The Ghost Regulation of Brexit – how Leave campaigned for the repeal of a regulation that never existed, and why Remainers should not gloat

5th June 2021

To the extent there was a positive case for Brexit, it was in the broadest terms – ‘taking back control’ and so on.

The impetus was primal – it did not matter what we were to be taking back control of, we were taking back control, and that was enough.

Remainers may scoff at this, but this was a basis on which Leave won and Remain did not – and the glaring fault of the Remain side was a lack of an equal and opposite positive case.

But.

One problem of any general case is that it can lack in the particulars.

And it was a feature of the Leave side that they rarely specified what would actually change in substance if the United Kingdom (were/) was to leave the European Union.

A consequence of this vagueness was that once the referendum vote was made for Brexit, there was a range of possible models for the further relationship with the European Union, from hard Brexit to Brexit-in-name-only.

Another consequence was a sense of ‘what now?’ – like the dog who caught the car.

Of course: given the general case for Brexit, this did not matter – and it still does not matter.

A case not made on detail is not defeated by that lack of detail.

*

Yet the case for Brexit does produce some telling (and entertaining) examples.

The journalist Marcus Leroux showed one recently on Twitter.

First, the question:

Then the answer given:

That was (presumably) in 2016 – but earlier in 2021 Longworth was still citing this ergonomics directive:

(I have checked – the ergonomics directive was an example given in that 2021 Times piece.)

And here is the good (and fun) kicker:

The directive never existed.

It is a ghost directive.

And yet from at least 2016 to 2021 it was cited as an example of the point of Brexit – and published as such this year in a national newspaper.

Leroux continues:

And here is the passage in the 2013 government report (three years before the referendum):

Cogito ergonomics sum – or not.

*

Of course, Remainers may gloat at such a prize example of idiocy – but it no more discredits Brexit than if it were true, because that was not why people voted and campaigned for Leave.

And the fact it has taken until 2021 for this to be exposed (at least to my knowledge) shows it was not uppermost in the minds of many following Brexit.

There is also, no doubt, ghost facts on the Remain side as well.

That said, this ghost regulation shows that it was perfectly possible for the United Kingdom to resist unwanted regulations in the European Union before 2016.

And there is the prospect that the regulatory regime the United Kingdom develops now was also possible within the European Union.

If so, this means – in a practical regulatory sense – there was no point in Brexit.

But at least we took back control, and we caught the car.

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31 thoughts on “The Ghost Regulation of Brexit – how Leave campaigned for the repeal of a regulation that never existed, and why Remainers should not gloat”

  1. I suspect some of those backing leave want to change regulations in a way that would be inconsistent with EU rules: but they didn’t dare to set out those changes as they knew that there was no consensus for change either within the UK government or the electorate.

    And prior to leaving the EU, what was the point in pushing for change if the response is that EU rules don’t allow it?

    Now they have every incentive to push for those changes. So leaving the EU was only stage 1. We can see the opening of UK markets to cheap imports in some sectors as just one example of this. I expect there will be more to come.

    1. Yes in numerous business meetings prior to the referendum that question was posed. What “red tape” would you abolish? Never an answer. But I suspected some would have liked to see the end of many workers protections such as paid holidays and workers hours limitations.

    2. I suspect some of those backing leave want to change regulations in a way that would be inconsistent with EU rules: but they didn’t dare to set out those changes as they knew that there was no consensus for change either within the UK government or the electorate.

      A given by now, I think.

      It’s indisputably the case that the only beneficiaries of Brexit are a subset of politicians, and their disaster capitalist paymasters (Rees-Mogg not being the only one with a foot in both camps, I imagine) and it’s axiomatic that their interests aren’t our interests…

  2. Indeed “we caught the car”.
    On reading that I was taken back to my childhood and how we used to watch our next door neighbour’s dog chase cars going down our street and try and bite the tyre. Alas one day he got the tyre and there was a yelp and an awful thump and he was dead – just like much of the UK economy is to be.

  3. Very droll Mr Green.

    For a long time I half thought that the rich and the powerful, the media barons and the geniuses at the ERG must have some hugely clever plan for Brexit that I was too thick to comprehend. Now we have got our lovely Brexit no-one knows what to do with it and that plan – so far it remains invisible.

