Make no mistake… Britain will be stronger without the EU after Brexit

WHAT wimps we’re becoming.

Listen to the way our MPs fret and whine about the coalition talks in Germany. You’d think our future as a nation depended on how many ministries are offered to the German liberals.

We are the sixth biggest economy in the world, for Heaven’s sake, one of five permanent seat-holders on the UN Security Council, and the fourth military power on the planet. Yet we’re working ourselves into a state about someone else’s election result.

It’s as if 44 years in the EU have made us incapable of independent action. As if our sovereign muscles, long unused, have melted away. As if we have truly become a European province, dependent on decisions made in Berlin.

For what it’s worth, I hope Angela Merkel stays in power. I wish Germany well, and she is a competent leader.

The last thing we should want is political chaos in a friendly country that is our second biggest trading partner.

But wishing Germany well is not the same as believing that our future will be decided there.

Maybe, as some pundits say, Angela Merkel’s distraction makes a Brexit deal less likely, because she has less time to focus on the talks. Or maybe, as others argue, her weakness means we can be tougher.

In reality, it makes little difference to our long-term success.

We are confusing ends and means. Leaving the EU is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. The end is a freer, wealthier and more democratic Britain.

How do we make a success of Brexit? By using the powers we reclaim wisely.

We should devolve more decisions to local councils, cut taxes, reduce regulations, open our markets.

If we do these things, we will prosper, and if we don’t, we won’t.

I understand why so many of our politicians and officials are focused on the short term.

Brexit was a huge shock to our civil servants in particular, almost none of whom saw it coming. They are obsessed with getting a good deal. But to repeat, the deal is not the end. It is only the beginning.

Some perspective. Yesterday it was announced that the European Medicines Agency was relocating from London to Amsterdam.

Cue a lot of moaning about the 900 jobs that will go with it — what Vince Cable ludicrously called the “jobs Brexodus”.

Yet, since the referendum, we have created 300,000 private-sector jobs.

Oddly, Vince never mentions them.

Some more perspective. Earlier this month the World Bank published a paper looking at what would happen if we got no deal with the EU, and dealt with the other 27 as a member of the World Trade Organisation.
It found that, in these circumstances — the worst-case scenario — our trade with the EU would fall by two per cent.

Exports to the EU account for 12.6 per cent of our GDP, making a maximum overall loss of a quarter of one per cent of our economy.

While every pound counts, it would be extraordinary if we couldn’t make up the difference many times over through better regulations and freer trade with more distant continents.

We keep missing the big picture. Obsessed with the extraction pro-cess, we are not having the debates that really matter: How to raise productivity, how to be more attractive to investors, how to simplify our taxes, how to cut spending, how to remove barriers to imports.

Frankly, these things matter a lot more than whether we pay £20billion or £40billion to settle our accounts.

Our aim should be to get a mutually advantageous deal with our 27 allies, one that benefits them as well as us.

We should approach every issue — the financial settlement, the Irish border, security co-operation, citizenship rights — in that spirit.

But we should never forget that our objective is to become an open, global economy.

If the EU won’t or can’t negotiate a mutually advantageous deal, we need to get on with the domestic reforms that will make us the most competitive economy in the region.

Either way, German coalition talks are for Germans. We should wish them luck and stop obsessing about them.

The days when we and they were fellow citizens, voting in common elections and obeying shared laws, will soon be over.

We are becoming an independent country again. It’s high time we acted like one.

• Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP and author of What Next: How to Get the Best from Brexit.