Rishi Sunak’s Brexit ‘wins’ on EU divergence are symbolic rather than substantive, a new report reveals

Rishi Sunak’s so-called Brexit ‘wins’ through EU divergence are symbolic rather than substantive, a new report has revealed.

The new study by UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE) has found that the government’s long-promised reforms of retained European law have put “style over substance”. It states that the government focus around these “totemic pieces of EU legislation” are likely to “have little impact in practice”. 

Even so, Rishi Sunak is expected to try and use these “symbolic” examples of divergence with the EU to attack Sir Keir Starmer come the general election campaign. Joël Reland, UKICE research associate, said: “This is the politics of style over substance. In the run up to the election, Rishi Sunak will be keen for some flagship Brexit ‘wins’ he can paste straight into his manifesto. Whether they change much in reality is of little concern to the government at this stage in the electoral cycle.”

Post-Brexit EU divergence includes working-time directive and GDPR

The think tank studied a number of pieces of legislation currently progressing through Parliament, including bills banning the exportation of live animals for fattening and slaughter and changes to the UK’s GDPR rules. 

It also looked at reforms to the EU-derived legislation on working time and bankers’ bonuses that have already been completed. UKICE found that the changes to GDPR are mostly technical while the changes to working time and animal welfare rules to a large degree update the law to reflect existing practices.

Reland explained: “The government previously expressed more ambitious plans in many of these areas. It talked about quite significant reform of EU GDPR rules and also changing working-time regulations, but what we’re actually seeing is just tweaking at the edges of the policy. It allows you to say we’ve reformed, but in practice it’s not going to affect people’s daily lives very much.”

Brexit Opportunities Unit

Boris Johnson famously set up a Brexit Opportunities Unit following his election in 2019, while Sunak literally shredded EU laws on video during his campaign to become Conservative Party leader in 2022. The reality is, according to Reland, it’s “actually really hard to amend EU legislation".

The government abandoned its plan to scrap or amend all EU laws before the end of 2023. Reland explained: “It’s almost always disruptive to business if you have different regulations in the UK compared to the EU. That means more compliance work, that means more friction when you’re moving goods or services across the border - so they’ve had to row back significantly on what was originally promised.”

The Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch told the Commons today that the government was still looking to “diverge”. She said: “If we are to seize the benefits of Brexit, we need to find that comparative advantage over the EU in our regulations, otherwise there would be no point.”

Starmer: we don't want to diverge

Despite saying he believes there’s “no case” for rejoining the EU or the single market, Starmer has said a future Labour government would not be looking to diverge from the bloc. Last September, he commented: “We don’t want to lower standards, we don’t want to rip up environmental standards, standards for people that work, food standards and all the rest of it.”

Reland believes Sunak will be looking to attack Starmer over this come election time. He said: “In order to use that line you have to demonstrate that you, as a party, don’t want to align with EU legislation, and that you’ve doing things to move away and take advantage of the ‘opportunities of Brexit’. Having some changes that you can point to is quite helpful for Sunak’s argument.”

Sunak’s official spokesman said: “We retain the ability to diverge. Of course we have already used our Brexit freedoms including getting rid of the VAT on women’s sanitary products, VAT-free installation of energy efficient materials, working on replacing alcohol duty rates. 

“Those are some examples of where we have already used those freedoms to change our approach to the EU norms. We will of course retain the ability to diverge, we would not lose that, we would retain the freedoms and powers that the British people voted for, and are already seeing the benefits of.”

Ralph Blackburn is NationalWorld’s politics editor based in Westminster, where he gets special access to Parliament, MPs and government briefings. If you liked this article you can follow Ralph on X (Twitter) here and sign up to his free weekly newsletter Politics Uncovered, which brings you the latest analysis and gossip from Westminster every Sunday morning.