Forget EU red tape – No 10 is perfectly capable of creating its own

The Treasury’s new wine duty is not enough to make up for the billions UK trade has lost since bowing out of the EU. The new restrictions it will come with is enough to render it all pointless, writes James Moore

Red wine is about to get smashed by some very British bureaucracy (Getty)

Businesses! Is the lingering effect of the pandemic getting you down? Are you tearing your hair out over the hundreds of forms you have to fill in each time you try to fulfil an order for a customer across the English Channel ? Well cheer up!

Big dog BoJo is going to slash the £1bn worth of EU red tape he claims is still on the UK statute books. And he’s going to get it done really, really quickly!

I do sometimes wonder if the prime minister carries an EpiPen to help him deal with his fact allergy, and if Carrie had to use it on him when the Office for Budgetary Responsibility released its trade data in October.

Oh Christ, Carrie, I’m struggling to breathe with this in front of me, stick the needle in quick. Ahhh, that feels better. Sling the document in the corner with last night’s security briefing from MI5, would you darling? Now, who’s coming to tonight’s rave?

Here’s why that jab might have been needed. The independent Office for Budgetary Responsibility, set up by a previous Tory government remember, originally said that total UK trade would be 15 per cent lower than had we stayed in the EU, driving a 4 per cent reduction in productivity.

Now obviously, Covid hit trade full stop. But when the OBR decided to look at the impact of Johnson’s Trade & (lack of) Cooperation Agreement with the EU, it found that while exports to the rest of the world had recovered to 7 per cent below their pre pandemic peak in August, the same figure for the EU, still by far the UK’s biggest market, was 15 per cent under water.

The OBR concluded that, based on the data it had seen, its initial estimate was good.

Now, if we go back to 2015, before the EU referendum was held, and no one had heard of Covid, UK exports to the EU totalled £223bn. I’m using that number there because it’s “clean”.

Fifteen per cent of that is £33.5bn lost by UK businesses, which is an awful lot more than the £1bn the UK government is planning to save. As for the new trade deals, which ones are supposed to make up the lost business? The best way to describe the “benefits” of the ones signed so far is a big fat “meh”. Some projections actually have the UK losing out as a result of the one signed with New Zealand. Just ask the your nearest farmer what they think about that one.

This supposed red tape cutting exercise isn’t really aimed at business at all. It’s just more rotting red meat for right wing Tory MPs to chomp on

I realise there’s a back-of-the-envelope quality to my calculation above – the actual losses will today be bigger still – but it’s there as an illustration. It’s just one figure among many attempting to quantify the staggering losses Britain has sustained from Johnson’s signature policy, and that’s before we come to the subject of the pain meted out to individuals through the end of benefits such as free mobile phone roaming, easy travel around the continent, the right to live and work there, health coverage while doing that etc.

But here’s the real killer. Forget EU red tape. The British government is perfectly capable of coming up with its own. A good example of this would be the new alcohol duty regime the Treasury is consulting on.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has said it will be reduced on sparkling wine, draught beer and cider, substantial quantities of which are locally produced.

The Wine & Spirit Trade Association (WSTA) says that the flip side of this is that 80 per cent of white wines will face a duty increase under the plans, with 95 per cent of red wines in the same leaky boat.

But that’s just the start of it. Instead of just three rates of duty, applied to still, sparking and fortified wine, there could be as many as 13, linked to alcohol content, making for an administrative nightmare for the wine sellers dealing with it. The WTSA puts the extra costs at £250m.

That, right there, racks up to a quarter of what Johnson’s government claims it can save. Presumably if the tape is coloured red, white and blue, rather than just red, that makes it ok?

Of course this big supposed red tape cutting exercise isn’t really aimed at business at all. It’s just more rotting red meat for right wing Tory MPs to chomp on in the hopes that they’ll be willing to give Johnson until, what, the local elections in May to stay in post?

It’s desperate stuff.

Those MPs will need to go easy on the red wine to accompany their dodgy roast beef. That’s if they can find a wine seller that hasn’t gone pop to supply it.