Some good points here against a customs union with the EU, by @GregHands theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Those in favour of the CU as a permanent solution have to explain how the U.K. is going to have any real say over eg trade remedies policy (increasingly important and controversial in a Trump world) and eg customs treatment of developing countries. The answer “none” won’t do.
I think Labour policy involves the assumption that the EU would agree to a U.K. say in joint EU/UK policy. This has always struck me as a somewhat heroic assumption. So I’m personally sceptical about a CU as a long run position.
But one can support a CU as a temporary expedient to give U.K. industry time to reconfigure supply chains to deal with customs issues, for new technology, and to agree (necessarily detailed and complex) legal and admin arrangements with the EU to ensure frictionless trade.
@GregHands doesn’t deal with those issues - but they could well justify a temporary (probably 4-5 year) CU - even if you accept his analysis. (As always, it’s about trade-offs.)
And the 🐘 in the room is of course @BorderIrish: so the onus is on those proposing leaving the CU to reconcile that proposal with the U.K. Govt policy, and commitment, of no infrastructure at the border.
As far as I can see (and I’ve read the ERG/@iealondon papers on this), that onus just hasn’t been discharged: the only way of reconciling the two at least on current technology is to keep NI in the CU.
The “Büsingen” solution (a part of 🇩🇪 surrounded by, and in a CU with,🇨🇭): h/t @hhesterm.
So again it’s all about trade-offs. You can’t have everything, so what choice do you make?
Unfortunately U.K. politics in the last couple of years seems incapable either of honestly setting out those hard choices and trade offs or of resolving them in a way that commands broad acceptance. /ends
