We should all be grateful to Brussels for showing us, yet again, why we are right to be leaving the European Union, an entity now irrevocably set on a course of long-term decline.

There have always been two tendencies at work in the EU: one pro-competition, pro-market and pro-individual freedom; the other collectivist, centralising and madly interventionist. The latter faction won, spectacularly so.

The EU’s proposed trade deal with America is dead, demolishing the argument that remaining in the EU would have been the best way for Britain to deliver global free trade; and now the European Commission is waging war on tax competition. Forget about the technicalities of the Commission’s allegations against Apple and Ireland: the intent is to preserve the high-tax, high-spending social democratic model, and that means crushing those smaller, weaker nations with the temerity to seek to make themselves more attractive to potential job-creators.

As the EU shrinks after Brexit and globalisation proceeds apace, this is the economic equivalent of a new Maginot line, a doomed attempt at bucking international competition.

But its ineffectiveness at propping up a discredited model ought to be the least of Europe’s worries. By retroactively changing the rules, it has introduced immense uncertainty into corporate decision-making, and not just for American firms. Many other investors are realising they could be next, they too could suddenly be landed with an entirely unpredictable, postdated tax bill. Contracts between companies and nations are being reopened; promises torn up, not by those who made them but by an unelected, unstoppable bureaucracy.

Inevitably, Brexit implies temporary uncertainty, rattling the nerves of many big firms (consumers, by contrast, are pretty upbeat). The good news for UK Plc is that what little fleeting advantage the EU had gained as a result has now vanished. If Britain gets its act together, our kind of uncertainty – rebooting our society, politics and economics – will soon be seen as the good sort, while Europe’s will be understood as purely negative. How many City firms would, under such circumstances, still mull relocating anything more than a trivial number of their staff to Ireland or Luxembourg? At some point, the penny will also drop that France, Italy and Spain all exhibit high and rising geopolitical risk.

David Fuller's view

Remember David Cameron?  He held the Brexit referendum at an early date – June 23^rd, because he feared the EU’s refugee crisis would worsen over the summer.  That was not a difficult forecast and he was right.  Moreover, I cannot think of anything that has happened in the EU since June 23^rd which would not have hurt the Remain cause.  Most significantly, the EU’s retroactive tax on Apple this week will hurt Ireland far more than the successful company currently run by Tim Cook.  If the referendum had been scheduled for tomorrow or anytime thereafter, I think the Leave majority would have been significantly larger.  

The Project Fear prediction in the event of a Leave victor have obviously not been realised.  The UK economy’s performance following the initial shock is reassuring, helped by new PM Theresa May’s steady hand, plus a competitive exchange rate and the ‘can-do’ spirit which received an additional boost from Britain’s strong performance in the Olympics. 

However, we are still in the EU and have yet to invoke Article 50.  The next danger period, albeit only temporarily so, will be immediately following a full-Brexit from the EU.  That is the only way the UK can regain its full sovereignty in 2017.  Some will regard this as a leap in the dark.  There will be uncertainties concerning the speed with which we can commence new trade relationships with countries from the USA to China, India and many more including former Commonwealth nations, plus our neighbours in Europe. Those are exciting prospects, well worth the risk but it may not be a seamless transition.   

Nevertheless, only full-Brexit will regain this nation’s sovereignty, to set our own laws, adjust our own taxes, trade on an international basis, control immigration to this country in our national interest, and fish in our own waters.  Those are the rights of an independent nation, which we will be once again, following full-Brexit.  While we remain in the EU, we do not have the independence which this nation has fought to preserve over centuries.  

Here is a PDF of Allister Heath's article.