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Ed Davey on Kuenssberg: EU/UK customs union would do more for economy than anything Government is doing

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 2nd February 2025 - 3:10 pm

Ed Davey had his first Sunday morning outing on the media of 2025 with an interview on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

As we’ve hit half a decade since the awful reality of Brexit, the conversation was mostly about our desire to see a UK/EU Customs Union to get our economy growing again. He said:

What I am arguing is if we can have a UK EU Customs Union we can tear down the trade barriers that the Conservatives put up for our exporters and get that growth far more quickly than anything Rachel Reeves and Labour are saying at the moment

Ed did well to get that point across. If I had to nit-pick, I’d have given a few examples of how our exporters have been done over by the crappy deal we have at the minute. I’d have mentioned the £4 billion that Brexit has taken out of our economy and how getting into a customs union could get at least some of that back and help jobs and growth here.

He could also have highlighted the polls which suggest that only a third of people think that Brexit has been a success. Clearly the public know fine that they have been completely done over and are open now to attempts to repair the damage.

I might also have dropped the spectre of Donald Trump inspired economic warfare in as well and how we and the EU would be in much better shape to deal with that if we worked together. I mean, we have a US administration whose members seem to want to make things as difficult as possible for our Government to achieve even its own modest aims to boost their political allies on the extreme right wing.

I’ve summarised the interview below. What do you think?