Reducing the uncertainties of Brexit
John Redwood MP sets out three ways to reduce the business community's worries over Brexit.
Last week I spoke in the Commons of the need to reduce the uncertainties and disagreements following the vote to leave the EU.
Business is right to chide politicians to be more precise and to reduce the worries they have There are three main ways to do this.
The first is to rule out the need to negotiate over large areas where we need to take back control. You cannot negotiate taking back control. We need to resume decision making over our laws, our money and our borders. Saying these are not up for negotiations greatly simplifies the task.
The second is to make a generous offer on trade, where we do need to reach an agreement over how we trade with the rest of the EU in future. We should offer trade tariff free with no new service trade barriers. it's a generous offer, and would make sense for the continent to welcome it. I have still not heard any continental government Ministers demanding that tariffs be placed in the way of their exports to the UK, so it should be pleasing to them. Nor would they wish to lose their financial passports to London.
The third is to have a rock solid fall-back position which does not require any positive decision by the rest of the EU, just in case Remain are right and the Commission does make the member states damage their own trade with us. We are founder members of the World Trade Organisation and can therefore file a schedule of tariffs with them under the MFN procedure, using the current EU schedules. We could trade reasonably well using this, just as the USA, China and others do into the EU at the moment without special trade deals. It would also mean the Uk government had a substantial revenue from the tariffs on rest of the EU exports to us, which could be given back to UK consumers in various ways.
There is absolutely no need to pay money into the EU budget in order to import products from the EU. There is no need to trade freedom of movement for the exchange of goods.
There is no need to spend two years sorting this out. If we rely on existing trade terms it could be much quicker.
John Alan Redwood, Baron Redwood, is a British politician and academic who represented Wokingham in Berkshire as Conservative Member of Parliament from 1987 to 2024. Born on 15 June 1951, he served as Secretary of State for Wales under John Major and twice stood unsuccessfully for the Conservative Party leadership during the 1990s. Following his ministerial career, Redwood held positions in the Shadow Cabinets of William Hague and Michael Howard before spending his remaining parliamentary years as a backbencher. Prior to entering Parliament, he earned a doctorate at All Souls College, Oxford and served as Director of the Number 10 Policy Unit under Margaret Thatcher.
A veteran Eurosceptic described in 1993 as a pragmatic Thatcherite, Redwood has been particularly known for his work on economic policy and European matters. He co-chaired the Conservative Party's Policy Review Group on Economic Competitiveness until 2010 and serves as Chief Global Strategist of investment management company Charles Stanley & Co Ltd. Redwood was a prominent supporter of Brexit in the 2016 EU referendum and was a member of the pressure group Leave Means Leave. He writes commentary for Comment Central.
