I'd apologise if I was anyone of consequence, but I might have slightly misrepresented Daniel Hannan in a tweet. There is a video going round of leave campaigners saying during the campaign that leaving the EU didn't mean leaving the single market. Daniel Hannan is one of the stars. Now I don't doubt that the others were simply saying stuff to sound good at the time while not believing for a moment that they'd ever have to make good on what they are saying. But you normally expect Hannan to have put a bit more thought into it than that. And indeed he did. Having just read something he wrote during the campaign I think it is just about possible to clear him of rank hypocrisy. Naive stupidity is the worst I can pin on him for this one.
His line if you read the small print is that we would retain access to the single market and simply give up our role in drawing up the regulatory standards. That way we would only have to follow EU rules when exporting to Europe and could do as we please in our home market. We sell more to non-EU countries so it isn't that big a deal for us. And a lot of standards are now worldwide anyway, so what is the benefit of binding ourselves to EU rules anyway?
It sounds quite convincing when you put it like that and makes you wonder what all the fuss is about.
But as usual Daniel is making the mistake that it is easy to make when you are well informed but not deeply informed. One statistic he quotes is enough to show what he gets wrong. Only 6% of UK companies export to the EU he says. Well I don't doubt he has some basis for that figure, though I am not sure where it comes from. But what of it - there are no doubt hundreds of thousands of window cleaners who count as businesses but only one GSK. And even that doesn't capture the whole story. One company I deal with doesn't export to the UK. But the customer that gives them 80% of their business certainly does. And might well shift that business to a manufacturer in the EU if the trade negotiations go badly.
And the idea that a country like Britain doesn't have a direct interest in influencing EU regulations is really dozy. This is nuts and bolts stuff. Does he really think the fact that the European pharmaceutical regulations were in origin pretty much based on the UK's regulations is not a huge advantage to the UK pharma sector? Does he really think that all the discussions on them being in English and taking place in London where the agency is based doesn't bring major benefits? These things don't just set regulations of course - the networks they create also lead to business.
And as to the point that many regulations are now internationally agreed and global in scope, does he really think that makes being in the EU irrelevant? Because even international regulations don't appear from nowhere. Somebody has to write them, and international bodies have to approve them. As a leading member of the EU the UK has a lot of sway in how they are set up. As a single state, not nearly so much.
Basically leaving the EU means we will have much less say over how we do things. That is the way the world is and no amount of fancy rhetoric will change that. But working in industry I am dreading the day we leave the single market. At the moment there is not much that stops you sending more or less anything more or less anywhere in the EU. Compared to exporting to the US where you have to negotiate with the port authorities it is a doddle. When your goods arrive in the states they get inspected by an officer who can simply stop them getting in. I know of a UK company who exported stress balls to the states. The guy at the port decided that stress was a medical condition so these stress balls were medicines and therefore didn't have the right paperwork. Back they went across the Atlantic.
That is just the sort of thing that we are now potentially letting ourselves in for when we are selling to Europe. Ironically leaving the EU will make us subject to the whims of Brussels bureaucrats over whom we have no democratic control. I am not even sure we'll be able to use the European Court of Justice to get redress. It is going to be very stressful. Luckily I know where to get hold of some stress balls to help me cope. But for everyone else I suggest getting an effigy of Daniel Hannan to poke pins into.
https://capx.co/remain-campaign-is-misleading-voters-on-the-single-market/
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