of business came first and we had to fit our lives around it.

Essentially, having sleepwalked into the European Union, handing it ever more control over ever more areas of invisible government, we have allowed ourselves to become passive spectators in our own so-called democracy, unable to change or even question the overarching governance philosophy.

Now, though, we can – and now we must. If it wasn’t necessary before Covid, it certainly is now. There are any number of problems to which we must address ourselves and we must choose solutions on the basis of whether they fulfil their primary intent without measuring against the requirements of Brussels.

Though I have long argued the merits of regulatory harmonisation, particularly the utility of harmonised rules in trade, we have allowed the dogma of trade liberalisation to override all other concerns. The question that has plagued me over the last few years is where the line is drawn. We want the benefits of trade of trade and it makes sense to harmonise our technical standards – but when it comes to how we live, it should be nobody’s business but our own.

If, though, the ultimatum from Europe is to stay in the EU tramlines or no trade at all, then “fuck business” has to be our policy. That’s what Brexit is about – taking back control over our own affairs. I would prefer a middle way, but the EU has made it abundantly clear that it’s their way or no trade.

One can understand why Norway, Switzerland and other medium sized economies in the orbit of the EU have no choice but to submit to this ultimatum, but we don’t. It’s a costly choice for sure, but one we can and will endure. Though we are often chastised for “British exceptionalism”, in this particular equation, Britain is exceptional. It is large enough and different enough (socially and geographically) to pursue its own distinct requirements.

Though trade wonks continue to bleat about trade gravity, we do not simply surrender ourselves to natural forces. Had we never questioned natural forces or attempted to defy them we’d never have discovered flight. And while we’re talking about undeniable facts of life, the EU is one of them. Trade in normal circumstances may follow the gravity model, but these are not normal circumstances. While the EU exists it is a barrier to the natural flow of goods and services between the UK and the continent. It seems those who prattle about the former fact of life, ignore the latter.

Consequently the parameters are defined otherwise. Trade follows the path of least resistance. It may be meeting more resistance than before, but that is the problem to which we must apply our thinking instead.

Knowing that the UK cannot compete on price, particularly in goods, and especially while EU agriculture relies heavily on low wage exploitation, the UK must re-regulate for quality and the highest standard of ethics. Against the EU, that shouldn’t be too difficult. British standards were once renowned globally even in my lifetime.

To that extent, we need to employ selective protectionism – particularly to safeguard our agriculture. But then we must also beef up our own standards enforcement to exclude cheap substandard rubbish the EU has utterly failed to defend us against. With container rates still climbing, and globalisation having stalled, we must take the opportunity to re-shore production of food, clothes and consumables, cutting out aggressors like China, and reassert British prestige.

Contrary to the free traders on the Tory benches, Brexit should not be about lowering tariffs to flood our markets with cheap crap. We want to rebuild a society that rejects rampant consumerism and respects clothes and food; to be a country where British built goods last and we don’t casually discard, one that doesn’t outsource services to India, and one where businesses train young people rather than exploiting cheap immigrants.

Exports are certainly important, and we must invest heavily in trade facilitation to streamline customs and authorisation processes, but we cannot let the tail wag the dog as we have for the last half century.

That is perhaps where Jacob Rees-Mogg was right. We perhaps won’t see any benefit to Brexit for fifty years. Brexit is a correction to an unhealthy trend of submission to neoliberalism, the cost of which will be borne for a generation. It is likely that we will never resume the same levels of trade with Europe for as long as the EU exists. The EU has made its position clear, as have we. The only thing left to do is to work out where to go next.

Unlike the cardboard cutout brexiteer on Twitter, I’m not opposed to a “great reset”. Covid coinciding with Brexit is a major opportunity to “build back better”. I see no reason not to invest in micronuclear and local CHP systems, I see no reason not to invest heavily in food security, reducing food miles and developing high tech aqua and agriculture. We don’t need a hot climate to grow bananas. We don’t need Bulgarians to pick fruit. And what if producing so many cars every day that they’re backed up on airfields for months is a pisspoor economic model?

It goes without saying that we made a far bigger mess of Brexit than we ever had to, and there were better ways of doing it, but that’s all in the past now. It’s now incumbent on all of us to envisage a new country that works for all, discarding the failed ideas of the previous century and letting go of European utopian fantasies. If we start to engage with reality then we might have a hand in creating a new one – and maybe even build a democracy worthy of its name.