    IMHO the EU made a very convenient and necessary closed shop for developed Western nations. Kept out the rougher sort and kept prices high enough for our industries to grow if not well at least not too badly. Except that this cosy scheme was not helping all those at the bottom of the pile – at least not within the UK’s political context. Didn’t always suit all the French or all the Germans or all the Spaniards but they managed to adapt. But not the British. Rather than change the political context we decided to leave the closed shop.

    I fear we face a collective Screwtape moment – the one where he looks into the Devil’s eyes and realises – the Devil is stupid.

  4. The real money behind the leave campaign was never clearly established. A conduit for a chunk of it was an insurance business that will clearly benefit from the requirement for UK travellers to purchase additional insurance whether to drive their car or go skiing. The barrier to entry has been raised for European insurers who will now need to operate multiple structures. This might have been the motivation for the conduit but the uncompromising source of the funding will have been extremely pleased with the outcome. So much disruption for far less than a few nuclear weapons.

  5. There were many debates by the various Leave factions that discussed post Brexit plans – somewhat unfortunately the one that gained traction was the Official Leave Campaign championed by one Dominic Cummings – this was to Leave the EU without a plan so that any criticism of any plan could not be used against the Leave Campaign.

    I myself favoured Flexcit as developed by Richard North which comprised an interim EFTA/EEA structure giving us a level of access to the Single Market without the choke hold of a Customs Union. EFTA/EEA would also have taken the sting out of the badly designed NI protocol.

    On a practical regulatory sense Brexit likely had to happen at some stage as the status quo of 2016 was and could never be on offer. In February 2016 Cameron’s faux negotiaitions came to naught – but Cameron was right in one respect – caucusing by the Eurozone countries combined with Qualified Majority Voting along with Enhanced Cooperation Procedures unfortunately made the likelihood of the EZ dominating the EU an accident waiting to happen ( even with UK s much vaunted opt out).

    No, the UK getting out of the EU when it did was necessary in order to create a baseline from which to change and transform the regulatory regime.

    1. On a practical regulatory sense Brexit likely had to happen at some stage as the status quo of 2016 was and could never be on offer.

      No, the UK getting out of the EU when it did was necessary in order to create a baseline from which to change and transform the regulatory regime.

      And here we are again – a claim that wholesale regulatory change was “obviously” needed, without a single piece of compelling of evidence as to why.

      This is the lie that many Leave voters chose to believe, and we’re all now far worse off for the Remain side assuming that the electorate would just know it for the lie it was.

      1. Don’t conflate a short term economic hit with newly acquired democratic and sovereignty rights.

        Many Leavers view self governance over economics.

        Ergo, not a lie – rather, perspective.

        1. That short term hit is in fact a 5% year on year loss of GDP according to the governments own figures.

          We have no new democratic freedom.

          As for sovereignty, we share some of our sovereignty with every nation we do a trade deal. We never lost any sovereignty so how can we regain it. The current attitude of the government that with our new found sovereignty we can now do what we like, such as breaking international law or tearing up agreements, is puerile nonsense. No sovereign nation can behave like that without consequences.

  6. One of many mistakes which caused Brexit, this on the part of Juncker, was the Commission’s decision to follow Cameron’s request and not correct lies about the EU in the referendum campaigns.

  7. Yes, the Brexit dog has caught up with the car. But far from being a “gloating” Remainer, I am as angry as I was in 2016. England has indeed made a “Shameful conquest of itself”. Like you DAG, I was born in Brum, of stock on both sides that was English back four hundred years (quite extraordinarily I cannot find Welsh, Scots or Irish in the direct line). But now I am ashamed to be Anglo Saxon. My children’s birthright to work, love and live in 28 countries has been ripped from them. I have had to set up a company in Ireland in order to be assured it’s IPR will remain valid in EU where I do business. My children qualify for an Irish passport. Ironically, though a graduate of TCD and having lived in Ireland for ten years, I do not. But I and my businesses will be moving to Ireland / EU. Along with my taxes and investments. And I know as a subscriber to the FT (where you are not frequently enough published) that I am one of thousands of businesses big and small moving part or all of their business to an EU jurisdiction. Derided as citizens of “nowhere” many of us see or saw ourselves as citizens of Europe if not of the World. We may be a post maritime imperial country – like Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Venice – but even in their slow decline, none of them took such a deliberate act of self-harm as Brexit to hasten their slide into global irrelevance. I would gladly have recorded annually the exact position, colour and cost of the office stapler to remain in the EU.

