A good laugh
I don’t normally go to the Mail on Sunday for my entertainment but yesterday’s was a hoot. Apparently it is now suggesting that the UK negotiate some kind of deal with the EU to reduce red tape and delays at the border.
While still holding onto the fantasy that the current mess was some kind of cunning Gallic trick by Michel Barnier, the paper published the thoughts of Archie Norman; top business leader and former MP. He has two solutions, one is technology, replace all that paperwork with a computer system. The second is for the EU to accept UK standards on food etc as equivalent to its own and therefore stop millions of checks at the border.
The UK government has been telling industry that a computerised system is just around the corner for years now and there is no sign of it. It also wanted the “freedom” to set its own standards as part of the Brexit deal. It wants that so called freedom, so it can undercut the EU and gain a spurious commercial advantage for British firms.
Since the government has been boasting about the advantages of its own standards and regulations it would, of course, be madness for the EU to grant equivalence.
Still there is a solution, as someone far quicker than me on Twitter pointed out the proposed scheme could be called the Single Market.
Nice to see that people can still laugh about this stuff.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.