1w ago

Wes Streeting: Britain needs to join customs union with EU

www.thetimes.com Wes Streeting: Britain needs to join customs union with EU

The health secretary’s remarks are being seen as a direct challenge to Sir Keir Starmer, who has repeatedly ruled out a policy favoured by many Labour voters

Archive link for those of us in the customs union.

Uh oh 😳. It's Wes Streeting whom we all hate because of NHS. But he wants us to rejoin the Custom's Union. Fuck! How do we choose? Will it be a path to rejoining or will it be in fighting and dogma? 🫠😜.

54 comments

Increasing our trade with Europe (whether it's with a customs union or some other measure) would be good for two reasons:
It would grow the British economy, create more good jobs, increase wages, and increase the amount of money raised in taxes for public services
It would annoy Brexiteers
- The UK specialises in services exports, which are unaffected by a customs union.
  Perhaps the EU should become less protectionist, it might help their stagnant economic performance.
  
  I don't know if the right solution is a customs union, or participation in some areas of the single market, or something else. I just read that the UK's post-Brexit arrangements "will reduce long-run productivity by 4 per cent relative to remaining in the EU", so presumably if we boost trade with Europe in certain ways, it should increase British productivity

Weirdly archive.is sometimes doesn't load for me
So here it is on archive.ph too
https://archive.ph/20251221200353/https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/wes-streeting-labour-uk-customs-union-eu-33p8fjd5z
- Oh thank you 🙏. It's the reverse for me.

A customs union (as opposed to a free trade area) would require us to allow the EU to control what external tariffs we set, that would effectively make Chinese and American goods a lot more expensive.
- And given how much China and the US are our friends, that would just be terrible.
  Oh no, we’d buy more stuff more Europe, how terrible. Then it’ll have to get shipped locally: the terror!!!
  And then European businesses and consumers might start buying from the UK again! That will not stand!!
  
  Spiking the cost of living is generally a bad thing 🤓
  
  You're happy to increase the price of pretty much everything, so a few rich people can buy overpriced German cars slightly cheaper?
- Good.

This has been signposted for a long time by the fact that we have not done any regulatory realignment after importing the EU laws into the UK wholesale.

They trying to hand the keys early to Reform?
- Yes, because pandering to fascists ended up so well last time. Oh, hold on...
  
  ?

54 comments