Toby on Tuesday

'Brexit and Brexports'

Last week I wrote about the Commonwealth, Captain Cook and the need to approach the United Nations (UN) at the same time as triggering Article 50 to reclaim our North Sea fisheries under its 1982 Conference on the Law of the Sea.   The point here is that the EU is an ideology, like 20th-century fascism or communism, and by leaving Britain is questioning that belief system.   No sensible negotiation with Brussels will ever be on offer and so it’s far better to go directly to those international institutions like the UN that rank above the EU in the global pecking order to secure our future.   And it’s not surprising that the only one of the EU’s five so-called Presidents who actually grasps the situation is Donald Tusk, EU Council President, who declared last week that “All too often today, EU elites seem to be detached from reality.”   For Donald Tusk is from Poland, a country which suffered terribly from both German and Vichy fascism and Soviet communism in the 20th century and which therefore of all  EU members views that EU ideology, based on the failed Euro and Schengen projects, much as we do in Britain.

 

So now, just as we should deal directly with the United Nations to reclaim our fisheries, so we should deal directly with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to secure our trade.  Of course it would be wonderful if we could enter into a simple tariff-free trade deal with the EU post-Brexit, but the truth is that Brussels would still demand open borders and contributions to its toxic budget in return.   It would be far better if, as with an approach to the UN, we went straight to the WTO when we trigger Article 50 and claim our full place among its 162 member countries.   For the fifth largest economy in the World, it is anyway ridiculous for Britain to be contracting out our global trade relationships to Brussels.  Based in Geneva, Switzerland, the WTO was established in 1995 to take over the functions of the old GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), itself formed in 1948.   It exists for the sole purpose of reducing tariffs and improving trade around the globe and, under the so-called Uruguay Round, now covers services such as banking, telecommunications and intellectual property.   The current round of negotiations, the so-called Doha Round, is directed at customs procedures.  And as the inward-looking, protectionist EU passes into history, so 21 more countries have applied to join the WTO.   This open, global system offers the basis for our trade and arguments over membership of the EU’s Single Market, really just a Customs Union, are a distraction from what really now needs to be done.

 

My good friend William Dartmouth, UKIP’s Trade Spokesman and MEP for the South-West and Gibraltar, wrote a brilliant pamphlet in the run-up to June’s Referendum called “Britain and the EU:  A Dysfunctional Relationship”, which is well-worth re-reading.   In this he recommended NAFTA (The North American Free Trade Area) as a valuable model for a post-Brexit Europe.   NAFTA’s economies, made up of Canada, Mexico and the United States, are about the same size as those of the EU but it is not a political union.   There is no all-powerful bureaucracy at its heart, there are no fiscal transfers and there are pretty strict border controls between the three countries.   Yet over 70% of Mexico’s exports go the Canada and the United States, while nearer 80% of Canada’s exports go to Mexico and the United States.   Meanwhile, less than 45% of Britain’s exports go elsewhere in the EU and this figure is falling fast.   In another illustration, William describes how Switzerland, an independent country and not an EU member, exports nearly five times the value of goods per head of population to the EU as does Britain.   So the point is that you do not have to be part of a political union to trade freely with another country.   But we must accept, like the EU’s own Council President, Donald Tusk that the people in Brussels with whom we shall be negotiating are “detached from reality” and that they feel wounded and aggrieved.  So it’s far better to apply for full WTO membership when we trigger Article 50, not waste any time on fruitless negotiations for Single Market membership and become a normal, open, free-trading global nation once more – therein lies our future!

 

Until next Tuesday!

 

Toby