I took a break from posting on this blog over the Christmas period, and I may not be able to post as much in the New Year. I’ve been working on this blog since 2017. This is the 3,350th published post. But, I’ve other things that I’m working on, and it’s difficult to find the time to do it all. In some ways, it’s been a frustrating eight years. Brexit was never going to produce all (in fact, none) of the promised treasure, as we knew in 2016. Remainers have been proven right, time and time again. It has been a long experiment that has now comprehensively failed. Unfortunately, hope is always the last thing to die, and among the Brexiters it still clings on.
There was no surge in trade to be found outside the EU, no boost to wealth, no sense of having been cut free from and soaring away to our true global heritage. It was all rubbish. Frictionless trade with your neighbours is always beneficial, and the more neighbours you have the more trade there will be. Agreeing on common tariffs and regulations just seems the better way, even if it means the occasional compromise. Is it really so irksome to have the same regulations as your friends?
But as we tick down to the tenth anniversary of the fateful day, you can’t help but despair at how little some people have learned from their lived experience since 2016.
The TUC's General Secretary Paul Nowak, has called on Labour to seek "the closest possible economic relationship with the EU." And, echoing David Lammy and Wes Streeting, said this should mean building, "the closest possible positive working relationship with Europe economically and politically … up to and including the customs union.”
Britain’s biggest trade union body has called on the Labour government to consider rejoining an EU customs union, reopening a core Brexit fault line as the party grapples with weak growth and rising pressure from its traditional base.— POLITICO Europe (@politico.eu) 27 December 2025 at 12:12
Politico frame it all as a move to combat weak economic growth, and that may well be the thinking of Messrs Lammy, Streeting and Nowak. However, it will never make that much of a difference to our GDP or wealth.
It looks like we have gone back seventy years and are having the same thought processes that the founders of the EEC were going through in the mid fifties. They thought it was the customs charges (often with much larger differences between European countries than they are now) that were preventing more trade.
It took a long time to gradually harmonise tariffs into the CET (Common External Tariff). The Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957, and the CET was finally implemented eleven years later in 1968. Mission accomplished? Err.. no.
It quickly became apparent that this was only a first step. There were still borders and goods were still being stopped and checked. There were no tariffs to pay, but every EU member state had their own rules, on Weights and Measures, for instance. So, goods packaged on machines approved for use in country X couldn't legally be sold in country Y, and vice versa.
There were still huge trade barriers, as evidenced by long queues at European border crossings. It wasn't until the Single Market came into being in 1993 that it all fell into place. It was the four freedoms embedded in the Single Market that really allowed trade to take off.
Fiddling around with the marginal 1-2% differences in our tariffs compared to the EU is not going to make any real difference. Leaving the CU did allow us to negotiate our own trade deals, but who has noticed any great change? What have we got in return? Not much.
It's a minor benefit with vast downsides.
So, calls for Britain to rejoin won't achieve what its proponents want, more economic growth. It is tinkering at the edges.
The Telegraph are already gearing up to attack the very notion of rejoing the EU. They publish a piece about Mr Nowak's call with a graph (Source:ONS) showing that "EU trade was largely undamaged by Brexit."
And it's true. But, the graph shows imports have surged and exports have flatlined! The trade deficit has widened considerably. Total trade may be about the same, but the EU has gained while we have lost.
They are richer, we are poorer. Joining the CU won't change that.
