Bojo had his usual column in The Telegraph this week (behind a paywall but you can read it HERE) and he obviously couldn't decide what to write about as the deadline approached so he went back to his life's work and lambasted EU regulations for what must have been the thousandth time. He gets paid £275,000 a year to produce this pile of worn out and incontinent rubbish but it's all complete nonsense.
The article is ostensibly about Dyson's decision to build an electric car in Singapore and it has the sub title: The Chequers deal will stifle British industry and innovation. However, not everybody is as enamoured with Dyson as Bojo is - as you can see below.
Johnson has only a vague understanding of the subject he has built his entire reputation on (HERE). He doesn't seem to see any good in regulating things at all. Food or product safety, standardisation to extend market size, increase competition and provide economies of scale in manufacturing as well as convenience to customers he ignores totally. Regulations strangle us in his opinion, rather than liberating us as they do.
I wonder if he ever stops to think about how regulations are drawn up? How trade bodies feed in to the process to reach a consensus on how regulations work to the benefit of all. He goes on:
"Of course, it makes sense that UK companies exporting to the EU will have to comply with EU standards. But why, when only 6 per cent of UK companies export to the rest of the EU, should 100 per cent of UK companies have to obey EU law – within the UK market?"
Because the 6% of companies are the largest and earn most of our overseas income and they have suppliers among much of the 94% anyway. If he thinks the EU will accept the UK on its doorstep where the vast majority of companies avoid the level playing field while helping the 6% undercut their own companies with an unfair advantage, he is going to be disappointed.
But let's move ourselves into a future UK where a government led by Boris Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson has passed laws saddling us with different regulations to the EU. This after all is what we would expect him to do. Manufacturers would then face two sets of regulations, thus meaning they will have to produce to two different standards, adding costs and making them less competitive. And the EU would need to have more border checks to ensure UK made products comply with their rules, not ours, meaning more red tape and delays and less trade.
But even if BoJo is persuaded not to change our regulations, we can't expect the EU not to change their's. The acquis communitaire is not cast in concrete but it is constantly being reviewed and updated. Unless we follow these changes our regulations will become different over time and exporters will face exactly the same problem.
Manufacturers will either have to keep up to date themselves, monitoring EU websites to see if new rules are coming down the line or the government will have to do the same and decide on a case by case basis if we want to incorporate EU law into UK law or not. This in itself will not be a simple process.
I am afraid Dyson is not the genius many people think he is anyway, as explained HERE (excuse the language). He is more of a dilettante fiddling at the edges with existing ideas and coming up with an "improved" version, usually far more expensive. His washing machine sold for £1200 but was discontinued in 2010 because amazingly, he wasn't making any money and had some very unhappy users (HERE). And really who wants a £300 hair dryer or a £200 desk fan called an air multiplier when you can buy something from Argos for under a tenner?
Johnson doesn't explain how EU regulations have "stifled" the German white goods industry so that companies like Siemens, Bosch, AEG, Miele and Neff are now world leaders. He has this madcap idea that EU regulations are slanted towards the Germans ("so influential in setting standards") as if they are one cohesive group rather than fierce competitors.
If Dyson's earlier forays away from vacuum cleaners is anything to go by, Singapore will soon have an empty factory for lease. With electric vehicles Dyson is entering a field which he does not know and will be competing with huge world-wide businesses with established supply chains and after market support. I'll give him two years at most.
