Five years on from Brexit and support for our departure from the European Union is low. While our economic woes have much more to do with the vast government expenditure in response to the Covid pandemic and surge in gas prices, it is unsurprising that many Britons feel let down by the promise of a brighter future outside the EU.
But Brexit was – and still very much should be – an opportunity to do things differently. And nowhere is this more true than the environment – love for which unites our whole country.
Freed from the shackles of the EU, the last government made a great start in using our Brexit freedoms to protect the environment. The ruinous Common Agricultural Policy, which harmed nature across so much of our countryside, is on the way out, now replaced by a system that rewards nature-friendly farmers. Marine life in British waters can no longer be so readily exploited by foreign vessels, following a ban on destructive bottom trawling in key protected areas. And tariffs on over 100 environmental goods have been eliminated, helping consumers afford to go green. None of this would have been possible inside the European Union.
But the Conservatives didn’t go far enough to overhaul regulations, and what progress was achieved is now under threat. Labour’s moves to cosy up to the EU and forge a closer relationship may look benign, but they pose a real risk not only to the UK’s sovereignty, but also to our efforts to protect the environment.
Keir Starmer is gunning for a new defence agreement with Brussels. Yet while greater cooperation in this area is clearly in the EU’s interests too, we can be sure that they will take the opportunity to demand concessions in return.
Access to our fishing waters has been a longstanding demand from the EU. We must not cave to that demand, not least given the steps taken by the last Conservative government to safeguard our marine environment from exploitation. Selectively banning bottom trawling has infuriated French fishing interests, and our closure of sandeel fisheries is already in formal arbitration given the impact it has on Danish vessels.
Back on dry land, the EU has taken a typically heavy-handed approach to regulating gene editing, which could be revolutionary for growing more heat resilient crops or those which do not rely on harmful chemicals. Since Brexit, the UK has taken a more sensible approach, liberalising the rules for the benefit of farmers and the environment alike. We should be world leaders in innovating in this area. But the Government’s plans for a new agri-food deal with the EU could see us having to follow European rules on areas like gene editing in return for smoother trade, throwing this progress into doubt. Even if the EU accepts the changes we’ve already made, it may well insist on ‘dynamic alignment’, which would prevent us from going further without its say-so.
Also in doubt is our ability to significantly ramp up tree planting. The Conservative government was looking to include woodland creation in the UK’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), a move which would create significant and much needed incentives for tree planting, without costing the taxpayer money. But this could soon be rendered impossible if the Prime Minister gets his way and links the UK’s ETS to the EU’s, meaning we would have to ask permission from Brussels to expand our ETS in this way.
There is so much more that ministers could and should be doing to make use of our post-Brexit freedoms. Bottom trawling should be banned throughout British waters, not just in a few selective areas; regulations on novel foods like lab-grown meat and on genetic technologies should be streamlined; and EU-derived rules that inhibit our ability to both build vital infrastructure and restore nature should be radically reformed.
But as long as Labour treat Brexit as a problem to be managed rather than a demand for change, we will fail to seize these opportunities. The environment may not be front and centre of negotiations with the EU, but the Government must make sure that it is not used as a bargaining chip to win concessions elsewhere. Instead, we should be looking at how we can use our sovereignty to protect and enhance the world around us, free from the burdensome strictures imposed from Brussels.
The real failure of Brexit is not the decision to leave the EU, but the inability to properly exploit it. It is high time that politicians of all parties look at how we can build on the promise of Brexit and heal the divisions it laid bare. The defence of the natural world is something that the whole country can get behind – there is no better place to start.
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