Forget the 4 freedoms -- follow the money

The Irish border issue is still being weaponised,and the Irish Republic (popn. 4m) still have a veto, it seems, and their First Minister can even cheerfully speak on behalf of the whole EU.. There is a leak that May will propose a compromise, that the whole of the UK stays in a temporary customs union, but the issue is still whether the UK will be able to make new trade deals. Perhaps that has been the issue all along. As the Graun reports it:

Varadkar poured cold water on the UK’s proposals. The EU could not accept a situation, he said, where British companies had access to European markets but were able to outcompete European rivals by lowering labour, product or health and safety standards. “To do free trade you have to do fair trade as well,” Varadkar said in a nod to deep concerns on this issue that have been raised by France, the Netherlands and other member states.

At last, after all the hurt talk about divorce, the lofty refusals to compromise on the four freedoms and the desire to punish the UK, we are talking turkey, if not chlorinated chicken. Fair trade is rather an underspecified goal for the EC. It wants to protect its members from competition. Competition is feared and loathed as only possible by lowering standards (bypassing all the other protective red tape), and not, say by greater efficiency or technological innovation.

The customers in the EU are being treated as pretty dim too. They are not forced to eat chlorinated chicken, but the old neo-classical model of Economic Man says otherwise, of course, that consumer behaviour is based only on price. That model also underpins the four freedoms. Have the Remainers realized they are also useful idiots for neo-liberalism?