Quote:
Originally Posted by ianch99
If the UK wants to mitigate the GDP impact of Brexit, it needs to harmonise, to the best it can, the trade alignment with the EU. Doing this will preclude certain concessions that may be asked by a new US trade deal e.g. food standards. To pretend a ¨cake and eat approach" is possible is disingenuous. Here's a Trump aide saying the same thing:
Britain should align with US on trade rather than pursue EU, says Trump aide
You are also ignoring the facts .. the reality where, as time passes, people who wanting Brexit (for what ever reason) move on and are replaced by those who were disenfranchised in 2016 and have desires to align with the EU (and not the US).
The polling slowly moves away from the promised sunlit uplands and towards pragmatic reality. The promises have not been delivered but the harm has. People will start to ask why are we poorer and, after the trauma of 2016 fades, will demand a return to normality?
Dogma does not drive change in the end .. reality & pragmatism does. As the saying goes: ¨Its the economy, stupid¨*
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_the_economy,_stupid#:~:text=%22The%20econom y%2C%20stupid%22%20is,Bush |
Endlessly repeating the same flawed argument doesn’t improve it.
You still haven’t demonstrated why the UK would have to adopt regulations affecting domestic production and consumption in order to forge a better trade treaty with the EU. The only form of trade deal that would impose some or all of the EU rule book on British producers making goods that aren’t destined for the EU, or British consumers buying goods made anywhere except the EU, would be an EEA/customs union type agreement. And that isn’t a trade deal, it’s membership of an EU-adjacent supranational organisation that isn’t on the table. And such membership wouldn’t just preclude trade deals with the US, it would kill all of them, for the same reasons we weren’t able to make deals with anyone else in the world while we were in the EU.
Whether people have changed their minds about Brexit is neither here nor there at this point. Keir Starmer has already called it, correctly in my view. When pursuing trade deals, it is not necessary to make an either-or choice between the US and the EU. Those that do so are, typically, confusing the US with Donald Trump. Trump may be awful, but he isn’t America, and he won’t be around after 2028, assuming he even lasts that long.