TCW’s Brexit Watch: Our Hong Kong connection strikes fear into EU – The Conservative Woman

Michael St Georges selections for comment from recent Brexit-related media articles.

NB: () denotes article behind paywall

EU: Trade with China Trumps Freedom for Hong KongGatestone Institute

IT should by now be clear that, having either deliberately released the Covid-19 virus or negligently allowed to it escape (the jury is still out on that one), China intends to take advantage of the rest of the world being both distracted by it and intimidated by its dependency on China for PPE to advance the Chinese Communist Partys own agenda.

So far, the UK has reacted honourably to the Chinese threat to Hong Kongs freedoms by suggesting the grant of a 12-month UK visa as a pathway to citizenship for the roughly 3million Hong Kong residents who qualify for British National (Overseas) status. The EU, on the other hand, shows no inclination to do anything which might jeopardise its trade links with China.

The UK must resist any moves by the EU in Brexit negotiations to capitalise on a potential future reduction in UK-China trade by being even more intransigent on future UK-EU trade relations. The EU has more to lose. Not only would the arrival in Britain of up to 3million from one of the most dynamic and entrepreneurial economies on Earth be a welcome boost to our post-pandemic recovery; the prospect of Hong Kong-style low-tax, free-market, small-state attitudes growing and thriving only 22 miles off the declining, sclerotic EU mainland would put the fear of God into it.

History will judge Brexit on how the fisheries issue is settledGlobal Vision

TCWs Brexit Watch has mentioned on several occasions how British commercial fishing has a symbolic, almost talismanic, political status as a proxy for Britains surrender of economic and territorial sovereignty since joining the then EEC in 1973, even if that status is out of proportion to the industrys economic significance.

So the article authorHjrtur Gumundssonis right to warn that the UK must maintain its stance of refusing to lump fishing in with all other aspects of a UK-EU trade deal assuming one can be reached at all, which looks increasingly doubtful, though not necessarily harmful and instead continue to insist that it be treated separately.UK chief negotiator David Frost has so far also been adamant that EU intransigence on access to UK fishing waters will heighten the risk of the UK walking away from a trade deal, and this pressure too should be maintained. Playing hardball may be paying off.

The greatest danger here, paradoxically, may arise from Boris Johnsons reported intention to involve himself more closely in the minutiae of negotiation.Never a details man at the best of times, the risk that, amid some typically Johnson bluffnbluster, a disadvantageous trade-off or concession might be made purely to achieve a deal for political purposes but whose baleful effects could reverberate, couldnt be discounted. In that case, Brexit would indeed be judged on how the fisheries issue was settled, and Johnson would be in the dock.

No-deal Brexit holds fewer fears for a Covid-ravaged economyFinancial Times ()

Even the irreconcilably Continuity-RemainerFTtacitly, albeit reluctantly, acknowledges what many have been saying ever since Covid-19 first appeared on the horizon.Set against the costs to the UK economy of the pandemic, or more accurately, the costs of the panicking Government:

1.putting the economy into the deep freeze;

2.placing millions on the State payroll;

3.borrowing upwards of 300 billion; and

4.restricting civil liberties to an extent unprecedented even in wartime,

the costs in comparison of a No-Deal Brexit pale into insignificance.

Not only would the likely scale of the inevitable-in-any-event decline in economic output ameliorate any adverse economic consequences of reverting to WTO terms on a No-Deal final exit, but Covid-19-induced unemployment might even be lessened by the recruitment of personnel needed to operate new border controls.

TheFTof course quotes the usual anti-Brexit Jeremiahs in abundance, but for it to admit that it may not be all doom and gloom is quite something. Its an ill wind. . . .

Free trade with America will see our farmers prosper Centre for Brexit Policy

Considering how the iniquities of the EUs Common Agricultural Policy, and the importance of the UK re-acquiring the ability as an independent sovereign nation to conclude trade deals, were among the significant issues aired during the 2016 EU Referendum campaign, its sometimes surprising how they appear to have receded in the public mind since then.

Yet, as this article by former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson makes clear, the calls to maintain EU-amenable levels of trade protectionism, particularly as regards agricultural products, have not gone away, merely re-surfaced under animal hygiene or animal welfare labels.

To end being told by countries into whose legislatures we have no democratic input what regulations we must apply domestically is one of the reasons we voted to leave the EU. Paterson is undoubtedly correct to say that free trade, policed by reputable global organisations overseeing regulatory equivalence rather than harmonisation, offers us a better chance of benefiting from our decision while improving animal welfare than does the alternative of continued trade-protectionism.

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TCW's Brexit Watch: Our Hong Kong connection strikes fear into EU - The Conservative Woman