Just found out that chemical regulation seems to have ruled out "the Norway option".I'd assumed that with the Great Repeal Bill, we'd somehow write those EU regulations into our national law and continue to work as a de facto member of EU regulatory bodies (since our regulatory body is pretty huge and influential).
Implementing our own regulations would be massively costly and hugely damaging. Chemicals are a globalised market and it's already a lot of hassle to get stuff properly authorised in the different EU member states even when they are ostensibly all using a harmonised system of uniform principles. No one is going to want to do everything again for a parallel UK system.
Our Health and Safety Executive seems to think they will have to write their own policy ("with hookers and blackjack" I expect) but hasn't got a clue how to do this.
Since all EU quango, commission and national regulators work in English and there is already a lot of fear about the HSE/DEFRA closing/relocating some of their departments located in expensive buildings, I suspect we'll see a lot of our experts end up in Germany, France, Holland, Finland or Italy (where the other major EU regulatory bodies are located).
Very sad, considering that the UK had a virtuous circle where our high EU influence meant we got many of the EU's "best and brightest" to move here, thus increasing our influence.
The (admittedly small) company I work for now has zero non-UK nationals in its UK offices. Every one of them has left and all the EU new hires have gone to other EU offices.
But at least we'll be able to make our own rules about how much fruit is allowed in jam.
...except we won't because apparently we intend on trading it with the EU so it'll be high-fruit English fruit spread or whatever those EU bureaucrats insist on calling it.
...except we will, because that was a fake "blame the EU" story and jam was always defined by the UK law on jam, which was mutually recognised in the EU; and which Vince Cable amended to satisfy the middle-class artisan jam lobby (well, who else votes Lib-Dem these days).
...except we won't because hard Brexit means no automatic mutual recognition, so we'll have to get our jams checked by customs against the relevant and varied laws amongst the EU 27.
...except fuck it, that's way too complex so let the French eat their Bonne Maman instead.
