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Part 1 of why the proposed “reset” is far worse than you could possibly imagine.
Possibly the most shocking aspect of the UK Government’s proposals for rejoining the EU through stealth – by calling it a “reset” – and pretending that adopting the EU’s Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) legislation and procedures would somehow magically increase UK food and agricultural exports to the EU.
It is standard practice for lobbyists to create a scare and build up an irresistible call for action by legislators so politicians might arrive like the cavalry to save the day. The need for the UK to operate under EU SPS rules has all the hallmarks of such a false flag operation.
We are told that the UK having its own sovereign rules, making its own decisions to suit its own particular circumstances and being under the jurisdiction of its own courts to oversee the process is not working, and we should change. Urgently.
Instead, the argument goes, we should adopt wholesale, exactly and immediately, the current EU laws (which are generally not the same EU laws we previously endured, but often more onerous and costly versions) – and then accept, without question, modification, delay, or consent, any new EU rules in future.
If we do not apply new EU rules, the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) would be at risk, as the EU has demanded cross-retaliation between the TCA and the Reset for any UK non-compliance with the Reset.
At best, the Reset is just transferring companies' trade expenses onto the public purse. We are told obeying EU SPS rules and procedures would increase UK food exports to the EU, but every example of potential agrifood export increases promoted by the government has proven false. From sausages to seed potatoes, even before Brexit, the UK had limited sales of these items to the EU, which either didn’t like them (sausages) or didn’t need them (seed potatoes).
The UK imports between 35 per cent and 40 per cent of the food it consumes each year; even for indigenous foods that grow in the UK climate, the UK is not self-sufficient, importing 25 per cent to 30 per cent of consumption each year. Why then should Britain change the rules for all its farmers and all its food producers – even for businesses that don’t export to the EU, or anywhere else?
The Government could solve any real trade problem with targeted assistance instead of this blanket regulatory dump that will force producers to change their processes, ingredients, and packaging, while also driving up their energy and import costs. This £12 billion in compliance costs will simply be passed on to consumers through higher prices – so much for solving the ‘cost of living crisis’.
This is all the more puzzling when you consider that DEFRA’s domestic agricultural policies encourage replacing good agricultural land with rewilding projects and solar farms. Rather than building food security, we are creating a need for even more food imports and smoothing the path for them to arrive from the EU, while making it more difficult for food imports from non-EU countries.
More puzzling still is that the easier entry of EU foods into Britain will only increase the risks of disease and contagion of animals and plants that are currently visible, measurable and a real challenge inside the EU – but do not currently exist in the British mainland, such as Foot and Mouth Disease and Swine Fever.
The increase in trade will not come from higher UK food exports to the EU but from yet higher EU imports to the UK, at a cost to our own production and imports from non-EU countries. That is because the beneficiaries of the proposed adoption of EU SPS rules are primarily EU exporters, and the focus of our own ministry is towards helping them rather than assisting our own farmers, fishing communities and food producers.
I can see this clearly because I have studied and evaluated the EU’s proposals and the response to them from our own Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to produce a serious paper of some 46,000 words over 100 pages (you can read it here). I can only conclude the majority of our politicians and much of the media are either unquestioningly going along with the great deception – swallowing whole trite slogans that DEFRA’s own evidence refutes – because they believe that it will give them access to the EU passport queue – it won’t – that is a national competency and not under EU control. Or because they are zealots desperate to return to the yoke of EU control – and caring not for the harms it may cause to our farming communities, economy and liberties.
The EU politicians and technocrats are in a rush. The longer the UK is out of the EU, the greater the regulatory divergence and the more the EU political class fear the possibility that the UK will never rejoin, or at the very least pay into the vast EU budget that has grown topsy since we left. They fear Nigel Farage’s Reform or a more EU-sceptic Conservative Party, or a combination of both, will take power and subsequently focus on global markets and make the breach with the EU even wider. Some may fear that a Labour Government may get too comfortable with being outside the EU and begin to see that many of its current and proposed policies would simply not be possible were the UK to rejoin.
It is therefore imperative to the EU and its sympathisers in UK government ministries such as DEFRA, that an inflated problem of exporting UK foods to the EU is talked-up to create a clamour for action – and the answer of subservience to the immediate adoption of EU laws, oversight, penalties and payment is seen as the answer and quickly re-established and adhered too.
Ironically, the officials at DEFRA have told British farmers and food manufacturers to start following EU rules before the negotiations are complete and before the UK has even established how much it would have to pay for this subservience. DEFRA officials would rather talk themselves out of the job of establishing a British approach to trade with British rules for British foods, farming, fishing and management of the environment – to then become little more than the EU’s enforcer.
If there is a silver lining to the Reset, it is that DEFRA is making the case for clearing out practically all its staff if they cannot show they wish to put British interests first.
That is the only possible way to explain how DEFRA could put forward proposals that are so subservient to and supportive of the EU positions – and so geared to accelerating the adoption process without regard to the lives of those who will be affected by the changes. Whether it's agricultural or fishing communities, artisans or food processors, or the flora and fauna affected by EU rules, DEFRA is in an unseemly scramble to get MPs to sign up to EU laws.
In a forthcoming series of articles here on Britain Unbound I shall consider the issues summarised here in more detail; the pro-EU and anti-British stance of DEFRA, the false flag of collapsing British food exports, the advantage being given to EU exporters – and the direct and indirect costs, as well as the opportunity costs from ceding our sovereign power to choose our own laws over food production.
British politicians should not press the reset button as it is currently designed – for it will only concede an unconditional surrender without there being a fight put up or even a question asked.
