EU Referendum


Brexit: how to save £10 billion


25/09/2014



A small snippet in The Times tells us the Heritage Foundation wants to save us £10bn by having us leave the EU and drawing up our own trade agreement with the United States.

Very kindly, they  (Heritage) have  sent me links to the relevant papers, which I'll study when I get back home (I'm on the train back from Dawlish at the moment – and will report also on what was a very successful meeting).

As the train has decided to break down and they are shunting us into cattle trucks once we get to Birmingham, I'll leave you with the links, here and here, and invite observations to build into the piece I will write if I ever get back to civilisation.

On first scan, the economics paper is well worth the study, and makes some interesting and valuable points which strike at the heart of some of our concerns - the degree to which harmonisation of legislation in the interest of "free" trade impinge on economic freedom.

Another interesting suggestion is that we should not allow the best become the enemy of the good, striving for after the "perfect" deal and failing, when settling for more realistic, limited objectives may yield better results.

This is close to my thinking on "unbundling", where I suggest we should go for limited sectoral (or even single product) agreements, which are attainable, rather than spending interminable period haggling over detail, only for the bigger deal to crash and burn over chlorine-washed chicken, or some-such.

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