In what looks like the most pathetic attempt yet to force the hand of the EU, the government is said to be planning to build the UK's own satellite navigation system (HERE) to rival Galileo, the EU version where we will be locked out of the precise military grade positioning and any future development of it.
This has echos of the mid 1950s when the EEC was first mooted under the Schuman plan and as European leaders were trying to put the horrors of war behind them and work towards a better future by joining together in the European Economic Community. We sent "observers" who observed that it wouldn't work and if it ever got off the ground it would soon fail. As soon it was shown to be working we created EFTA as a spoiling tactic.
Now we are proposing an alternative to Galileo as another spoiling tactic. I don't think anyone in Europe will be impressed.
The Treasury is forecasting a big hit to our finances in whatever scenario we exit - even a Canada style FTA will cost us 6.2% of GDP - about £124 billion a year in today's money - and spending £10 billion on a satellite system is just not realistic, even if it is spread over a number of years. The defence secretary is already talking about about fitting guns to farm tractors and using ferries as landing craft (seriously HERE).
We would have an advanced satellite system to precisely position our John Deere lightly armoured tractors fitted with machine guns. It is transparently laughable.
