Chris

Yeah ... I think anyone who thinks the level playing field will be conceded to any significant degree really hasn’t been paying attention. Dynamic Alignment, which is what the EU would like the LPF to mean, amounts to EU directive by fax; single market rules made in Brussels, sent to London to be automatically applied to our statute book as the price of our access to their single market. This is problematic for a number of reasons. First, we take rules, without having influenced their drafting; second, they apply to domestic trade, not just to stuff exported to the EU (as is the case now); third they dent our ability to negotiate independently with third parties for mutual access to our markets; fourth, the EU has form for defining very broadly what single market regulation looks like. It’s a recipe for continued EU mission creep right across our statute book.

Dynamic alignment neutralises many of the main advantages of us leaving the EU, while scoring the EU the major win of imposing rules on us that could never have been drafted in the same way had we been in the room.

I have no problem with the EU being as bureaucratic, centralising and absurd as it likes with its own rules in its own market place. I do have a problem with us continuing to suffer for it.