Toby on Tuesday

 

'Free From The Shackles' 

 

 

Before anything else, a very happy New Year to readers of this blog.   And what a wonderful start to 2017!   In defiance of Project Fear, the figures for manufacturing output have reached a 30-month high, the Stock Market is hitting new all-time records, the Environment Secretary has announced a bonfire of damaging farm regulations post-Brexit and Sir Ivan Rogers, our so-called Ambassador to the EU and living embodiment of Whitehall defeatism, has finally resigned.   The liberation of Britain from the calamitous EU’s straitjacket is underway.   And during the coming weeks – better late than never – Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty will at last be invoked and our country can start to awake from the nightmare of EU membership.  But forced to accept this, the hysterical Remoaners are now shifting their tactics to arguments over a “Soft” or a “Hard” Brexit, with arguments over the Customs Union, the Single Market, the Internal Market and the rest.   But the truth is that what Britain needs is a clean Brexit under which we can control our own borders, make our own laws, enter into our own trade deals, stop paying into the Brussels budget and reclaim our North Sea fisheries. 

 

And the background to this was spelt out vividly the other day in forecasts published by Oxford Economics.   In round figures, during the year 2000 Britain’s exports to the EU amounted £55 billion while exports to non-EU countries amounted to £45 billion.   By 2008 these figures had reached parity, with exports of around £50 billion to both EU and non-EU countries.   By 2015 the numbers had been reversed with some £45 billion of exports going to the EU and some £55 billion to the rest of the World.   And by 2020, Oxford Economics are forecasting £40 billion of exports to the EU and £60 billion to the rest of the World.   The reality is that the EU is in long-term decline as a market while growth in the rest of the World is soaring.   And our trade deficit with the EU is running at a massive £60 billion a year, while we run a £30 billion annual surplus trading with the rest of the World under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.   So there is nothing to fear and everything to gain from life outside the EU’s doomed construct.   And in a World of falling tariff barriers the simplest Brexit outcome would be to work with the EU under those very same WTO rules as we do with other countries.   On manufactured goods, the average tariff is just 2.4%, far less than the depreciation of Sterling since last June.   Indeed, we import so many German cars, so much French wine and so many Italian fashions that our Treasury would gain hugely from the imposition of WTO tariffs.

 

So a clean Brexit, operating under WTO rules, would avoid endless painful negotiations with Brussels while offering simplicity and clarity to the whole process.   And at the same time as triggering Article 50 during the coming weeks, our Government should introduce its Great Repeal Bill to Parliament with immediate effect.   This needs to be enacted at the very start and not the end of the Brexit process.   All EU-derived laws can then be incorporated into our own law and in the years ahead they can be adapted and unpicked by our own Parliament as and when necessary.   The World is changing rapidly, the failures of the past generation are all-too clear and a bright future beckons for a bold and independent Britain.   All that is needed is the will to make this happen and, under Paul Nuttall’s leadership, UKIP now has that will in abundance!

 

Until next Tuesday!

Toby