3 ms·

One of the proposed benefits was cutting bureaucracy and regulation (retained EU laws) that made the EU one of the worst investment and business growth environm

One of the proposed benefits was cutting bureaucracy and regulation (retained EU laws) that made the EU one of the worst investment and business growth environments in the world, which was a drag on UK/EU economies. But it seems like the UK lost their political will to drop the hammer on regulation after Brexit, and they actually kept most of those legacy EU laws and only nixed a few. UK experts: why was that? What made them lose their will? It seemed to me once you were in for a penny, you were in for a pound and you had to go all the way to realize the benefits. Now you just have a situation with even more regulatory complexity due to differences between the UK/EU, but the UK got none of the benefits. They’ve fallen between two stools.

pjc50 11mo ago
The simple explanation is there was no plan. There was no list of named regulations, just a handwave against the concept of regulation to begin with. Then comes the reality that, for physical products, deregulation in the UK market limits you to the UK market - for a global exporter, you have to comply with CE rules anyway for your EU customers, and you aren't going to make a separate cheap/worse product for UK customers. Not to mention the NI question. Physical reality bites as well: you can deregulate fish https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-fishing-uk-fisheries-act-b2866310.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-fishin... , but that doesn't solve the underlying environmental issues and at best allows fishermen to collapse stocks sooner.
hshdhdhj4444 11mo ago
They didn’t lose the “will” to get rid of EU regulations. It was never practical in the first place. The idea that the UK was gonna get rid of EU regulations was based on a fundamental lie, that outside of some very specific minor stuff they were onerous, and was based on a lie of omission, about what would happen if they did. If they did get rid of the regulations they wouldn’t be able to trade with their largest trading partner anymore, whereas the trading partner would have over a 100 alternative countries they could replace the UK with. Getting rid of well defined EU regulations would then additionally require passing tons of regulations through a complicated political process. It would require retraining existing bureaucrats and hiring new bureaucrats. It would require rewriting tons of software. It would require exposing themselves to new loopholes because so many regulations and laws they weren’t getting rid of interacted and depended on EU regulations in ways that would not be clear before getting rid of them. Negotiations between the EU and the UK paralyzed the UK political sector for half a decade. Getting rid of decades of EU regulations (which the UK was the biggest driver of along with France and Germany, and held a veto power on every single one), would tie up the Uk Leadership in at least a decade of political bickering and inaction.

pjc50 11mo ago

The simple explanation is there was no plan. There was no list of named regulations, just a handwave against the concept of regulation to begin with. Then comes the reality that, for physical products, deregulation in the UK market limits you to the UK market - for a global exporter, you have to comply with CE rules anyway for your EU customers, and you aren't going to make a separate cheap/worse product for UK customers. Not to mention the NI question. Physical reality bites as well: you can deregulate fish https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-fishing-uk-fisheries-act-b2866310.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-fishin... , but that doesn't solve the underlying environmental issues and at best allows fishermen to collapse stocks sooner.

hshdhdhj4444 11mo ago

They didn’t lose the “will” to get rid of EU regulations. It was never practical in the first place. The idea that the UK was gonna get rid of EU regulations was based on a fundamental lie, that outside of some very specific minor stuff they were onerous, and was based on a lie of omission, about what would happen if they did. If they did get rid of the regulations they wouldn’t be able to trade with their largest trading partner anymore, whereas the trading partner would have over a 100 alternative countries they could replace the UK with. Getting rid of well defined EU regulations would then additionally require passing tons of regulations through a complicated political process. It would require retraining existing bureaucrats and hiring new bureaucrats. It would require rewriting tons of software. It would require exposing themselves to new loopholes because so many regulations and laws they weren’t getting rid of interacted and depended on EU regulations in ways that would not be clear before getting rid of them. Negotiations between the EU and the UK paralyzed the UK political sector for half a decade. Getting rid of decades of EU regulations (which the UK was the biggest driver of along with France and Germany, and held a veto power on every single one), would tie up the Uk Leadership in at least a decade of political bickering and inaction.