May talking a good game this afternoon. She has said no single market which is good, and most importantly, been clear that no trade deal is still better than a bad trade deal for Britain. She's still not shaking these kleptocrats by the collar as much as I'd like, but this is a start.
Personally I think we should be taking a much tougher line in the negotiations. I would like to see the squeeze being put on the Brussles negotiators.
I've been randomly compiling the following over the past year or so. Where numbers appear, I've tried to get them from the ONS, Open Europe, or Tax Payers Alliance - none of which took up a position on the referendum.
The important thing to remember with this negotiation is that, should we fail to strike a trade deal, we *and* the EU would be subject to WTO tariffs. Alarmists bleat about these, but they are (mainly) tiny and ever decreasing.
If we continue to to sell the same exports to the EU after leaving as we do now, then each side will pay tariffs to the other. Since there is a NET £62billion trade deficit with the EU, and rapidly rising, we gain several billion pounds from these tariffs, even if the 'average' 2.4% tariff were applied across the board. Interestingly, and relevantly, the areas where the deficit is highest also have the greatest tariffs. EG, the EU sells us £20billion more per annum in vehicles than we sell them. Tariffs here are 10%, so a net £2bn gain. On food, booze and fags, the average tariff is 20% and the EU sells £17bn more to us per year than we do to them. From these two sectors alone thats a £5.4bn tariff gain for the UK.
Obviously the £ has lost against the euro quite significantly over the past year or so. This should be a good thing. A modest devaluation helps choke off imports and stimulate exports, which should lead to the sort of recovery we saw when we left the ERM. Right now our soaring deficit is unsustainable and a real threat to our economy.
The WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services has a principle of non-discrimination, as with goods, and this accounts for 40% of our exports (House of Commons Library briefing paper No 06091), so the EU couldn't actually single us out on this anyway.
Without our £10.6bn net contribution, and £3bn from fisheries and £5bn buying their Common Agricultural Policy produce at inflated prices, the EU would have to make huge cuts to their staff and budgets. Hardly a strong position to make threats from.
Staying in is also disadvantageous for protecting our financial services contribution to the economy (the EU HATE our dominance in this sector). The EU is already threatening 'Robin Hood' taxes to steal them away, and you can be sure if we had stayed in these would have been pushed through anyway. This is the one area where we currently have a trade surplus.
Since 1999 our sales to the EU have gone from about £8.5bn to £11bn, whilst theirs have gone from about £13bn to £33bn in the same period (deficit from about £5bn to £20bn).
Since 1999 our sales to the rest of the world have gone from about £2.5bn to about £18bn and the RoW sales to the UK from under £2bn to c. £4bn (surplus gone from about £0.5bn to about £16bn).
laugh