Face masks debate could be ‘worse than Brexit’ says Brazier

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The leading Brexiteer accused Brussels of “self-harming” after it refused to offer equal market access to UK based financial firms. Writing for ConservativeHome, he argued this makes the case for Britain ditching EU regulations stronger.

Lord Hannan argued Brussels responded to Brexit by being “as bellicose as possible”.

He explained: “UK-based firms found that the letter of the law was suddenly being forced on them with a perversity that their Japanese or American rivals were spared.

“Equivalence – essentially an agreement to trust each other’s regulators – is a normal courtesy among advanced economies.

“The EU offers it to Brazilian, Chinese and Mexican companies. Britain, naturally, offers it to the EU.

“But the EU evidently believed that refusing to reciprocate might somehow asphyxiate London.

“It didn’t work. This would have been obvious had it not been for the hysterical tone of Britain’s Europhile broadcasters, determined as they were to show that Brexit had been a catastrophe.”

Between 1999 and 2020 Lord Hannan served as a Conservative MEP in the European Parliament, where he passionately made the case for Brexit.

He now sits in the House of Lords and is an advisor to the Board of Trade.

Whilst Britain formally left the EU in January 2020, it remained closely tied to the bloc until the following December.

During this time it continued to pay into the budget and implement many rules made by Brussels.

Boris Johnson’s new Brexit deal, which took effect at the end of December, restored Britain as a fully independent trading nation.

Lord Hannan argued the EU’s strategy has been “self-harming”, even if it caused “a kind of excited despair” from some UK remainers.

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He wrote: “Protectionism always makes the state applying it poorer.

“Making it harder for continental firms to access London finance does more damage to the continental firms than to London.

“Had the EU been more adroit, it might have sought to make itself more attractive.

“But, for whatever reason, it cannot bring itself to think that way.”

However, Lord Hannan warned London had “no automatic right to the top slot”, and argued Brexit should be used to strengthen its position by ditching some EU rules.

The peer said: “We should begin by repealing those EU rules which were opposed by the industry when they were brought in, even if, having now assimilated the compliance costs, some established actors have lost interest in repeal.

“We need to think of future businesses as well as existing ones.

“We should undo the parts of the EU’s MiFID 2 and Solvency 2 regimes that we opposed at the time, and scrap the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive and the short-selling ban.

“More broadly, we need lighter-touch regulation.”

Britain voted to leave the EU in June 2016, by 52 percent of the vote to 48 percent.
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