A sensible but humiliating retreat
According to The Guardian, but no where else I can find at the moment, the UK government has abandoned plans to force UK companies to use a new UK version of the EU’s CE mark. Now they can keep the CE mark and still sell in the UK as well as the EU.
Without a sense of irony the business minister Kevin Hollinrake said: “By extending CE-marking use across the UK, firms can focus their time and money on creating jobs and growing the economy.” Which kind of gives the game away really, the UKCA mark was a waste of money, time, effort and would have cost jobs and economic growth.
British industry will be delighted as they hated the idea of having to test everything twice, having one production quality mark for the EU and one for the UK. Neither would have recognised the other.
But for the government and Brexit supporters this is a massive backdown and a humiliation.
After all, the whole idea was to have better, British specific, lighter touch regulation in post Brexit Britain. It was a pipe dream, a Brexit fantasy, business hated it, the EU was unmoved and unmovable, it is their rules or nothing. British industry would have been denied access to its largest export market unless it just stuck religiously to EU rules and regs, producing another line of products to UK standards that were un-exportable would have been madness.
Everyone knew this long before the Brexit referendum, 7 years later the government is still in retreat in the face of reality.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media