The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak is apparently launching a UK fund to replace the almost £2.5 billion a year provided up until now by EU structural funds and a National Infrastructure Bank to replace, in part, the European Investment bank. It will lend to British infrastructure projects at low rates because it is underwritten by the Government.
Now you can argue that these will be far better allocated or efficient funds because they are British funds for British projects, returning power and money from Brussels. But they still cost money and do pretty much what was already being done.
Likewise, to give just one other example, the UK’s replacement of REACH, the EU’s chemical industry regulator and supporter, has done very little more than copy and paste the EU’s regulations. Creating two regulators where there used to be one.
One of the big arguments for the EU is that these sorts of things are done better and more efficiently with one EU wide body than by 28 separate national ones. We seem to be putting that theory to the test.
https://jonty.substack.com/