  8. Brexit is an ideological, emotional, perceptual project. Whatever anyone may say, it is not a financial, economic, trade or regulatory project. It is simply about “sovereignty”, “control” and “freedom” – without those ever needing to be defined. And having now got Brexit done, “sovereignty”, “control” and “freedom” have, by definition, been delivered. The details do not matter.

    1. Adam, I’m strongly of the view that the details will eventually matter within say a 5-10 year period -sure the next 5 or so year’s will likely be turbulent – the EU is acting like the jilted lover it is – eventually the UK will have to transform itself massively in order to make sense of Brexit.

      The big question is can the incumbent government take the initiative and newly found freedoms to optimise the Brexit possibilities.

      1. The EU is just protecting the interests of it’s members. We aren’t a member so can’t expect special treatment or our demands over the NI Protocol met without question.

        Even if it only takes 5-10 years to sort out new trade arrangements, our growth will be less than it otherwise would have been so it will take a period of even higher growth to catch up fully.

        We already had the best possible trade deal with the EU. Why was it necessary to rip that up to try and find equally good trade deals with other nations? We were already able to trade with the USA, Australia, India, etc. Where was the benefit?

      2. The big question is can the incumbent government take the initiative and newly found freedoms to optimise the Brexit possibilities.

        If only such opportunities actually existed…

        1. It helps massively to understand the constraints and limitations of the EuroZone.

          Unfortunately the EZ dominates , understandably EU thinking – it needs far greater political union and joint sovereignty to make the EU/EZ hybrid work – the UK being out of the euro could therefore never nor want to partake in le project.

      3. > eventually the UK will have to transform itself massively in order to make sense of Brexit.

        So you think that transformational change is needed (not disclosed to the electorate at the time of the Referendum) in order to ‘make sense of Brexit’. But you’ve chosen not to say what that change is. I wonder why?

        1. Part of the early ( within 4-6 years) benefits are being out of the CAP, CFP and being able to effect trade deals/FTAs with global partners.

          We will have an agricultural sector, Fishing sector and industrial strategy more suited to the needs of the UK.

          Agreed, this will take time to transform and some change will be painful.

          The UK can also develop with the US its digital capabilities & standards in AI/ML/automation outwith the restrictive, permissive and schlerotic approach adopted by Brussel’s.

          1. The EU is making good trade deals with global partners which we would have benefitted from. We won’t get such good deals on our own, simply because our market is much smaller than the EU.

            The fishing sector soon realised it had lost out post Brexit. Sure, they gained control of access to our waters but they sell most of their catch to the EU, which is now much more difficult if not impossible because of the customs headaches. Not such a benefit then. Likewise agricultural exports.

            Where is the benefit of Brexit?

  9. Let’s remember that both the vagueness and the lies were only possible because journalists did not see it as their job to explain it better and worse they did not call it out when politicians were making these statements. I cannot remember any one Brexiter ever having to be embarrassed about being caught out on a falsehood, they were having it very easy to repeat their falsehood without consequences.
    And unfortunately that goes on until today, no consequences for lying, never mind breaches of the “ministerial code”.

  10. Another piece of phantom EU legislation was the Caramel Directive, illustrated by this excerpt from Hansard 1966, in which Robin Cook relates an incident involving Neil Hamilton, former MP for Tatton, addressing the Conservative party conference:
    “He told that conference that the caramel directive of the European Union took 12,000 words whereas it took only 200 words to put together the Lord’s prayer. I was impressed by the comparison and telephoned the European Union movement to ask if it could help me trace the caramel directive. A weary spokesman told me that there was no caramel directive and that that line had begun as an after-dinner joke by Sir John Banham some two years previously in Brussels. I telephoned the Minister’s office and asked whether they were aware that the caramel directive did not exist. I received a weary reply from a spokesman in the Minister’s office, who said that they were aware that the Minister was wrong about the caramel directive but that he was right about the length of the Lord’s prayer.”

