A Brexit bombshell buried in the King’s Speech

Hidden amongst the pomp and ceremony of the King’s Speech was a small announcement that is going to change the UK forever. It is the first step back from the cliff edge of an ideological Brexit, pushed by people who refuse to listen to sense, which has done untold harm to the British economy. It is going to enrage all the right people – the new MP for Clacton and his fellow hard Brexiteers.

The actual announcement is in the description of the Product Safety and Metrology Bill – a name that hardly promises excitement. It says: “We need new powers to address current or future threats and hazards, and ensure a continued supply of safe goods on our market and so this Bill will enable us to make the sovereign choice to mirror or diverge from updated EU rules, so that we can maintain high product safety while supporting businesses and economic growth.“

Sounds dull as ditchwater, doesn’t it? But let me explain why this is instead a massive moment.

There are probably no more boring words in English than “regulatory divergence by inertia”, but it is a phrase that has been haunting British industry ever since the Brexit referendum.

What it means is that the EU changes, reforms, improves, and develops its rules and regulations all the time, but the ones in the UK are the ones we inherited when we left the EU in 2021. If the UK government does nothing to change UK regulations to keep in line with EU ones, then the two will, over time, diverge just because of the inertia of the British government.

And so, one day in the future, a British chemical company or carmaker that has been following EU regulations for decades could wake up to find that its products, components, and finished goods were unsaleable in the rest of Europe, because they no longer complied with EU rules and were therefore illegal.

This new law could change all that. After years of Brexiteer posturing from the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg on the need to break every link with the EU, to destroy every last remnant of its laws in the UK and diverge purely so we can cut off our noses to spite our own faces, the grown-ups have entered the room.

So now the UK can diverge from EU rules when it is sensible and economically advantageous to do so, but will “mirror” EU regulations when it makes sense. Be in no doubt that British industry is certain that it will make sense the vast majority of the time.

The Brexiteers will scream betrayal when they spot this. Boris Johnson has already been chuntering on about Labour selling the UK into “serfdom” of the EU. But this is the first real sign that his days are over, and the government will now act to ameliorate the appalling damage his Brexit has done.

It is not sexy, but after eight years of chaos and incompetence, it is the very sensible, responsible, grown-up and intelligent thing to do.