My point yesterday on the medicines section of the @iealondon @ShankerASingham paper is an example of a wider problem with the IEA/Singham approach: lack of honesty about trade offs.
The example there was failing to be honest about the fact that separate U.K. regulation means delayed drugs. But there are other examples.
Some are there in the text but not faced up to. Eg scrapping tariffs on all imports of tropical agri produce while maintaining tariff preferences for developing countries (think about it).
Or advocating escaping (in some vaguely defined but significant way) EU data protection rules ...
... while grumbling that the EU has succeeded in exporting those rules around the world (but without facing up to why and how the EU has done so - which would involve an explanation of the cost to the U.K. of swimming against that tide).
Facing up to trade offs would also mean engaging in some political realism. Is Parliament really going to want a new medicines system if that means delay in life saving drugs?
Are we really going to scrap EU data privacy rules (which have wide and deep U.K. support, anyway) if that becomes a real problem for our goods and services businesses exporting to the EU?
Honesty about trade offs and realism about what different interests and sectors within the U.K. want and can live with is the start of any realistic prospectus for post Brexit trade. I fear that the @iealondon @ShankerASingham report doesn’t even try.
