Matthew Hancock, the Culture Secretary, was on Radio 4 this morning talking about today's debate in parliament about staying in the customs union. He was asked about leaked documents from the Northern Ireland office suggesting the government's proposed options presented "challenges". As usual, he was sticking to the government line that we want to have "as frictionless trade as possible" with the EU. It was pointed out that this was the position now, inside the EU. His answer? Yes, but that doesn't allow us to strike independent trade deals with the rest of the world!
First of all, the customs union is not the thing that delivers frictionless trade anyway. For that we need to be in the single market at least and probably in the EU. In fact this is the essence of the single market, the embodiment of frictionless trade. It was set up specifically to provide "as frictionless trade as possible" at the time that we were in the customs union anyway, but we are leaving the single market!
Secondly, I don't see any suggestions from Brexiteers that we are about to sign up to any other single market and what we seem to be aiming for is free trade deals. But these will not be frictionless either. So, we are leaving the single market which delivers "frictionless" trade for 44% of our exports and varying amounts of friction on the rest, in exchange for varying amounts of friction on 100% of our exports.
The House of Commons library has produced a briefing note for the debate (HERE) which says explicitly on page 10 - Item 5.1, "A customs union alone will not achieve frictionless trade. Membership of the single market is also needed for this" - quoting Michel Barnier's own words.
And today figures were released showing a 13.3% slump in car production amidst worries about Brexit and according to the BBC HERE the SMMT say, "the UK must stay in the customs union to ensure "frictionless trade". So, it looks like they don't get it - yet.
Nearly two years after the vote there is still confusion surrounding what we actually want, without even thinking about what we're likely to get. The BBC today have an item on their website (HERE) with the title: What is the EU customs union? Err, we apparently voted to leave it in 2016, let's find out what it was!
What a shambles.
And today figures were released showing a 13.3% slump in car production amidst worries about Brexit and according to the BBC HERE the SMMT say, "the UK must stay in the customs union to ensure "frictionless trade". So, it looks like they don't get it - yet.
Nearly two years after the vote there is still confusion surrounding what we actually want, without even thinking about what we're likely to get. The BBC today have an item on their website (HERE) with the title: What is the EU customs union? Err, we apparently voted to leave it in 2016, let's find out what it was!
What a shambles.
