Britain should rejoin EU single market to ease cost of living crisis, says Tobias Ellwood. Tory MP suggests ‘radical thinking’ to fight rising inflation

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  2. A senior Conservative backbencher has suggested Britain should rejoin the single market to ease the cost of living crisis.

    Tobias Ellwood, the chairman of the Commons defence select committee, said that “radical thinking” is required to tackle rising inflation, even if it means accepting EU regulations and freedom of movement.

    The MP, who has been a vocal critic of Boris Johnson, said politicians “must dare to assess how Brexit, the biggest geopolitical decision in a generation, is faring”.

    In an article published by the PoliticsHome website, Mr Ellwood said that the decision to leave the single market, which was “not on the ballot paper” in the 2016 Brexit referendum, has had adverse consequences including a £20 billion shrink in exports and difficulty on the Irish border.

    “In a nutshell, all these challenges would disappear if we dare to advance our Brexit model by rejoining the EU single market [the Norway model],” he wrote.

    Mr Ellwood said that the plan would “require acceptance of some EU regulations”, which he believed would be popular with businesses which would be “better off working with one common standard rather than having to follow two”.

    “There remain understandable reservations about the free movement of people in relation to benefit claims which would need addressing, but this is not insurmountable,” he said.

    “Let’s not forget, both Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher endorsed this model, with the view that the potential economic benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

    “If joining the single market (with conditions) results in strengthening our economy, easing the cost of living crisis, settling the Irish problem at a stroke and promoting our European credentials as we take an ever greater lead in Ukraine, would it not be churlish to face this reality?”

    The argument is likely to go down poorly among Mr Ellwood’s Conservative colleagues, who have largely accepted Britain’s decision to leave the EU even if, like him, they voted Remain in the referendum.

    Simon Clarke, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said he was “pleased to reassure” Mr Ellwood that his plan would not happen, adding: “Single market membership would extinguish half the freedoms that make Brexit so important and Boris is the principal reason we were able to escape it.”

    Labour has also abandoned its Jeremy Corbyn-era policy of support for a second referendum on Brexit.

    Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Corbyn’s successor, has explicitly ruled out the idea of the UK rejoining the EU under a Labour government.

  6. Ok, file that ‘radical thought’ in the folder labelled “obvious things that you should have thought about before Brexit.”

  9. And that’s why he’s a backbencher.

    Has anyone told hom that rising prices are also a major problem in the EU market?

  10. He’s lucky Johnson is in a weaker position now, otherwise he would get purged like the rest of those MPs who didn’t align with hard brexit.

    Anyway, the TCA came into effect merely a year ago. It’s not long enough to revisit decisions that should be decades long

  11. I find it funny that joining the single market is “radical thinking”. It’s common sense. Leaving it was done by radicals using radical thinking

  19. It’s not easy for a non UK citizen like me to fully understand what the hell happened with Brexit and why they did it, but it was their democratic choice and now they have to stick with their choices. I don’t think it’s even possible with the current rules to rejoin.

  20. That’s cool, let them rejoin the EU even, just no rebate this time, no opt-out, nothing Thatcher managed to win as an exception to all the obligations so that the membership was just benefits and no costs 🙂

  22. People like Ellwood cant help but pick at the scab that was the Brexit vote, they’ll never let let heal. Re-joining the SM would mean a return to literally everything leavers voted against in 2016. Not surprising people like him are coming out of the woodwork now Boris is in real trouble, other senior figures are hinting at revisiting the Brexit question once Boris is gone, obviously him possibly being ousted for breaking covid regulations brings the 2016 vote into question . . . . .

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