We must chuck Chequers... it’s a trap, says think-tank

THE Government’s Brexit blueprint will trap Britain in damaging trade rules that will hold the economy back, analysis has found.

A damning report accused politicians of being under an “illusion” that being in the European Union Single Market is so vital its principles must be preserved.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s vision agreed with ministers at Chequers in July would mean a “common rule book” for goods.

It effectively amounts to staying in the single market, leaving Britain obeying rules it has no say over while hampering its ability to make deals around the world, pro-Brexit think tank Global Britain warns.

It says: “Moreover, it risks permanently locking the UK into the world’s slowest-growing, most-regulatory burdensome and underperforming bloc.”

The report has a foreword by former Conservative Trade Secretary Lord Lilley, who declared: “It is an illusion that Single Market membership has been an irreplaceable boon to British manufacturers. The evidence shows they do relatively much better exporting outside it.

“The most frightening aspect of Chequers is that it commits the UK to accept all future rules.

“Yet Britain is particularly strong in emerging industries like bio-tech, fin-tech, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering, where rules have yet to be set.

“It would be an act of self-harm to allow those rules to be made by countries that lack such industries and often apply extreme versions of the precautionary principle that throttle new developments.” The report also says the Single Market disadvantages Britain because it is so focused on trade in goods in which the UK is relatively weak, compared with France and Germany, and does not ease trade in services, in which it is strong.

The authors say Britain should “chuck Chequers” and seek instead a Canada-style free trade deal.

Global Britain director Ewen Stewart, who co-wrote the report, added: “While the Chequers Plan uses innocuous sounding words like ‘the common rule book’... it is not a partnership of equals.

“Chequers is the Single Market in all but name and abandons any pretence of taking back control by resetting regulations. It doesn’t deliver the referendum result and breaks the manifesto pledges of both Conservative and Labour.

“Membership of the Single Market comes with a net price of £10billion a year but places all businesses under its rules, irrespective of them being exporters or not.”