- A part of our country (Northern Ireland) remains under the jurisdiction of the EU, with internal restrictions and checks between parts of the UK now required. That's a rather dramatic sacrifice of the sovereignty we seemed so keen to claw back. Or is this not a problem for you providing it doesn't impact you directly?
- We've signed up to arbitration mechanisms to ensure that the EU can counteract certain actions we take that are deemed unfair. So to escape being a rule-taker, we've decided to take rules from someone else instead.
- The Common Travel Area allows Irish citizens to freely live and work in the UK, and EU citizens can gain Irish citizenship after 5 years of residency, which then gives them a free movement path into the UK. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but it means that despite all the downsides of Brexit, we still haven't gained the "full control" of our borders that so many wanted.
Just as a side note here, that means we haven't gained full sovereignty, full border control, or full control over our regulations, which were three of the biggest selling points apparently.
- The right to use national identity cards to gain entry into the UK will expire next year. Some may say this is more secure, but most EU nationals don't have passports as their identity cards give them free movement access across the EU, so expect tourism (and the revenues from that) to decline substantially.
- A huge negative that remains is the amount of bureaucracy businesses and individuals will have to deal with. Yes, there won't be tariffs or quotas, but there will still be customs declarations, carnets, checks and all sorts of other paperwork to do. It will be a colossal difference compared to the free market access we currently enjoy. Ask anyone with experience in these matters.
- Now we don't have a seat at the EU table, we don't have any ability to influence its decisions (and we've done plenty of influencing in the past). We can therefore expect the EU to take more actions at our expense, which is a problem when its responsible for 50% of our trade and nearly surrounds us on all sides. We shouldn't underestimate the issues it can cause when the EU wants to do things that negatively impact us and no longer has to factor in our opinion.
- We've left the EHIC scheme. Now we have to pay for travel insurance to avoid huge medical bills, which is relatively cheap, but it means we're now at the mercy of insurance providers in terms of what they cover and what can be voided under their policies. It's extremely hard/impossible, for example, to be covered for pre-existing conditions, which will create significant risks for many older people holidaying in the EU (this is something I wonder if older Brexit voters ever realised). Even now, due to FCDO advice, travel insurance doesn't cover Covid related illnesses while in the EU, so if you catch it while abroad, you're in for some big problems. Who knows when this advisory will be lifted.
- We'll no longer have any protected right to even travel to the EU. This is more a point of principle than anything else, but think about it: the EU can now ban or restrict our travel however it pleases, and all we can do is reciprocate.
- There's very little in the deal for financial services, which is one of our primary exports. We'll lose our passporting rights, and now enter another world of bureaucracy with time-limited equivalence rules. Basically, for continued access, we have to keep doing what the EU wants.
As for the benefits of leaving the EU, they seem to have boiled down to:
- Regulatory divergence - which we're still limited in doing.
- International trade deals - We've rolled over a lot of existing deals on the same terms, and in our desperation to secure trade deals elsewhere, we're already
bending to the USA's will to scramble together some kind of mini deal with them.
- Investment - We can't afford to do anywhere near as much anymore as we've spent so much dealing with Covid, and we're still restricted by the deal even here as well.
- Becoming a tax haven - Good luck selling tax breaks for corporations to the British public when they're already being hammered by the economic impact of Covid + Brexit + probable tax rises of their own.
So that's less freedom, money, influence and rights; and more risk, tax, trade friction and uncertainty. And in exchange, we still didn't get full sovereignty, still didn't get full border control, still have to abide by many EU rules, and also had to create a trade barrier within the UK itself.
Sounds super.
