Sir John Redwood reviews a timely new book that highlights the UK’s opportunities outside the EU. “This is an important book,” he writes. “At last, after nine years of propaganda from anti-Brexit spinners, here are the facts.”

Sir John Redwood’s Review: At last, a well-researched account of how far the EU had taken over and how we are gradually changing things for the better. 

Here the author sets out how we are now an independent country. We can improve things for ourselves. We can change our laws, cut our taxes, extend our trade deals, take down tariffs, get our seat back on the leading world institutions where the EU displaced us. The 75 benefits are all good. The book also hints at how it can get much better, if only the government, the civil service, our lawyers and our quangos would stop keeping us under the thumb of old Brussels rules, and cease seeking ways to put us back under new ones.

Remain said that if we left the UK would be marginalised and less powerful in the world. In 2016 at the time of the vote the UK was the third ranked country for soft power in the world. Today we are still in third place after Brexit.  More importantly we are still third despite the rise of China to second place because Germany has fallen well behind us into fifth. So, the UK outside the EU is ranked more highly than the EU’s largest country, which when we were in the EU was thought more influential than us. That looks like a Brexit win. 

Gully Foyle has done a magnificent job showing in detailed accounts just how many things we have already improved despite the reluctance and resistance of much of the governing class. He puts the wins under seven heads. There are the money savings on our membership fee and lost tax revenues. There is independence to have our own fishing, farming and animal welfare policies. There is more trade through the large extra trade deals we have been able to sign. Our service exports have roared ahead.  We can decide on our own laws. We have used more flexibility in financial markets to grow our worldwide business. We can control our own border and have greatly reduced legal migration from the EU. Governments have failed to suspend European human rights law to grip the issue of illegal arrivals though they are free to do that.  We have improved our position in defence and our world standing.

The financial wins are large. There is the saving of £12-16 bn a year from our annual subscription. We now keep 100% of the customs receipts, not 20%. We keep all the green levies and plastics tax which were EU impositions. We have avoided taking joint liability for up to Euro 800 bn of new EU borrowing, where our share would have been around Euro 120 burdening us with contributing to more interest charges. We are out of the discussions over how much the levies for the EU will go up as the EU plans a further large increase in its spending in the next seven year period. Given successive UK government’s ability to spend and borrow at home these savings are crucial to our continued solvency. With a possible £50bn black hole we could not afford £30-40 bn a year of extra EU costs and lost taxation. 

Many of us want to treat animals well. Out of the EU we have been able to strengthen the law on animal testing. We have banned the export of live animals. We have banned cruel ways of making foie gras and the fur trade. These were not possible in the EU. We want a good environmental policy. Out of the EU we have been able to remove VAT from green products like insulation materials, and we can ban the sand eel fishery which is damaging our marine environment. 

The UK has regained our seat in the World Trade Organisation. Instead of the EU’s protectionist high tariff voice representing us we have been able to advocate freer trade. The UK has signed important new trade deals with the Trans-Pacific Partnership and India, two fast growing large markets much bigger than the EU. We have removed smaller tariffs, tariffs on intermediates needed for our manufacturing, and on goods we cannot produce or grow for ourselves. Why shaft UK consumers as the EU did?

It is true the UK has missed out on many opportunities, but these can be regained by a government that believes in our country now we are out of the EU.  Why do we still cripple our industry with high EU style emissions and carbon taxes on energy, forcing the closure of so many plants? Why do we put up with the Windsor framework, pulling apart our country, when there are easy fixes of border issues without submitting Northern Ireland to the rule of Brussels? We could make unilateral changes that protected the EU single market in the way they want whilst allowing free trade between two parts of our country.  Why do we not change the fiscal rules, still based on a version of the Maastricht debt and deficit criteria, for a system that would allow faster growth with low inflation?

Everyone interested in the future of our country and the detail of our relationship with the EU should read this book. For too long the mainstream media and the Remain politicians and officials have trotted out false soundbites often based on old wrong predictions to suggest Brexit was a bad idea. As this book shows, we already have some good wins and could have so many more if we put our mind to it. The world sees as now as having more influence than before, so let us use it for the greater good.

By Sir John Redwood

Order 75 Brexit Benefits by Gully Foyle here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1917743114

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