Tuesday 3 July 2018 4:08am
Rob Edgar
To Australians, the Brexit vote was an opportunity to rekindle the trade, cultural, and people-to-people links (Source: Getty)
To that end, The Spectator’s event last week at London’s Australia House was both a tonic and a bitter pill to swallow for globally-minded Brexiteers.
That great liberaliser of the Australian economy, former Prime Minister John Howard, spoke about the success that Australia has seen since moving from protectionism to a more open economic stance, in particular with countries in the Asia Pacific region, while retaining faith in the nation state as central to any useful trade policy.
The Asia Pacific region’s potential far exceeds that of the EU, and the UK is in a better position than most to capitalise on it. One of the consequences of the British Empire is that many countries in the region retain similar legal and political systems to ours, which would ensure at least an initial degree of mutual sympathy in any trade negotiation.
These ideas were picked up by the Australian high commissioner to the UK, George Brandis. He reminded us that Australians have enjoyed 27 consecutive years of economic growth, and are the tenth richest people in the world. Bilateral free trade agreements are the foundation of this growth, and an ambitious Free Trade Agreement (FTA) could act as a bulwark against perceived US protectionism.
What about the difficulties of regulatory alignment? The British MEP Daniel Hannan made the point that an FTA is in essence an expression of trust – and if you trust the Australians not to put strychnine in your bottle of Jacob’s Creek, there is little need for it in most cases.
FTAs with other countries may necessitate differing degrees of regulation, but therein lies the advantage which would come from negotiating our own trade deals. We could have as much or as little impediment to trade as we like. These deals need not be over-complicated: Australia’s FTA with the US was negotiated in a mere 15 months.
Then there’s the oft-repeated concern of British farmers being undercut by cheap Australian beef and lamb. But according to Brandis, Australia cannot even fulfil demand from the Asian market, while Hannan made the blindingly obvious point that we exist on separate hemispheres so our respective livestock production is contra-seasonal.
As for immigration, Lynton Crosby – the political strategist who orchestrated David Cameron’s campaigns – pointed both to polling data and post-referendum analyses to suggest that what the British people want is more control of immigration.
Control does not necessarily mean a reduction, as long as the quality of that immigration is of an acceptable standard. Part of any deal could be formal, mutual recognition of professional qualifications, useful in sectors like health and services.
Now for that bitter pill: the tantalising prospect of Britain once more engaging as a formidable globally minded entity in its own right – and on its own terms – will become a mirage in the desert if we stay in the EU customs union, continuing to outsource our trade policy to a third party which perceives the referendum result as an affront.
All we will have achieved will be instability without any corresponding relief, leaving us with the worst of all possible worlds.
In the end, it is confidence that will win the day. The UK can hardly be said to be exuding confidence, thanks to our unwillingness to look beyond the narrow confines of the EU.
Our strategy should be to forge partnerships with nations that are like us, not falling over ourselves to accommodate the desires of a bloc which – lest we forget – we voted to leave.
To Australians, the Brexit vote was an opportunity to rekindle the trade, cultural, and people-to-people links between our nations. That’s the kind of optimism we should be pursuing.
City A.M.'s opinion pages are a place for thought-provoking views and debate. These views are not necessarily shared by City A.M.
