, 21 tweets, 3 min read Read on Twitter
There are serious problems with this paper by @LegatumInst. I’ll look at two of them.
1. The paper assumes that there is a very short term opportunity for the U.K. to have a major impact in liberalising world trade.
But it no where explains (i) why this opportunity is short term (why only now and not later?) nor (ii) why the U.K. could have that impact.
To put it gently, neither proposition is obvious: and I’d suggest, given the Trump presidency till 2021/25, neither looks right.
2. The second problem is here.
The hope is that the EU will agree mutual recognition of different UK goods/agri/services standards.
But no real basis is given for supposing that that hope is remotely realistic.
The vague references to WTO principles are misleading: these principles are vague and have key exceptions. They go nowhere.
E.g., in financial services, WTO agreements don’t cover prudential/consumer protection rules. Which are precisely where the problems are.
So, contrary to what this passage might lead the unwary to think, waving WTO principles at the EU won’t work.
And why should EU agree eg to allow U.K. fin serv businesses to operate in EU when they comply with different (less onerous) UK rules?
That would mean the EU and EU voters/politicians wouldn’t set the rules any more. “Take back control” is a slogan that works in the EU too.
You can read the same point over to food and other goods.
That means that, contrary to the passage, departing from EU regulation or a Swiss type model carries a large cost in terms of lost access.
Eg checks at borders for food; functionally separate operating subsidiaries in fin serv.
But since the paper pretends those costs can be avoided, it makes no attempt to analyse their scale.
So it avoids the critical question: are the gains from putting our regulation “on the table” in deals with eg the US ...
... likely to exceed (in the short or long term) the costs of lost/more difficult access to the EU single market?
The answer to that question could in theory be “yes”: but every respectable analysis I’ve seen suggests that it is in fact “no”.
So I’m afraid the @LegatumInst proposal is, in my view, not a realistic way forward.
It certainly in my view fails to provide an adequate answer to the case for staying in or close to the single market.
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