And this one on selling fish to France. Hurts my eyes, and my brain.
Poor fishermen. And I mean that sincerely. They have been used as pawns by the high and mighty throughout the Brexit process. And now they have to face this.
Here's another link to the original document in all its foul glory. There's so much more there. My extracts are a mere aperitif compared to that 12-course tasting menu of bureaucratic horror... gov.uk/government/pub…
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Here are the new post-Brexit VAT rules. Basically, overseas firms are forced to register with HMRC, collect VAT then remit it to HMRC if they want to sell to UK customers. gov.uk/government/pub…
BTW, Captain Kirk had raised this very issue back in October... 🖖
(He's not the first person to mention it - not by a long way - but he's undoubtedly the most prominent.)
I'm an "honest broker" so here's two changes the UK has just made that it couldn't have as an EU member.
- Scrapped the "tampon tax"
- Banned pulse fishing in UK waters (EU ban wasn't going to be until mid-2021)
Oh, and one more...
- Points-based immigration system for EVERYONE
If you're thinking "that list reads like a couple of Smarties vs a metric tonne of manure" you wouldn't be alone...
Except, that's not the whole story.
Despite very widespread Tory gloating today, it turns out that pulse fishing is "blue passports" all over again. Could have banned it without leaving the EU. France has done so already, for instance. independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…
This is exactly what should have been presented years ago so that firms could prepare.
Or, arguably, before the Brexit referendum. Just the 70 pages of case studies released TODAY could have tipped the result the other way. Not everyone is blinded by sovrinty & hating forrins.
Going back to the examples...
The person in France buying (say) UK mechanical goods will take one look at the procedures involved, and Google an alternative supplier inside the EU instead.
Full Brexit in just over 7 hours, and the UK Government website doesn't seem to know what rules will apply to moving goods around the EU for temporary purposes, such as to take stuff to trade shows... gov.uk/taking-goods-o…
Here's where it gets "fun" if you follow a few breadcrumbs.
I will give Liz Truss a little credit. Not that many EU trade deals remain unrolled-over. Her team did an ok job of the old CTRL-C CTRL-V.
(But *zero* out of ten for the naked propaganda following each act of copying.)
Mexico & Canada are delayed a bit. Then just titchy stuff.
What we are likely to discover going forward is that a single substantial trade deal is harder to accomplish than copying across 60+ existing ones. In the latter case, the detail has already been thrashed out over months and years. But new trade deals mean starting from scratch.
Up until now, it's basically been an exercise in penmanship: how neatly can Liz copy out other people's homework.
But going forward, she'll have to complete the work on her own. And that's a much tougher proposition.
Here's how the UK's situation will change after the transition period ends, compared to our former EU membership...
(Come back to this thread. It will keep growing!)
- UK can negotiate its own trade deals
- No more automatic participation in new trade deals reached by the EU
- UK gets to keep fish equivalent to 25% of the catch EU boats previously caught in UK waters, staggered over 5.5 years
- Costly export health certificates for fishery products
- Inbound and outbound customs and regulatory checks (UK side will defer some of these temporarily)
- Stringent rules of origin and local content requirements
- Loss of freedom of movement for UK citizens in the EU and EU citizens in the UK (Ireland excepted)
- No Erasmus programme
- No equivalence decision for financial services