UK must stand firm against vindictive EU
Emmanuel Macron’s aggressive posturing has been convenient for the EU: Brussels has appeared almost reasonable by comparison. But the truth is very different. The EU is still animated by the bizarre principle that the UK should be punished for Brexit. This is particularly obvious in its attitude towards Northern Ireland. The Protocol is an unequal treaty agreed with the UK when the Government’s capacity for manoeuvre was hamstrung by the shameful attempts of Remainers in Parliament to stop Brexit. Its effects are economically and constitutionally catastrophic, and represent a ploy by Brussels to ensure that if the UK diverges from EU rules it would be at the cost of undermining its bonds with the Province.
No sovereign nation should have to accept such a state of affairs, and the Brexit minister Lord Frost has been right to indicate that he is willing to trigger Article 16 and suspend parts of the protocol. It is questionable whether even that will be enough to force the EU to shift its position. But it would be an incontrovertible statement that the UK must be treated as an equal and that Northern Ireland is an integral part of this country, not a tributary of the EU’s regulatory empire.
Yet Brussels’s behaviour has been appalling across the board. It has not been willing to agree to a mutually advantageous comprehensive deal for financial services. It showed the immoral depths to which it was willing to plunge during the vaccine row earlier this year. Now, the UK is drawing up plans to withdraw from EU research programmes should relations deteriorate further. On Horizon, the EU’s multi-billion pound science scheme, the EU has dragged its feet on ratifying UK membership.
The Government is right to stand firm. However, it has been astonishingly complacent about the domestic changes needed to bolster UK competitiveness in the face of rising EU vindictiveness. There has been little attempt to take advantage of new regulatory freedoms, and ministers remain committed to myopic plans to burden businesses and consumers with everhigher taxes. It must urgently reconsider. The UK cannot rely on EU fair-dealing; it must make its own prosperity.