Tories demand UK becomes landlocked

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The issue with the Northern Ireland Protocol is, and has been from the outset, that two areas with different regulatory and customs regimes need to have a border between them to control smuggling and tax and customs evasion. It’s a simple enough concept, although one which the Brexiteers are still struggling to understand, largely because many of them actually favour tax evasion and smuggling. Buccaneering, aka piracy, is what they’ve openly admitted that they want.

But the issue doesn’t just apply to the question of Northern Ireland – it also applies to so-called freeports. Logically, there has to be a customs border between any freeport and its immediate hinterland because two different customs regimes apply; without controls over what passes across that border, goods imported tariff-free into a freeport can simply end up in the rest of the UK, potentially undercutting legitimately imported goods. The proposal from a group of Tories that the whole coastline of the UK should become a freeport thus effectively amounts to a demand that the rest of the UK should become an entirely landlocked customs area. The fact that they are proposing, effectively, not to police the border doesn’t mean it isn’t there, just that crimes such as tax evasion, money laundering, and smuggling become easier to commit. If one of the problems with the border between the Republic and the North is its length and the number of crossing points, just imagine the consequences of a border which maps the entire UK coastline, but a few miles inland.

There is certainly evidence that establishing a freeport promotes the development of industry and jobs within its area, but there is no hard evidence to suggest that that economic activity is extra, rather than merely relocated. From the perspective of a capitalist, who wouldn’t prefer to operate in an area where they pay less tax and are subject to fewer regulatory restraints? Whether it actually benefits the economy as a whole, as opposed to only those who can easily relocate their businesses, is another question entirely. The evidence and experience is not good, which is why the government of the day – a Tory government – closed down the UK’s freeports in 2012. There is no obvious evidence that the current crop of Tories have learned anything from the problems of the past, and every reason to believe that it’s a get-rich-quick scheme for those prepared to play fast and loose with the rules.

There is another parallel with the Northern Ireland Protocol here, though. Those who believe that it is possible to set up separate customs regimes within a territory without policing the borders can’t understand why the EU doesn’t see things in the same light. The EU believes that borders between customs areas should be controlled; the UK government considers such controls unnecessary. That’s how they want to implement their promise that the UK outside the EU would pursue a policy of global piracy, although they preferred the rather vaguer term ‘buccaneering’. Same thing, though. One man’s criminal is another man’s ‘entrepreneur’; it’s hard to see how that gap between perspectives can ever be bridged.