UK would be so much better off without EU tariffs of 20%

[lljkk]

On food, clothing & footwear, says the co-chairman of Leave means Leave (Radio 5 live tonight, 6:20pm). By going to WTO rules on 1 April 2019 (John Longworth continued). He said 20% off b/c no external tariffs that EU imposes on food, clothing, footwear.

So, maybe the Leavers can explain to me ... Won't that make British-grown food suddenly 20% more expensive than imports? How exactly will a flood of cheap imported food help British farmers stay financially viable?

(I presume there is too little British manufactured clothing & footwear to worry about their impacts, at least.)

I would like to understand "WTO rules" much better, too. I got impression from MN that there is no such thing as "WTO rules". "WTO rules" for each member state have to be negotiated painfully and it can take decades , and can only be agreed with consent of all other WTO members (is that because negotiating with EU27 is sissy work, so instead Leavers want to try to charm 100+ world countries at once?).

Also, once we are in WTO, UK must agree to WTO arbitration. Why was European court of justice too remote a court that didn't decide enough in UK favour but WTO arbitration is acceptable and will make fairer decisions... can someone explain?

Let’s just leave them to their supposed inability to function (according to lurking).

which arises from a lack of education, investment and training, by the way.

I'm puzzled by arguments that almost simultaneously invoke "the EU is too protectionist" (applying import tariffs to goods imported from the rest of the world) and "the EU undermines our own ability to be protectionist" (we would do better if we were to grow our own food, produce our own goods, rather than import from the EU). Seen often on these threads.

Born, growing our own has nothing to do with being 'protectionist'.
In the past we eat mostly our own home grown produce. But now we import needlessly enormous amounts of food from all over the EU. We do this because we treat the whole of the EU like one big country and have loads of trucks coming and going back and forth over the channel clocking up a larger and larger carbon footprint.
There is no need to do it and it needs looking at.

The west should be able to help developing countries, create renewable energy, environmentally friendly work places and decent work conditions.

They should, but as we have seen at home, things like environmentally friendly workplaces have had to be fought for, and there are plenty of right wing Brexiters who want to make a bonfire of such regulations. So to think that they will suddenly decide to help developing countries is something I don't see happening. Indeed was it Rees-Mogg who thought that Indians managed with their standards, so why shouldn't ours be lowered to match?

When you talk about 'in the past we grew our own food', how far back are you going? We had a problem during the war years with getting sufficient food in to feed ourselves and the population has both grown considerably and aged since then.

In the past many people did indeed eat home grown produce. And suffered malnutrition because we don't grow a wide enough range of foods all year round, starvation when harvests failed and financial disaster when prices skyrocketed. Theoretically, according to some agronomists and economists - and the Campaign for Real Farming - we could feed ourselves. However it would be a restricted diet and would probably require some form of rationing/centrally controlled distribution systems to make it work. Would people countenance that?
Of course locally sourced foodstuffs are better to support local economies and to protect the environment but once again there has been absolutely nothing to stop us in the UK putting into place means to encourage this. Ironically it's one of the big German discounters, Aldi, who where I am, offer the best range of UK regionally sourced foodstuffs of all the supermarkets (Welsh butter and sausages, various cheeses including Cornish camembert, bread).

The UK stopped being self-sufficient in food back in the 19th century, when steam powered railway and ship transport opened up trade routes for perishable goods. By the time of WWII we were nowhere near self-sufficient - hence food rationing when our trade routes were severely curtailed. Currently, the UK is around 62% self-sufficient.

Technically, the UK could achieve full self-sufficiency, but this would require drastic shifts in consumption patterns away from tea / coffee / tobacco, animal products and many types of fruit and vegetables.

Those of you who were around during the 1950s may remember the extreme monotony of diets then. I admit that my mother hated cooking and that someone who enjoyed it might have been able to make meals more interesting, but there wasn't much variety in the shops, so you were limited. I recall that the daughter of the local Grocer married a Dutchman, and they introduced Edam cheese into the shop. It was a revelation that there were more types of cheese than cheshire and cheddar. This was about 1960.

Those of you who were around during the 1950s may remember the extreme monotony of diets then.

The National Loaf ?

The result of Britains top scientists talking time of from nuclear power and space research to come up with ways of making flour (still in short supply) go further.

The answer proved to be to pass a law making it illegal to sell fresh bread, and a loaf so bland and tasteless that no one would be asking for seconds.

Sounds like we'd better get used to it again.

Obviously we will still have to import food stuffs. We don't need to be self sufficient Peregrina if you read up thread I was talking about all the different fruit and veg we can now grow in this country. In the 50s we were still suffering from the effects of rationing and we certainly didn't have the varied palette we now have, we didn't go abroad and taste 'exotic' foods, there are loads of reasons we had a bland diet by today's standards which have nothing to do with home grown produce. But we really don't need to import so much.
Agriculture has come o a very long way since the 19th century and even the second world war. Production is much greater and we can grow a vast variety of fruit and veg. for much longer season than ever before.
There is so much unnecessary importing of goods that really isn't needed. That is what I'm talking about.

Production is much greater and we can grow a vast variety of fruit and veg. for much longer season than ever before.

If you have the energy ... something the UK is already struggling with.

There is so much unnecessary importing of goods that really isn't needed. That is what I'm talking about.

I do think there is quite a lot of wishful thinking in what you are talking about. Recollect that Mrs Thatcher once said that one Christmas Sunday lunch was spam, potatoes and lettuce. At which my DF immediately said that it meant her father must have bought it on the black market. Why - because winter lettuces were grown under glass and the greenhouses needed fuel to heat them. This was available to the American service men based in the area, but not for the ordinary population.

