The Government tells us it needs a new trade deal with the EU. What they are planning sounds more like surrender to EU demands. As always, the EU knows what it wants. They want more migrants and young people to cross the Channel to the UK. They want the UK to have to obey EU business and trade rules to favour EU exporters. They want to keep the rest of the world out of the UK market so they keep it for themselves.
They want to reserve most of the fish caught in UK waters for EU vessels as if we were still in the deeply damaging Common Fisheries policy. To get elected, Labour said they would not reimpose freedom of movement. They said they would not rejoin the single market and customs union. Now they are discussing undermining those very important promises.
The EU is insisting on a so called Youth Opportunities Scheme. This means anyone between the ages of 18 and 30 would have the right to come to live, study and work in the UK.
That age group is very mobile, with most too young to have saved money or to have got a well-paid job. The UK is already accepting far too many low paid and no-pay migrants, legal and illegal.
We are short of homes to rent, short of water, electricity and broadband provision, short of public services for them. We cannot afford more migrants in need of taxpayer support.
Under current rules anyone from the continent can apply for a work visa to come and do a qualifying job. A student who gets a place at a UK University can get a visa. They are allowed to work whilst here on their course. Enough is enough.
The EU wants the UK to sign up to more of their business laws as if we were back in the bloc, without even the right we had as members to explain why we disagreed with a new law before losing the vote on it.
The UK thinks this would be a price worth paying if the EU would relax its requirements on our exports of cheese and a few other animal-based farm products.
All the years we were in the EU saw us lose market share in food and end up importing three times as much as we export. Why would it be any different now? The EU used rules and grants to displace our farmers in their own home market.
The Government is talking about giving the right to EU boats to carry on taking most of our fish. Why? The EU plunders our fishing grounds, using supertrawlers that hoover up too many fish and damaged our marine environment. They should be banned.
Next year, when we can, we should take control of our fishing grounds. There should be less quota for the EU and less overall quota but far more quota for UK vessels. There should be government grants to build a new fishing fleet and help set up many more fishing businesses.
Currently the EU enjoys 80% or 90% of quotas for important species in parts of our fishing grounds, with 97% of sand eels. We are being robbed. There is no need to carry on like this. No other country gives their fish to the EU.
Once again a defeatist government is negotiating with the EU by not asking for enough and all too willing to give way on things we need to keep. Accepting more low-paid and no-pay migrants, putting ourselves under more EU laws and failing to reclaim our fish would be a national disgrace.
Far from boosting growth it would impede it. It would make a US trade deal more difficult, denying us tariff-free trade with the US while having it for the EU. It would diminish us in the eyes of the world as other countries see our abject capitulation.
UK trade with the rest of the world, especially in services, has grown rapidly since Brexit. The Government is busy closing down, taxing and banning some of our most successful exports to the EU, led by oil and gas, refined oil products and petrol and diesel cars.
No wonder our EU trade is in relative decline. Brexit did not reduce our trade with the EU, but it is liberating it with rest of the world. There are more good deals to be done around the world now we are free to set our own rules and make our own decisions. Don’t let the EU stop us.