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Trade wonks argue against diverging from the EU but it betrays a certain ignorance of the volumes of EU rules that have no bearing on exports and should never have been harmonised in the first place, done for political reasons and was never in the public interest.
The TCA obliges us to retain global standards and there's no real argument for diverging from them but there's still major scope for a bonfire of regulation. The EU can retaliate with tariffs if it wants but since alignment doesnt afford us any greater access, why should we care?
We're already seeing that EU NTBs make tariffs something of a moot point, and so we may as well use the opportunity to re-regulate in the public interest rather than aligning for its own sake. We might as well make good of the opportunity.
I'd have preferred to have stayed in the single market but that's yesterday's argument. Since there's evidently nothing in between an FTA and the SM, there is no rationale for broad spectrum alignment or regulatory retention. Might as well let Brussels do its worst.
My thinking was that the TCA could be evolved but Brussels is going to stonewall any sincere cooperation until the Tories are gone, so I figure in for a penny, in for a pound. There's a lot of crap EU law I would happily take a blowtorch to. Let's make the most of it.
If the ultimatum is permanent full spectrum alignment or no trade then we have to write off having a comprehensive trade relationship with the EU. We're not a small satellite economy we should stop thinking like one.
Rather than negotiating with the EU we're better off engaging at the global level to build ad hoc coalitions to tackle each problem one at a time, allying with other states the EU discriminates against. The EU notionally upholds the WTO agreements. Let's hold them to it.
The NI protocol means relations probably aren't going to improve any time soon and the TCA is as good as it gets for now. We should instead focus attention on domestic commercial reform and regulatory regeneration. The Europe question can wait.
