Brexit is an opportunity to do things differently – and not just in trade

Economic talk dominates the airwaves, but from GM crops to outer space there are many other dimensions

The EU’S threat to exclude Britain from its Galileo space programme, which is building a European version of America’s GPS system, has upset the Government. Given Theresa May’s red lines, some sort of Galileo renegotiation was always going to be required, yet even pro-remain ministers like Greg Clark have been angered by the manner in which the EU proposes to lock Britain out of the most militarily sensitive parts of the system. After all, even after Brexit, Britain will remain “a European liberal democracy, with almost identical security interests to the remaining EU countries”, as Sophia Besch of the Centre for European Reform puts it – so it is odd to treat us as a strategic rival.

Behind the dispute probably lies French interest in space technology contracts that British companies have been winning. Yet it is a sharp reminder that more than economic growth is at stake in Brexit.

One response to the EU threat would be to build our own satellite network. Russia, China, India and Japan are building them; why not Britain too? We are not only a strategic superpower with our Trident nuclear deterrence and GCHQ, we are also a leader in space technology. “If Brexit is about Britain refinding its mojo then this is just the sort of thing we should be thinking about,” says David Willetts, who when a minister in the Cameron government did much to promote the space industry.

I have no idea whether that makes sense or not, but I do wish the debate about Brexit could be lifted above the intricacies of future trade arrangements. Of course economics matters and it seems unavoidable that there will be – indeed there already has been – some economic cost from leaving the EU. But every time I turn on the radio or television, as I did on Saturday to listen to the BBC’S Any Questions, there is Andrea Leadsom focusing again on why it is vital to be outside the Customs Union to make our own trade deals while Emily Thornberry counters, yet again, that we must stay in for “jobs and growth”. When I debated Andrew Adonis in Oxford last week about his plans for overturning the referendum his key points were that exit would make us poorer and that the Government would not have the “bandwidth” to deal with anything else for several years.

I voted Remain but like most moderate Remainers I accept that the other side won and now just want the best possible deal. I am agnostic on the Customs Union but increasingly frustrated by how uber-remainers have framed the whole debate around the economic costs of Brexit.

Before it is too late we need to focus on those areas of policy where we can, potentially, regain national control. That will not only raise the spirits by reminding us of some of the good reasons why we have taken this momentous step, it will also better inform the key Brexit trade-off: do we retain close regulatory alignment to minimise economic disruption but thereby forgo our potential freedoms, or should we grasp those freedoms and risk an economic hit at least in the short term? Almost the only area where there has been some debate about post-brexit freedoms so far has been in farming and fisheries, which impacts a small part of the population. It is time we extended the conversation.

Take state aid. For “level playing field” reasons this is closely controlled in the EU, which prevents us adopting a serious regional or industrial policy. We cannot, for example, boost growth in the north east or South Wales by, say, waiving corporation tax for five years. Rohan Silva, an enthusiastic Remainer, recently described how when he was a Treasury adviser an ambitious state-backed venture capital plan for new hi-tech companies was rejected by Brussels. When we leave the EU, we should be able to experiment in this way.

Or what about public procurement? Thanks in part to corruption in southern Europe we get lumbered with unnecessarily stringent rules on bidding for public contracts, which hugely favours big companies. When we leave, we can redesign the rules so they don’t always favour contracting out to conglomerates like Carillion. We could also expand the so-called Preston model in which local institutions — the police, universities, NHS trusts — pledge to spend a proportion of their budgets locally.

On immigration, thanks to free movement Britain has been “employer of last resort” for eastern and southern Europe in recent years. This has boosted GDP, but mainly through higher population, while at the same time undermining middling-skill training of the UK population. Almost half of building workers in London are from the EU and we started barely 10,000 construction apprenticeships last year. Ending free movement will finally place the training and post school education of all those who don’t go to university at the top of the national agenda, as we seek to fill the millions of unglamorous but vital jobs that need doing. This can be an exciting conversation about improving the skill set of home-grown workers, equipping us better for the future. When it comes to innovation, meanwhile, there are many opportunities to do things differently, from GM crops to recycling rules to data protection – all areas where the EU imposes its risk-averse caution on us.

There is no domestic consensus (in either main party) on how to use our post-brexit sovereignty in some of these areas, which is perhaps why politicians have been shy about raising the issues. It is even said that Theresa May plans to surrender state aid freedoms outside the EU in order to stymie a potential Corbyn government (it was, after all, British Conservatives who wanted such strict state aid rules in the first place).

But we need a dose of Brexit imagination – and a far less narrowly trade-focused debate – so we have a better idea of what sort of balance to strike in that great trade-off. Germany, for example, now spends three times the UK in state aid – could we raise our spending to German levels while still honouring a pledge to stick to current state aid arrangements?

Brexit is an opportunity to re-boot Britain with the complaints of Leave voters in mind. We need to talk about how our potential freedoms might contribute to that – or we risk waking up after Brexit to find we have given them all away.