Leaks about yesterday's cabinet meeting don't give us any real clues about what, if anything, was decided. If appears from this report in The Guardian HERE that those inclined to stay close to the EU were in a small majority but the PM's position was not clear.
It's claimed she argued that the "UK ought to be thinking less about conforming to European standards and more to international ones as it enters discussions about the future trading relationship"
Which is amazing since the EU usually complies with international standards or more often sets the standards. Where the PM has been for the last forty years isn't clear but she has obviously learned nothing and has been badly advised. Note this from the Commission in 2016 (HERE - page 2):
"The ESS [European Standardisation System] has been successful until now to issue high quality and efficient standards, while placing Europe on the global stage. Industry supports the European standards development and their regular and agile revision to take into account state-of-the-art technologies. In addition, the interaction between European standardisation and international one is constant: sometimes, European standards are proposed to international standardisation organisations, sometimes, international standards become European ones. This dialogue is important as it makes it easier for companies to go global, notably SMEs"
And, "Building on that new momentum ensures that Europe remains a global hub for standardisation. If not, standards would be set somewhere else and Europe would lose opportunities to benefit from first-mover advantage".
There seems no special advantage to us in adopting world standards that the EU has already adopted or is in the process of adopting. Conversely, not adopting EU standards that later become world standards simply delays things for our exporters.
The Telegraph, of course, reports it differently (HERE), with Gove and Johnson suggesting they're winning the battle to diverge. Only those two idiots could suggest that there is a benefit to us or that we will get a trade deal allowing us to diverge from EU standards by any significant amount, even if they made any economic sense whatsoever.
What are our manufacturers supposed to do? Comply with our own unique standards for domestic sales, EU standards for the European market and some other standards for sales elsewhere? This just does not make any sense even if the EU permit it, which they won't.
As BoJo and Gove argue for more divergence, Canada is aligning it's businesses with EU regulations in food, chemicals and electrical equipment (HERE) so not only will it be more difficult to export to the EU it will also be more difficult to export to Canada, Japan, Korea and presumably other countries who have voluntarily chosen to adopt EU standards.
And it might be worth some of our exporters to Europe looking over the extra work needed post Brexit to export goods to the EU even if we get a CETA style agreement as Canada has. The Canadian government has a helpful website for potential exporters (HERE).
Service exporters needn't worry - they won't be able to export anything anyway!
