The latest complaint about Brexit and the European Union appears to be about musicians and the like being able to tour Europe. We do indeed sympathise:

Actors, musicians and comedians have reacted with alarm to provisions in the Brexit trade deal that will prevent British performers moving around many European countries without a work permit.

Leaders of the culture sector fear the clauses will severely curtail the ability of performers to go on tour in Europe, and will hamper the recovery of the arts after the devastating impact of the pandemic.

The clauses in the deal will affect tens of thousands of people in the UK’s creative industries, including film-makers, technicians and models as well as performers.

We’re entirely in favour of people being able to move to work, to tour.

However, we’d still like to point out something we regard as pretty important. So, there are difficult bureaucratic rules that must be followed now that the UK is fully out of the EU.

Musicians and other performers requiring equipment face the added burden of having to fill out a carnet, a passport for goods that involves paying a deposit on the gear involved.

….

He also pointed out that from January musicians face the added risk of having their instruments confiscated if they contain rare wood or ivory and don’t have the correct paper.

Our point being that all of these rules have, all along, applied to those from outside the EU who wish to tour inside it.

That is, the EU is not some delight of a free trade area, or not only. It’s an area with very high barriers to the people outside it however lax the impositions inside it. It is, in fact, a zollverein, not a free trade area. We are now able to see the frustrations and barriers that the 160-ish countries out there not members of the EU have in trying to offer us their fine goods and services. That is, every complaint about how difficult it is now to export from the UK into the remnant-EU is a reminder of what we’ve been missing all these years from all those places outside it.

The more people complain about the new situation the stronger the argument for actual free trade is. Every mutter about how difficult it is to export British beef, or banking services, or musicians, should remind us of how difficult it has been for us to import Argentinian beef, or Antiguan banking, or American musicians. Perhaps we don’t actually want all of those but the edifice of bureaucracy which denies them to us is being brought home, no?

Certainly, we’d have rather more respect for them if those now complaining had also been complaining before.