The EU’S rules are designed to aid Germany...

Larry Elliott The Guardian

£135 billion. That’s the latest figure for Britain’s annual trade deficit, says Larry Elliott. It’s a huge sum and one, alas, that is steadily growing. Of course, many factors lie behind this trend, but a big one that’s often overlooked is our membership of the EU. Why? Because its trading arrangements were designed to suit other countries, not us. Brussels has put its energies into sweeping away barriers to a free trade in goods – a boon to a manufacturing nation like Germany – but not in services, which is our strong suit. So even though we now sell more to the rest of the world than we buy from it (a surplus that has increased fivefold since 2012, to £39bn), and even though we run a surplus in services with the EU, we’re still deep in the red owing to our vast deficit with Europe in goods. Some say Brexit will make things worse. But if the UK were now outside the EU and “weighing up the pros and cons of joining a club whose trading rules amplified our weaknesses and nullified our strengths”, would we really “be gagging to join”?