Sometimes it's hard to know whether you're reading a speech by David Davis or a parody of one by John Crace. The Brexit secretary has been speaking in Vienna for some strange reason, fathomable only by those schooled in rune reading. Why Brexiteers feel the need to travel all around a continent they all hate in order to address a group of people in what for most of them is a foreign language, on a topic about as opaque as the Schleswig-Holstein question will be pored over by historians for years. The full speech is HERE
As usual it offered only vague pointers and such as they were, most people seem to think we are now heading for a very soft, thickly padded, Brexit. He told his audience that after Brexit Britain would "lead a race to the top in global standards".
Any suggestion otherwise was "based on nothing". How anyone listening to Brexiteers for the last few years could have got the impression Britain would cut regulations he couldn't explain. How was it possible for a sentient human being listening to Priti Patel in May 2016 saying, "If we could just halve the burdens of the EU social and employment legislation we could deliver a £4.3 billion boost to our economy and 60,000 new jobs", to think we might halve the burden of EU legislation? Or which fool watching Jacob Rees-Mogg saying Britain after Brexit could cut environmental standards a "very long way" would possibly think we might cut environmental standards a very long way? What is wrong with these people.
The foreign secretary last week talking about "intolerable'" EU regulations wasn't talking about them being too burdensome! No, no. He apparently believes they are not burdensome enough! Anyone would see that surely?
Davis also said, "Neither side should put up unnecessary barriers during this process" forgetting that no barriers are being put up - we have just voted to put ourselves outside the existing ones.
And listen to this, "The European Union itself has a number of mutual recognition agreements with a variety of countries from Switzerland to Canada to South Korea. These cover a huge array of products — toys, automotives, electronics, medical devices — and many many more". This is not even true. There are no MRAs recognising Canadian or Korean product standards at all.
To quote Dr Richard North, "In a separate agreement on conformity assessment between the EU and Canada, it [CETA] specifically states that it, "shall not be construed to entail mutual acceptance of standards or technical regulations of the Parties and … shall not entail the mutual recognition of the equivalence of standards or technical regulations".
Nicky Morgan has written about David Davis' speech (HERE) and she chose to pick up on one particular phrase that seems to indicate the government is finally coming to terms with what Brexit means. Davis said "the future of standards and regulations – the building blocks of free trade — is increasingly global" which means we can't deregulate unless we want to stop exporting stuff altogether. Nicky Morgan says Davis is going to ask for mutual recognition of each others regulations.
The CETA agreement with Canada has an arrangement where both sides have agreed to cooperate in convergence measures (not divergence note) but it is Canada that is doing the converging, not the EU. For the UK to imagine we will ever be an equal partner is more delusion. The Sun does not go round the earth. A union of 27 nations is never, ever going to bend to the regulatory ideas of one ex member nation. No matter what David Davis thinks. In any case how would we ever be able to get the EU to listen to our proposals? We will have no formal connection. It is all delusion on delusion.
And Nicky Morgan seems to think we will avoid border checks if we have mutual recognition. This is also a delusion. Whatever happens, goods will not cross borders in the way they do now. So, we will be in the bizarre position of having close regulatory alignment but friction on our trade with the EU. How long will it be before people realise Brexit has been a huge con trick?
I suppose if one can take anything from the speech it seems at last a grudging recognition of what we have been saying for almost a year now. EU laws are frequently global laws. We must stay close to the EU. If we adopt EU regulations and standards, as we must, we might as well stay in.