Another example - I live in the south-east and have a south facing garden. My fig tree regularly sets fruit, but the growing season is rarely long enough to obtain a good crop. Two years ago I had a decent crop, last year nothing, this year a handful of figs. No amount of people exhorting me to produce more figs will make the tree more productive. I agree, climate change might help.

If you have the energy ... something the UK is already struggling with.

And a young fit workforce, to pick the crops. Something we are also now beginning to struggle with. Yes, we could bring workers in from the Commonwealth, no doubt to be exploited as much or more as some of the East Europeans are. Is this really what we want?

Recollect that Mrs Thatcher once said that one Christmas Sunday lunch was spam, potatoes and lettuce. At which my DF immediately said that it meant her father must have bought it on the black market.

Shades of East European teachers asking kids the news theme tune (to catch those whose parents listened to West German news....)

I think Mrs Thatcher was extolling the virtues of being thrifty, not realising in the process that she had let slip that her father was a black marketeer. Which she probably hadn't thought about.

Up thread Lurking I have already talked about how berry farmers in Scotland are using bio mass to heat their poly tunnels. They grow much more in the tunnels than ever before and have a strawberry season of 6 months now for instance.
I'm not suggesting you grow more figs in your garden Peregrina!
MT's father could well have been given the produce by American service men in exchange for somethings he sold in his shop. That happened all the time. My father did a fair business buying up excess stores from the American Army in Italy and selling it to Maltese quite legitimately.

But if your argument is that we need to reduce food miles then leaving the EU is possibly the worst thing to do. John Redwood already said we can import oranges from South Africa rather than Spain, this thread is talking about importing more from Africa, sugar from the carribean, many news items are about importing food from America. All of this will increase our food miles. Sure we can try and grow more here but its naive to think we can fully support ourselves. And although it would be nice to think we would only import food and goods produced ethically I don't have much faith in that. Especially when the pound has dropped and we are broke and desperate for cheap imports.

MT's father could well have been given the produce by American service men in exchange for somethings he sold in his shop.

He might. I suspect that it was still illegal - buying up excess stores sold legitimately as the war was closing is probably quite different. This is a bit of a digression - and someone else made the point that greenhouses/polytunnels etc. require heating, and we already beginning to see problems with energy supply.

Read the thread Peregrina - Renewable, Renewables Renewables!

Green houses and poly tunnels have massively improved in their thermal properties now as well.

I'm not suggesting we buy oranges from South Africa rather than Spain but there are loads of things we really don't need to import and can grow here. Neither am I talking about us growing our own in our own gardens. I'm talking about our farmers growing the produce.

The American rations were generally rubbish and didn't feed a fighting man so it was fair game to do swaps for our produce.

Corcory, I doubt we will ever agree about Brexit, but I appreciate your contributions and they do make me think.

I have read the thread Corcory, and the conclusion I have come to is that you are trying to convince yourself. We could have been growing more produce ourselves for donkeys years, but we chose not to. Furthermore, what preparations do you see being put into place now to grow more of our own food?

Peregrina - you statement that we could have been doing this for donkey's years sounds just like Bear's previous comments! For a start we didn't need to it is easy to import anything we like from the EU. Just like Health professionals and teachers, we haven't bothered to train up our own home grown talent and have used other countries talent instead.
We have the change this whole attitude.

Technology has advanced a lot in agriculture so we can now produce much more ourselves.

I really don't understand your comment about me trying to convince myself!

We have the change this whole attitude.

I fully agree, but what evidence do you see of anyone trying to change attitudes? I don't see any lead coming from the Government. Right now a protest is going on in Westminster about cuts in Education. Do we see any real investment in Education? We have seen vanity projects like Free schools and forcing schools into becoming Academies, but precious little in the way of real debate about what we want out of education and what we are prepared to pay for it. We have seen no initiatives seeking to find answers as to why teachers are leaving in droves.

Health care - has been a tinkering around of the edges. In a way Mrs May wasn't wrong to raise the idea of a 'dementia tax' but again the whole position of health and its interplay with social care needs a proper examination, not being tossed out as an idea in a manifesto.

Back to food - we have been unable to feed ourselves for more than a century. It's going to take a sight more than a change in attitudes - it would almost certainly require substantial government investment. At present, as far as that is concerned, IMO it's one case where Boris Johnson's comments were apt - we can 'Go whistle' for any input.

corcory, peregrinas comment sounded like mine as we're both making the same point.

We could have addressed these issues previously but chose not to- jumping off the Brexit cliff and having no alternative but to do something now, when we have nothing in place to make the required adhjuatnehts is an incredibly reckless way of going about things.

^^ adjustments

We could for a long time have managed our food production and consumption better by intervening sensibly in markets and by encouraging people to buy fresh and buy local, and retailers to stock fresh and stock local - and by making sure that people were paid enough to afford good food. (The Milk Marketing Board was abolished in 1994 and though it had its problems a similar set up might have helped mitigate the destructive effect of supermarkets on the price of milk.) But we didn't. We could have made sure that we were training sufficient doctors, nurses, associated healthcare professionals such as radiographers and podiatrists and STEM graduates in general, but we didn't. (Seen an NHS podiatrist recently? I thought not, but if you have a bad back it might be a good move). I was a sixth form tutor for years and saw many young people disappointed in their ambitions to become doctors, midwives, physios - not because they didn't get the grades or because they were not suitable, but because there were not enough places. So yes, I agree we need to do all this but it should have been done years ago (when we could well afford to), not as the result of a potentially economically damaging Brexit.