Jacob Rees-Mogg accuses PM of betraying Brexit and turning UK into ‘mini EU’ | Politics | News | EUROtoday

Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has accused the Government of squandering the advantages of Brexit with plans for brand spanking new border checks, which can undermine free commerce alternatives with the remainder of the world.

Speaking on GB News final night time, Sir Jacob stated there’s “no doubt” that Brexit was the fitting choice for the UK economic system, however new commerce boundaries being erected by the federal government are undermining the potential advantages.

According to Sir Jacob, Rishi Sunak is now making an attempt to “make the United Kingdom a mini European Union”, by saying new fees on consignments of EU plant and animal merchandise.

The MP and GB News presenter defined: “The Government has announced that consignments of EU plant and animal products will face charges of up to 145 pounds from the end of April, and trade groups have understandably reacted with horror.

“Instead of removing checks with other safe countries, it’s been decided that the over-regulated EU is dangerous.

“And the particular problem with these checks is that they disproportionately affect small and medium-sized businesses.

“They won’t have a big effect on larger companies who can afford the border costs, but small and medium-sized firms with smaller consignments will be forced either to stop the imports or pass the cost on to consumers.”

Sir Jacob argued that these claiming the brand new charges are a necessity of Brexit are mendacity, pointing to a time when he was nonetheless in Government when the Department for Food and Agriculture needed to impose the identical checks however had been blocked by him, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Suella Braverman.

He now says that the then-Government’s choice to dam the costs has now emerged as merely a delay.

Sir Jacob says it “would be more sensible to abandon them altogether”, pointing to a forthcoming change to digital border applied sciences coming later this yr, which “should be an opportunity to recuse friction on all our trade from safe countries, not just the EU”.

In a remaining rallying cry, he warned: “Free trade benefits the consumer by cutting prices. This type of protectionism simply damages the economy and makes us all poorer.”

While warning in regards to the forthcoming protectionist commerce fees on new items from the EU, Sir Jacob did level to quite a lot of free commerce victories secured since Brexit.

He stated: “The whole point of Brexit as I said many times during the 2016 campaign was to free ourselves from the protectionist racket, that is the European Union, the EU prohibit its members from negotiating its own trade deals. For years. This closed us off from the likes of Australia, Canada, Japan, and even the United States.

“Since leaving the EU, we have successfully negotiated a free trade agreement with Australia and New Zealand and Japan. We’re also in discussions with India and the Gulf Cooperation Council for FTAs and improvements with Canada and Mexico, Switzerland and Israel, none of which would have been possible from within the EU.

“We’ve also joined the Trans Pacific Partnership, and that’s now passed into law this trading bloc is projected to make up significantly more of global GDP than the EU over the coming decades.

“It’s clear that the future of global trade and economic growth does not lie with the EU, but rather with the Anglosphere, and East Asia.”