But, but, we must have common standards to have free trade!

A common enough insistence these days. We must all accord to EU standards in order to be able to have free trade with the EU. Or, vice versa, in order to have EU goods come here we must make sure that our standards are the same as their.

What amuses is that this insistence is being applied to the car industry. Yet cars used in the UK are right hand drive, those on the Continent left hand drive. European factories do make RHD cars for us to drive, British do make LHD for them.

So the insistence becomes that we must have common standards for an industry which actually builds to entirely different designs in the first place. In order to enable the trade of those things built to those entirely different designs we must all agree upon the one single design that is.

Someone isn’t thinking logically here and we’re absolutely certain that it’s not us in error.

That other people build to different standards is something that exporters deal with routinely. As the car industry proves. Therefore we do not require commonality of standards in order to be able to have trade. QED.