Great Brexit wins

8 years on from the Brexit vote let us celebrate the great Brexit wins.

By far and away the most important is we are now free to make our own decisions through elections and Parliament. The fact that so far governments have made little use of this cannot take away from the great liberation that comes from knowing we can now if we wish.

It is a great win that the EU is busily borrowing an extra Euro 800 billion and none of that now will add to our debt pile. Our share would have proved very costly.

It is a great win that thousands of new laws, regulations and decisions have been made since we left and none of those apply to us. The EU for example will not be able to receive the latest Apple technology on Apple devices  owing to their regulations.

It is a great win that the UK has now become the world’s second largest exporter of services, and services are the biggest part of our trade. The new and rolled over trade Agreements we are signing have chapters allowing greater freedom of trade in services which the EU used to ignore in its trade agreements for us.

It is a win that VAT has been taken off green products and off female hygiene products. We had to impose it on them under EU law.

We no longer have to have open borders with the continent. The government failure to control legal migration in recent years was an unwise UK choice, which is now being corrected with tighter restrictions on the issue of visas. We can now set a fairer policy that has the same conditions for people from the rest of the world and from the EU.

After a too generous deal on exit the UK is now saving its large annual contributions to the EU budget. As the EU budget continues to climb so our savings mount. The NHS is getting far more than an extra £350 m a week as set out on the side of the campaign  bus.

We have removed tariffs from 20% of our imported product lines completely on top of the 27% that were EU tariff free, making things cheaper for customers.

We have joined the large and fast growing Trans Pacific Partnership which the EU has not joined.

We are planning new laws to improve animal welfare and limit the transport of live animals which we could not do in the EU

We have increased our fish quotas for our domestic  industry and need to restore more at the end of the transition period.

We have introduced more Freeports with more relaxations of trade rules than the EU would allow, with a more generous package to promote their growth.