Brexit Metaphor No 73
In 1980 China set up its first Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in the sleepy southern Chinese town of Shenzhen. When the experiment became a success, China rolled out the SEZ concept in other parts of the country.
Britain has been keen to experiment in distancing itself from the EU. However, the Brexit referendum was too large-scale and too risky as experiments go. You don't start administering a new medicine to 65 million people; you first test it on mice, then on a controlled group of humans, and only then you roll it out for general use.
Similarly, the UK should have conducted its own Shenzhen experiment in deregulation and de-EU-sation. Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man already provided early case studies on various sets of exceptions from the EU firmament. But Britain then skipped a step and went straight for nationwide Brexit, while what it actually needed was a Shenzhen-sized experiment: a set of counties to carve out into a SEZ and place outside EU rules.
Where could such an experiment have taken place? Northern Ireland would have been too sensitive; Scotland - too pro-European; and Wales - too deeply integrated in the British economy. So the UK should have chosen Cornwall for its "Shenzhen experiment".
Cornwall is not only relatively isolated and poor (i.e. not much to lose) but it also already had a knack for experimentation with the Eden Project. Brexiteers missed a trick by foregoing an "Eden-Outside-EU".
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| Shenzhen, southern China (Source: Wikipedia) |
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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 73 have been posted so far and another 88 Brexit Metaphors will be published every day until the planned Brexit date of March 29, 2019.
2. Disclosure: The author has a master's degree in European Integration. He also thinks he knows a bit about business, economics, entrepreneurship, China, history, geography, science and Rubik Cubes.
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Why Cornwall:
ReplyDelete1. One of the most isolated parts of the UK.
2. Poorer than the UK.
3. Relatively small population that will be impacted (~500,000).
4. Has a history of communication with the rest of the world: the first transatlantic telegraph cable landed at Porthcurno in the 19th century, which later became the hub of Cable & Wireless to connect to all over the world.
5. Goonhilly was the world's largest earth station for transmitting communcations to/from satellites in the 1960s and 1970s.