“Taking back control of fishing waters and exclusive economic zone.”
UK Fishing is worth 0.4% to the British Economy. If we had paid every single fisherman in the UK £1 million to retire it would have been cheaper than what it has just cost us to secure a Quota we use less than 50% of and then sell the unused Quota to other countries. We export 95% of our catch to the EU and Scandinavia because we don’t actually eat that much herring, mackerel, crab, lobster, mussels, etc. We import most of our cod from Iceland, our tuna and prawns from e.g. the Seychelles.
Fish we caught and landed in the EU will now be landed in the UK – except we don’t have facilities to process all that fish, which is why we landed it in the EU (Holland, mostly). Now we will have to fill in lot of new forms in order to export all that not so ‘fresh’ fish in refrigerated lorries, through customs, to be sold in our largest market – the EU.
“Replacing the wasteful anti-environmental Common Agricultural Policy.”
Do you know why we didn’t re-sign the CAP this year? Because Washington said that if we did we wouldn’t get such a favourable Deal with the US. We not only swapped one ‘Master’ for another, but Trump is not even going to be President come negotiation time and Biden, who describes himself as Irish American, has no love for the country that has just abandoned Northern Ireland.
(Which reminds me – Northern Ireland is now going to be in the EU in all but name thanks to the border Boris promised there would never be between Northern Ireland and mainland UK, meaning that the UK now has ‘Frictionless Trade’ with a smaller area than the UK. Gibraltar has also made its own arrangements with Spain to continue friction-less access between the two, while British citizens will now have to go through Customs.)
“More accountable political system. Direct Parliamentary accountability. Politicians no longer hiding behind EU rules.”
Again, as a Member of the EU Britain had a seat at the top table and had a major say in the making, or vetoing, of ALL those ‘EU rules’. On the other hand the British Government will no longer be able to blame the EU when everything goes pear-shaped. They will have to own their own stupidity.
“A new state aid regime that is responsive and in keeping with free market principles, but also that support the agenda of levelling up.”
The very same arrangement the EU proposed back in March and Boris flatly refused. If we maintain Standards equal or better than EU Standards = no tariffs on exports. And vice versa.
“New freeports.”
There was never any EU regulation to prevent us from doing this while we were members of the EU. We did it for London Docklands, Southampton, Liverpool, Glasgow Prestwick airport . . .
“Taking back control of the £20 billion currently controlled by the EU every year to spend on UK priorities instead.”
Like the £350 million a week for the NHS? After discounting money siphoned into Private Medical Care, Funding for the NHS has actually dropped since the Referendum. Or replacing Erasmus with a new system nobody has signed up for? Or replacing all the Funding for Scientific Research after EU funding dried up?