WTO – The Way To Go

Part Two

Dead Bodies, Gridlocked Counties, Rubbish Piled Up In The Streets?

© Twitter / Michael Fabricant MP

Project Fear and the WTO Solution

There are many important flaws in the current Project Fear wild stories about exiting on WTO terms.

To remind readers, these wild and irresponsible claims by national and local government include Southern England’s roads becoming gridlocked for six months by trucks queuing for Dover, dead bodies being uncollected, food deliveries not getting to supermarkets, and even children missing their exams because of clogged roads. All of these claims were made or reiterated yesterday by Government Ministers and by Kent County Council.

Act of Economic Aggression

In order for any of these wild claims to be remotely true, it would require deliberate action on the part of the EU to make their borders as difficult as possible for normal trade to work.

Putting aside the immediate action that the UK would take against the EU at the World Trade Organisation and the UNECE for breaking its rules, there is a more fundamental point to make.

If the EU were to introduce vindictive and unreasonable checks at their ports on 30 March next year, it would be doing so to punish the United Kingdom for leaving.

That argument alone is a key one, and is not one you will hear from the BBC or Sky. Who would want to be part of a club which was so evil?

What happens at Borders?

The world has been moving to a system of pre-clearing goods for customs purposes for many years. It is official WTO policy and the EU itself has such a system, as well as a legal requirement on all member states to comply. The EU is now moving swiftly to an enhanced and fully electronic system. This is mandatory and the UK’s HMRC says that the UK system will be in place in January, ahead of the EU’s deadline.

Physical checks of goods involve a tiny proportion of trade. Depending on the border in question this is around 2%, and these checks are generally intelligence-led.

For example, the Chairman of the Board of the Irish Revenue Commissioners told a Committee of the Irish parliament in 2017 that :

What about goods from outside the EU?

What is almost never mentioned by Remainer MPs is that borders exist between independent countries all around the world. And hundreds of billions of pounds worth of goods enter the UK’s and the EU’s ports every year from non-EU countries. Strangely these international (non-EU) goods pass through into the UK and EU without involving massive gridlock or trucks backed-up in their countries of origin.

The final killer facts

If the EU were instantly to make life as difficult as possible for goods travelling to the EU from the UK on 30 March 2019, this would be an act of enormous self-harm.

1. Republic of Ireland goods travel through the UK to mainland EU

The EU claims to be Ireland’s best friend in the Brexit negotiations. If Southern England becomes gridlocked for six months as a result of vindictive action by the EU, what happens to exports to the rest of the EU from the Republic of Ireland?

The majority of these travel across the Irish Sea, through the UK, and down to Dover. Obviously they would not be able to be delivered to mainland EU and the Irish economy would be in big trouble.

2. EU’s goods exports to the UK

The other consequence of vindictive action by the EU is obvious, but is never stated. (Except by us.) If Southern England becomes gridlocked, what happens to EU exports into the UK? Let’s just take one EU country: Germany.

Last year Germany’s businesses sold over £75 billion (pounds) worth of goods to the UK.

© Facts4EU.Org 2018

How is Germany going to react to these goods not being delivered to their British destinations, because the UK’s roads are gridlocked by ideological EU action?