VIDEO BELOW:
Theresa May has now conceded that the customs partnership championed by her Brexit Adviser Olly Robbins, has gone the way of the Dodo.
The prime Minister was said to be shocked at the strength of opposition to her idea of a customs partnership with the EU during the crunch cabinet Brexit sub-committee meeting yesterday.
And the new Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, came through on the side of the Brexiteers to help kill off the idea.
Saying he was the new kid on the block, the former Remainer shredded her customs partnership proposals, reports the sun, and he tipped the balance of the eleven member team, leaving the Prime Minister visibly shocked to have lost the room according to one insider.
The PM has been forced to send her officials back to the drawing board to find a solution.
The customs partnership has snuffed it, it is no more, it has ceased to be, it is bereft of life. To put it bluntly, it is a dead customs partnership hanging upside down from its perch in a cage.
You have to wonder how much longer Mrs May can cling on, if all she can do is keep coming up with plans that compromise in favour of the EU.
Now onto business.
Many Remainers claim that business is on the side of staying in the EU – or single market – or customs union – or anything that makes Brussels run the show. But that is just not true.
Making the case for small and medium sized enterprises or SMEs, the managing director of REIDsteel, Simon Boyd, who is also a member of the CBI Manufacturing Council, puts that assumption to bed.
In a scathing attack on the EU in Brexit Central he basically says that the Customs union is no more than a protectionist racket that is the opposite of fair trade.
He also points out that small businesses often rely on trade associations to be their voice when talking to politicians and civil servants and, however well meaning, these trade associations tend to listen and speak for those that have the time and resources to engage with them, which are of course the huge corporations that have, some would say, a vested interest in remaining stuck to the European Union.
The EU he writes:
"…..strives to protect inefficient and subsidised European players against developing nations and more efficient producers from around the world. It is the opposite of fair trade. It damages many businesses throughout the UK and serves to control the market as the big players like.
"Membership has been harmful for us and other British businesses. It has excluded many of our traditional markets, particularly the Commonwealth; it prevents us from making our own trade agreements worldwide."
And as a businessman operating globally he should know about these things. REIDsteel has been involved in projects from Belize to Chile and from Mauritius to Mongolia as well as Africa. Involving such things as aircraft hangars, bridges, factories and hospitals.
Now he says he is concerned about the talk of some sort of customs union or partnership with the EU.
"It is the language that some vested interests are using, in effect, to keep the UK in the EU, against the will of the British people." He writes.
"I and many others have been working for decades to try and highlight just how damaging our membership of the EU has been to us." He goes on.
"We have seen our international trade shrink and have watched over the demise of our manufacturing capabilities as businesses have been less able or willing to invest for the future.
"Our productivity has plunged because it is often easier to invest in cheap labour rather than train and invest at home.
"Multinationals have seen fit to export our jobs and expertise to other locations where labour is cheaper and incentives are greater, often with help from the EU: our money being spent to export our jobs and our industries."
What we need he says is not regulatory alignment that stifles us, but mutual recognition and the re-emergence of the British Standards Institute to act in the interests of British business and the British nation.
"We must not be regulated in any way by the EU. The struggle by some to keep us regulated by the EU is a struggle against the nation. Out means Out; let’s get on with it please."
Well, the Former Chancellor and now editor of the Evening Standard, George Osborne, seems to be getting the message!
Last night, in a podcast conversation with his former coalition partner and former Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, he said:
"I don’t think you can stop Brexit."
And he went on to say that he didn't think the country could have another Brexit referendum, as the country had made a decision.
Welcome to reality George!
