Brexit Unbound: Opportunities still ahea

Rory Broomfield reflects on his work with Iain Murray in their book Cutting the Gordion Knot in his article for Britain Unbound.

Prior to 2016, I had co-authored a book, Cutting the Gordian Knot with Iain Murray, Vice-President of the US think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute. It was the runner up in the Institute of Economic Affairs’ Brexit Prize, ran in 2014, and highlighted how the UK government, if the UK were ever to start the process to leave the EU, could do it. The paper, written whilst I was Director of The Freedom Association, also outlined the opportunities that the UK could implement to become more prosperous…[t]his includes the reduction of regulation.

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In Cutting the Gordian Knot, Iain and I argued that a Royal Commission on Regulatory Reduction aimed at reducing the burden of EU-imposed regulations and “gold-plated” regulations inspired by the EU would be beneficial. In essence, we partially got this with the introduction of Retained EU Law (REUL), and subsequent reviews, under the previous government. The figure, as quoted by the Department of Trade, was initially 2,417 but subsequently rose to 6,925 individual pieces of law across 400 unique policy areas. Given that in 2005, over 20 years ago, the costs of the EU on the UK was estimated by Minford, Mahambare and Nowell to be between roughly 11% and 35% of GDP, even the lower estimate would be over £11,500 per household in the UK today. Indeed, in 2014, Iain Murray and I wrote that the burden of the EU on households – in 2014 amounting to the equivalent of approximately £5,000 per household, assuming the lower end of Minford et al’s estimates – should be considered excessive.

Read the full article at Britain Unbound.