I keep hearing  the falsehood that the Brexiteers have no alternative plan to the government’s White Paper. I point out we have proposed a comprehensive free trade deal, or the WTO Global UK options.

Then I am told wrongly  we have no worked out White Paper to match the government’s. We published a 108 page document entitled “The Road to Brexit” based on the all day experts seminars we held on October 16 2016 and 27 January 2017. This document set out how to send the Article 50 letter and how to handle the UK legal issues in a single Bill which became the EU Withdrawal Bill. It went on to discuss how to negotiate a free trade agreement, and how to put in place winning policies on fishing, farming, the budget, taxation, migration, borders and much else where there are gains to be had from leaving.

Some of this was summarised on this site in the form of the Minutes of the first seminar on October 3 2016.  The document is still good advice today.

One of the most deceitful arguments some Remain advocates use  is that the car industry depends on the EU for its success and would be adversely affected if we leave. They need to explain the damage membership of the EEC/EU did to it.

In 1972, our last year  as a free and independent country, the UK made 1.92 million cars. After just ten years in the EEC/EU that had crashed to just 888,000. Our membership was devastating to us, removing more than 50 % in a decade.

We have never made as many cars in any year during the whole 45 years of membership as we did the  year before we joined. Why did this happen?

Before we joined UK people mainly bought UK built cars. On joining we had to remove all tariffs and some other barriers on goods like cars where the Germans and French were more competitive. They did not remove barriers on services where we were  more competitive. When the tariffs came off more UK people chose continental cars and our industry faced savage cuts in jobs and output.

In later years we rebuilt some capacity thanks to Japanese and Indian investment, whilst losing much of the US capacity in the UK. Some manufacturers chose to switch production to cheaper EU locations in Spain and Eastern Europe.

We were told by some manufacturers that they woukd stop investing here if we failed to join the Euro. That turned out to be a lie. In recent years leading foreign carmakers have praised UK workforces and increased their investment.

The story of the car industry is a cameo of industry generally. EEC/EU membership wiped out a lot of industry in the 1970s when tariffs came off, with too few offsets given the one sided  liberalisation of trade. The UK has run a huge balance of payments deficit with the EU for most of our membership as a result.

Were the EU to insist on WTO tariffs the extra cost of German and French cars in the UK would doubtless lead to more UK buyers buying home produced vehicles.

Some commentators see symmetry in the interventions anti and pro Brexit by successive Presidents. There is one crucial difference. President Trump is not intervening in an election or referendum, whereas President Obama deliberately tried to influence voting. Most of us think a government leader  should not try to influence an election in another democracy during an election period. As it happens, I think it was an ill judged intervention, as it added to the unreality of Project Fear and ended up helping the Leave campaign.

The other difference with Mr Trump’s intervention is his is a factual statement. Were the UK to accept the White Paper position it would  be much more difficult to agree a Free Trade Agreement with a non EU country. President Obama, on the other hand, was saying he would seek to delay a UK free trade agreement which would otherwise have been possible.  The Trump Administration would like to do a free trade deal with us, but can only do so if we leave the EU, single market, customs union and surrogates for them.

The White Paper proposes the UK staying in much of the current EU. White is the colour of the flag of surrender. Much of this White Paper sacrifices the bold idea we voted for, that we wish to  be a free and independent country again.  It wants us to stick with the European Chemicals Agency, European Aviation Safety Agency and the European Medicines Agency, with Europol and Eurojust, with a joint customs area, continued co-operation on energy and transport, minimum EU regulatory standards in many areas, joint military development and an EU data regime. We offer to pay for all these things!

No, we voted to leave. Leave means leave. It means doing these things for ourselves, not paying the EU to do them and accepting EU rules and controls. The legal format of forcing us into an Association Agreement which bind us to all this through a Treaty is the worst of all possible worlds. We voted to be free, not to  be bound in in some new way. The government says we would be able to diverge if we wished, and there would be independent arbitration. If we sign a Treaty we will be told that the people and Parliament are bound by it, and our freedoms will  be circumscribed or lost again. We did not vote to come out of one Treaty only to sign up to a watered down version of it instead.

Lets take the case of medicines. The UK has a strong position in the pharma industry, leading research universities in the field, and many experts. We should re establish our own Medicines Agency, and sell its services to third countries who would value our skills and knowledge, and would wish to be associated with our high standards. Our own Agency could be a focus of further work to expand and improve our industry, and the money spent on it will be spent in the UK, not sent to Brussels.

Or lets take the case of Aviation Safety. The UK has very high standards which we wish to preserve and a high proportion of EU air travel, given the dominance of London as an aviation hub. Again our global reach and ambition requires us to establish our own Agency and to work at a global level on high and rising standards.

The language of the government that they will end “vast annual contributions to the EU budget” is not good enough. We voted to stop paying any money to the EU, not just to the EU budget. Offering lots of smaller sums to a range of policies and Agencies, recreates our subservience to the EU and continues the strain on our balance of payments. Where there is regulatory work to be done, lets do it at home with UK experts and administrators.

Why do large parts of the UK establishment so despise us that they do not want us to lead or to adventure for ourselves? Why do they so dislike freedom? Do they really believe the best we can do is to be rule takers, meekly paying the continent danegeld?

I have spent time discussing  the detail behind the three page Chequers Statement that I found wanting last week. On the eve of the White Paper, which is the longer version of the Chequers Statement, let me share with you why it has to change.

The Statement is based on the false premise that there is a border problem between Northern Ireland and the Republic which needs special arrangements on customs and trade to get round. I will explain again another day why this is untrue. It offers the EU a “common rulebook” to govern trade in goods and agricultural products. It offers a guarantee of no dilution of standards in a wide range of other policy areas. It proposes collecting EU customs dues on goods circulating in the UK destined for the EU, but does not say the EU has to collect UK customs on goods circulating on the continent destined for the UK. It says there needs to be a “Mobility” Agreement which erodes UK control of our borders and  migration.

The legal structure of the proposal is particularly worrying. The government wants to enter into a new Treaty or Treaties with the EU, creating a binding international law obligation over and above any UK Parliamentary say on these matters. The government says dispute resolution will be ultimately by an independent third party, but in practice decisions and policies of the European Court of Justice towards the common rulebook will be important and will be taken fully into account should the matter reach independent arbitration. Parliament will doubtless be told should we sign such a Treaty that in practice we have to follow its spirit as well as its letter.

The so called common rulebook is not a common rulebook. It is the EU’s rulebook. That is why the ECJ will be important, as they define the rulebook along with the other institutions of the EU. The UK will have to accept all old and new laws that comprise the rulebook. It is true Parliament would have the right not to enact a new law, but there will be consequences with the EU allowed to impose trade penalties. It is also unclear how the Treaty obligation would sit with Parliamentary authority. I suspect Parliament would be told where it wanted to deviate from the EU rulebook both that there will be unpleasant consequences and that it breached the Treaty obligation.

The idea behind the dual customs system is that the UK can impose its own tariffs on goods for its market that are not necessarily the same as EU ones. This creates a complex set of arrangements, where the UK  not only collects EU duties, but has to trace and follow any good coming into the UK to make sure it does move into the EU. A Free Trade deal would be a much better way of capturing benefits, with the preservation of tariff free UK/EU trade.

The Mobility framework has still to be defined,  but it is likely the EU will push to recreate something like  freedom of movement. I presume the UK government will resist this, but they would also need to be very precise and limited with concessions to avoid losing the right to design and implement our own migration policy.