What was the Point? UK Government Abandons Plan to Get Rid of EU Laws

An EU flag, flown by anti-Conservative and anti-Brexit activists, flaps in wind, in front
JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images
Peter Caddle

Britain’s government has reportedly abandoned plans to get rid of around 4,000 EU laws by the end of this year.

The UK’s Conservative Party government has allegedly abandoned plans to scrap a large number of EU laws this year, a report on Sunday has indicated.

If true, it would be the government’s latest post-Brexit failing, with many of the promised benefits of leaving the EU — such as better border control — completely failing to materialise as ministers fail to take advantage of the situation.

According to a report by The Observer, the Retained EU Law Bill — sometimes referred to as the Brexit bonfire plan — aimed to see around 4,000 laws retained by the UK post-Brexit to be scrapped by the end of the year, with authorities given the opportunity to save any they believe were needed in the near future.

However, the bill found itself on the wrong side of a palace coup, being championed by former Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, who was swiftly removed from office within a matter of months due to the deposition of ex-PM Liz Truss.

Now, the government is said to have put the bill on indefinite hold amid resistance from mostly pro-EU politicians, with authorities refusing to set a date for the report stage of the bill, despite it passing in the House of Commons.

Such a retreat has been met positively by various elements within the British parliament, with many seeing it as the latest defeat for the more right-leaning elements within the Conservatives.

“The penny has dropped with No 10,” one member of the House of Lords anonymously said. “There is a recognition that unless they make concessions they are in ‘baby out with the bathwater’ territory. They will be causing legal chaos on many fronts for the sake of pleasing Rees-Mogg and the Tory right.”

In response to the report, a spokesman for the government rejected any claim that the government was looking to abandon the planned bonfire of EU laws, saying that they are “fully committed” to seeing the bill made into law.

However, they reportedly failed to dispute the idea that the planned legislation had been delayed indefinitely, despite being described as warranted to “further seize the opportunities of Brexit”.

This is not exactly surprising considering the Conservative Party’s track record, with repeated administrations failing to actually pursue desired policies that resulted in the public voting Brexit in the first place.

Perhaps the most obvious of these examples is that of border control, with many Brexiteers lauding the country’s decision to leave the EU as an opportunity to finally crack down on mass immigration and get the country back in order.

Three years after the UK officially left the bloc, and the exact opposite has happened. Britain is once again seeing record immigration from abroad, with most new arrivals coming from outside Europe.

To make matters worse, the country is also facing down a crisis of tens of thousands of illegal boat migrants crossing the English Channel, with all efforts to stem the flow failing miserably due to a combination of state ineptitude and non-EU European law.

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