If one day we are to see a full-scale public inquiry into Brexit, one of the men in the dock will be Shanker Singham. With privileged behind-the-scenes access to ministers, nobody has had more influence on the policies that have brought this country to its present state. He has another deranged effort in The Telegraph with his ego threatening to engulf the planet as he condemns the “anti-growth” policies not only of the EU but also the USA and now of the UK. Everybody in the world is apparently wrong except Mr Singham, the chosen one to whom all the hidden truths of international trade have been revealed.
His article is: The EU has given up on growth – and could soon self-destruct.
Singham says Britain is headed in the wrong direction and “In order to reverse this decline and cement the difference between the UK and other European nations, we must leave behind the stagnancy-inducing, anti-competitive regulation that Western Europe appears so fond of.”
The usual arguments follow but with little in the way of specifics. He does mention one, the CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) which he claims "imposes significant trade barriers between the EU and its trading partners."
Shanker asserts, although it's hard to follow his logic, that: "CBAM will likely go into effect over five years, meaning it is reasonable to attribute a 1.6pc reduction in GDP per capita year on year for that period." It may well have an impact but 1.6% is about £40 billion a year which I am sure is a massive overestimate.
The UK steel industry is begging the government to mirror the EU's CBAM so that it doesn't affect them (and other energy-intensive industries) at all. Of course, this isn't a remedy Singham proposes because he's just ideologically opposed to it.
The motor and chemical industries are among those crying out to keep in alignment with their largest export market and you can see why. To diverge simply adds costs, it doesn't save anything at all.
In November 2019 a government special adviser, Raoul Ruparel, couldn’t tell Channel 4’s Gary Gibbon a single sector of the British economy that wanted Brexit, and we are now seeing the practical result of that. The government is trying to implement a policy against the best interests of businesses large and small the length and breadth of the country and is unsurprisingly encountering a lot of resistance.
At the end of his article, Singham admits that “Leaving the bloc has come at a price by requiring more process and restrictions for trade between the UK and our European trading partners.”
And then says, “It would be absurd to pay that price, and then not take full advantage of the potential gains and benefits.”
This is indeed central to the whole raison d'etre of Brexit but the government has shown no great appetite or willingness to depart from EU law and there is very little sign of ministers wanting to propose anything substantial, and I'm sure it's for the reasons I've given. Business simply does not want to.
An Open University blog post last month looked at what EU Retained Laws have been ditched so far and examined the 553 EU regulations that were scheduled to go at the end of December. The post says:
"In short, much of this list is not highly salient or current in content, but rather a clearing out of the legislative roll. Which is fine, but arguably not what Brexit was meant to secure."
And they go on to conclude that, "while the focus has been on the reform of REUL, it’s ever more important to remember that there is still a material interest in some form of regulatory alignment with the EU. Partly that’s down to Level Playing Field requirements in the TCA, but mostly it’s a function of proximity and the convergence that came from being a long-standing member state: if the UK values trading with its nearest large market then avoiding needless imposition of additional effective barriers to trade needs to be part of the calculations being made."
The blog links to the government's updated REUL 'dashboard' which claims that out of 5,020 EU laws in 2017, 3,271 still remain. This must mean 1,749 have gone or been changed. The dashboard also says 673 have been amended, 369 repealed, 17 replaced and 78 expired which comes to 1137, to which I assume the 553 can now be added.
Despite that, has anyone noticed the slightest positive difference in their daily lives? Has the UK's economic performance been boosted? I don't think so.
So, assuming the UK doesn't diverge much more, and there is zero evidence that it wants to in practice, Singham is really saying that Brexit will have been absurd.
Finally, he's right.
