Common market sense....
For the last week I have wanted to write about climate change, and Brexit keeps getting in the way. So I will delay my piece on why global warming is inevitable and no one is seriously doing anything to stop it for one more day and instead talk about Sir Keir Starmer’s sensible Brexit policy.
The EU might have “left a light on” for the UK to rejoin but it is impossible. Who would have the UK if the Tory party was to always campaign on leaving again and might well win re-election? Who would have the UK in EFTA when it would dominate the organisation and destroy it?
You cannot even campaign on rejoining the Single Market without the right wing media coming for you on immigration. More immigration is what the country desperately needs but it is now poison. You are not going to be elected on that platform when this government will deport asylum seekers to Rwanda and win the support of the press for doing so.
Sensible policies that would work will, however, make a real difference.
Eliminate veterinary and agricultural testing and cut billions of pounds of red tape.
Common standards would save industry billions more
Be sensible over Northern Ireland and everything gets easier and smoother. For instance the UK gets back into Horizon.
Negotiate visa free business travel. How Lord Frost failed to do this or even ask for it is impossible to understand.
Abolish carnets for short business trips and concert tours.
There are a dozen other measures that would help, easing temporary work visas for farms and agreeing on more bilateral cooperation, getting pet passports back, allowing holiday home owners to stay in the EU longer.
But the key factor is to negotiate in good faith, agree to stick with the deal already negotiated and then ask for improvements, and ask nicely.
It is a sign of how appallingly stupid, nasty, untrustworthy, deceptive and cynical this pathetic government is that the previous paragraph is at all controversial.
But the first thing any new government must do is find HM Treasury’s assessment of the economic damage Brexit has caused and publish it.
That would change the political weather overnight but you can only do it after you win an election.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
Given that UK food standards and pesticide regimes have changed already, there's little chance that the EU will change the SPS requirements on food from GB. As yer man says to Liam Neeson in Taken: Good luck.