Eight years on and Brexit is changing Britain to how we want it - Brian Monteith

Yesterday was the eighth anniversary of the 2016 EU referendum when the UK voted to leave in what remains the largest democratic vote in our country’s history. Not that the Conservative Government or its Labour opposition has wanted especially to mark the occasion.

Again, in another of their conspiracies of silence (like the Covid-19 pandemic that goes without mention by either party) they would rather talk about something else. Each party has its own reasons.

Sunak’s Conservatives are embarrassed by Brexit – it continues to divide the parliamentary party and the rejoiners are again in the ascendancy. The party’s best Brexit champion, Kemi Badenoch, the Secretary for Trade, is hardly allowed off the leash and the anniversary was not exploited as it could have been – especially to appeal to ex-Labour voters who made a leap of faith in backing Boris Johnson in 2019.

The people now running the Conservatives are very different, they look embarrassed about Brexit, as if they caused a lingering bad smell they can’t own up to, so they scramble to find other topics to discuss – as if anything a Conservative Government has done could be bigger than Brexit.

For Keir Starmer, Brexit is also a source of discomfort that dare not pass his lips. Starmer, who campaigned for a second referendum, does not wish to give Red Wall voters returning to the Labour fold an excuse to stick with the Conservatives – or back Reform UK. Starmer would far rather talk about making relationships with the EU smoother – but that will come at a price, and could set up a genuine challenge for a Labour Government in 2029.

And yet all this shadow boxing is not necessary. Brexit is slowly working to the country’s advantage.

Firstly, and it has not been said often enough, it helped crash the Scottish Nationalist bandwagon, for it forces people in Scotland to decide if they would rather remain in the UK without a border with Scotland’s biggest trading partner, England – or leaving and creating a physical English border requiring immigration and customs checks while waiting for many years before negotiating entry to the EU?

It could be a very long wait indeed for Scotland unless it were to quickly concede adopting the Euro, allowing Scottish fisheries to be pillaged by EU nations like Spain and France and agreeing to many billions in annual membership fees, and for what? Then there would be the acceptance of tens of thousands of the illegal immigrants that are about to be shared out among EU member nations.

What few people across the whole of the UK seem to realise is that the EU the whole country voted in 2016 to leave no longer exists – it is a far different beast now and one that, I wager, more people would find objection to than did eight years ago.

Of course the UK has not stood still itself – while the Conservative Government has not covered itself in glory by exploiting Brexit opportunities to the full – it did negotiate the most open and substantial trading agreement the EU has conceded. The problem the country now faces is the lack of confidence our mainstream parties show in exploiting the Brexit opportunities to the full.

To help raise awareness of the achievements to date I had a hand in assisting a team of trade experts, economists and lawyers pull together a list of the First Fifty Brexit Benefits, now listed on the GlobalBritain.co.uk website. It is only an initial marker as it will soon list sixty and then seventy benefits as it eventually climbs beyond 100, the number only held back by the need to check and verify the entries so they are watertight.

The list has something for everyone, with many changes in law unknown and uncommented upon. For instance by summer 2023, Brexit had allowed the UK to remove tariffs completely on 47 per cent of all product lines entering the UK, making these items cheaper for UK consumers and businesses.

The Shark Fins Act, which looks to end the ghastly import and export of shark fins, is now UK law. Brexit made it tougher for EU criminals to enter the UK, resulting in over 12,000 EU citizens being refused entry to the UK in 2023. This included a new default refusal of entry for EU citizens who served time in prison for a year or more.

Then there is the EU’s new additional annual fee from 2021 of €0.80, for every kilogram of plastic packaging produced but not recycled – that would have cost the UK an additional €1.12 billion for the first year. And there’s the UK-Australia free trade agreement that ensures all artwork made by British artists re-sold in Australia over AUS$1,000 will see 5 per cent of the resale price paid to the artist.

None of the above would have been possible before Brexit – you don’t have to like them or agree with them but our laws are slowly changing – and more will change even with a new government.

One of the political ironies going uncommented in this election campaign is how some policies offered up by Labour and the Liberal Democrats would not be possible without Brexit. Labour’s policy on charging VAT on independent school fees could not happen within the EU (a similar approach by the Greek Government was ruled illegal by the EU Commission) just as the Lib Dem’s promise to scrap VAT on children’s toothbrushes and toothpaste is only possible because of Brexit.

Brexit has helped defeat the SNP and is slowly working its way through our laws making incremental changes that will become the new normal. We are diverging, and for the better, because even if you don’t like every change Brexit allows you don’t need the agreement of 27 other states to change the law. At last you have the final say. It’s called sovereignty and eight years ago we voted to have it returned.

Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments and a director of Global Britain.