Nigel Adams, MP for Selby, was an enthusiastic Brexiteer, inviting BoJo to a rally in the town and campaigning vigorously for a leave vote (HERE). He has now got his hands on the greasy pole and is at the moment Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Welsh Office. I assume therefore he will be voting for Mrs May's deal - that ministerial salary is not to be sneezed at. There is a lot of irony here although I'm not sure he would see it.
"The EU is fast becoming a European State, where Britain has to obey directives and regulations that British people have never voted for and never would. The House of Commons Library has estimated that over 60% of our laws start in Brussels – nearly all decided by the 28 unelected EU Commissioners"
Ignore the nonsense about our laws being decided by 28 unelected Commissioners, it's just not true - they don't decide any of them. All are voted on in the Council of Ministers - every one of them democratically elected in their own countries. In any case we don't actually know which EU laws the British people would vote for because they are never asked to, their elected representatives vote for them instead.
But if the deal goes ahead (a very big IF I know), how many EU laws will we still have to obey? Before the referendum the impression was given that we would break completely free of the EU's so-called shackles but what does the Political Declaration (PD) actually say, how separate are we likely to be in practice?
I had a quick look. The PD talks about (paragraph numbers in brackets):
- appropriate cooperation between regulators (10).
- create a free trade area, combining deep regulatory and customs cooperation (22)
- common principles in the fields of standardisation (24)
- aligning with Union rules in relevant areas (25).
- alignment of rules (28)
- agree disciplines on domestic regulation (34)
- voluntary regulatory cooperation in areas of mutual interest (35)
- structured cooperation on regulatory and supervisory matters (39)
- both Parties will have equivalence frameworks (38)
These are just a flavour, I could easily have added many more similar references. Let us not kid ourselves when there is talk of common principles, aligning rules, cooperation between regulators or equivalence. The EU is not going to adopt our rules. The rule-adopting traffic will be coming downhill along a one-way street. If we object to some aspect of any new directives or regulations, the EU will probably listen politely and then tell us to adapt or lose access to their market. To think otherwise is a delusion.
Hence, when we adopt Union rules or align ourselves with domestic standards or engage in the euphemistically named "structured cooperation" on regulatory matters, the deal will actually be turning Adams' 2016 entirely false statement into the truth. The only difference is where he originally said we had to obey rules that the British people wouldn't vote for, his government is now arranging things so that after Brexit we couldn't vote for them (or indeed against them) anyway even if we wanted to. And worse than that we will have no influence in shaping them. But we'll still be following them.
This is known as taking back control.
It's a bit like saying democracy isn't working out too well so let's scrap all that voting nonsense and just follow the directives and regulations that are handed down to us anyway. A vassal state indeed.
Having given up our place on the top table we are now feeding on scraps thrown out of the kitchen door.
