Only Reform can get Brexit done properly
WANT AN an example of a daft EU regulation? Look no further than the great crested newt. This charming little amphibian is still fairly common in this country but is genuinely endangered in other parts of Europe, so the EU superstate decided that a common standard should apply across all member countries regardless of the health of the newt population.
So elaborate surveys are required before any housebuilding or industrial estates or business development can take place to decide if such structures might impact on the great crested newt, causing delays and costs which even that arch Europhile George Osborne decried.
We have some 4,000 EU regulations and only some 600 or so have been repealed.
Now a promise to ditch the rest by the end of the year has been dropped and Brexiteers are rightly furious, sensing that yet again we have Brexit in name only.
Some suspect that the real issue is divergence. Those of us who believe in Brexit want us to become competitive with Europe, not aligned with it. Yet of course if the UK bins laws which Northern Ireland has to keep, then Rishi Sunak’s abject surrender – otherwise known as the Windsor Framework – will be exposed for the fraud which it is. So Rishi tries to keep the whole UK aligned, which makes a mockery of Brexit.
I am not wholly unsympathetic to the argument that it is not an easy exercise, given the complexities of inter-related laws and the scope for legal challenges, but ministers knew all that when they promised to have binned the regulations by the end of this year so it is reasonable to suspect some very cold feet.
As I have so often said, I heard some very strong arguments for staying in during the referendum and I heard stronger arguments for coming out but I never heard a single argument for coming out but acting as if we were still in, yet that is now the position of the Government while the opposition parties want to go even further and seek formal re-alignment.
In short, despite the outcome of the referendum, the outcome of the 2019 election and the supposed exit from the EU in 2020 there is no party of Brexit atWestminster.
The EU probably still cannot believe its luck.
It is time for something new, time for Reform.