  11. Taking back control and regaining sovereignty were two things I heard a lot about from people supporting Leave. Most people (and I suspect most politicians) don’t really understand what the EU does, how it works and why membership was hugely beneficial to the UK. So it was very easy to falsely characterise the EU as an undemocratic foreign bureaucracy imposing itself and it’s excessive regulation on the UK and taking away its sovereignty. This view completely ignores the fact that the UK was part of the EU’s decision making system at all levels and just as able to influence it as any other member country. Vote Leave behaved as if the UK was uniquely a victim of the EU. In fact we always were in complete control of our most of our own laws, the EU only affected agreed areas of competency. Most EU regulation was related to trade and competition. We had opt-outs on things we disagreed with. We had democratic influence at ministerial and MEP level and of course a nominated EU Commissioner participating in the generation of policy.

    UKIP had been pushing the sovereignty and no control angle for many years so there was fertile ground for a well organised Leave campaign against membership focussing on these simple issues, ignoring the awkward facts that showed these simplistic views were very inaccurate view of a much more complex relationship and benifical. It’s wrong to see Leave supporters as uninformed or unintelligent. Even intelligent people can believe misinformation and disinformation.

    For me the most risible criticism of Remainers post Brexit is the idea that Remainers opposing Brexit in Parliament and the Courts prevented the UK getting a good deal. Remainers are being blamed for the consequences of the very hard brexit Leave politicians demanded (though only after the referendum, before it the talked of a very soft Brexit).

    If Leavers really wanted Remainers to get behind the outcome of the referendum (leaving the EU) they should have sought cross party agreement on how we should leave, because the referendum never addressed that. That way a compromise might have been achieved, respecting the views of the whole country, not just 52% of it. Thus the UK might not have been so deeply split and Brexit would not have been the terrible and ongoing wrangle it became. Instead the May government pushed for a very hard Brexit along party lines by drawing certain red lines which made that inevitable, though I don’t think May realised this when she drew them.

    The ultimate cause of this extremely damaging national divorce was David Cameron, who sought to protect his party from right wing influence and ended up driving it to a much more right wing position. He opened the Pandora’s Box of the EU referendum. Once opened he failed to effectively counter the misinformation of the Leave campaign or properly argue the benefits of EU membership. His failings ultimately resulted in an even lazier politician becoming the current Prime Minister.

    1. “If Leavers really wanted Remainers to get behind the outcome of the referendum (leaving the EU) they should have sought cross party agreement on how we should leave, because the referendum never addressed that. ”

      I completely agree with this.

      Once the 52% had “won”, the views of the 48% were, seemingly, disregarded & ignored.

      Had there been compromise & support as you suggest, things could have been different in a great many ways.

      1. There wouldn’t have been a problem except that the “little people” were fed a diet of lies about how bad the EU was for those 45 years. That and government politicians of both parties using “Brussels” as a convenient excuse for their own failings. To undo that negative and generally baseless impression in an election campaign was a hard task. The government did send out a booklet setting out the benefits of EU membership before the referendum campaign began, but I expect most committed leavers binned it without reading it.

        Leave consistently claimed EU membership only benefitted a metropolitan elite which was absolute tosh but seemed to stick on the basis that if you say something often enough it will be believed. It totally ignores the fact that economic prosperity benefits everyone.

    2. We had 45 years to convince the ‘little prople’ as to the benefits of the EU.

      It was a good innings, some would say too long – hey ho.

      Paradoxically, with the UK leaving the EU/EZ can and ought to integrate much further to bring about the polity of the United States of Europe.

  12. Yet another myth, then, along the same lines as banning bendy bananas. Or the ‘caramel directive’ cited by Hector McGillivray, which is a new one to me.

  13. Well what can I say , from the continent it looked as if the UK was negotiating Brexit with it self for a very long time at least. And stuff like this is what they mean when they say for domestic consumption only
    How hard would it have been to finds out the truth.
    But nobody did.
    I really wonder why

  14. It was a ghost most never even had any idea of until someone promulgated it. None of the Leavers I have talked to – workmen, my cleaner, the postman – ever once mentioned they believed they had no control in the years leading up to the Referendum. But someone says, “Take back control” and suddenly everyone wants the control they never felt they didn’t have – and had anyway!

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