By Graham Vanbergen: ‘Take Back Control’. That’s what they said they would do, once they got Brexit done. But in the ultimate irony and slap in the face of the Jihadists of Brexit’s right-wing within the Tory party – they’ve outsourced British border control policing to … the European Union!

Boris Johnson’s government, more concerned with getting plastered and reintroducing bare-knuckle fist fighting inside Downing Street, announced last month it would ditch planned animal and plant health checks on imports from the bloc following three previous postponements.

Its grand Brexit border plan now is to introduce a new border model for imports from right across the world that will make checks digital and decrease the hassle for traders. The big problem – it’s not been invented yet – and so that has been delayed until the end of 2023.

That being the case – the UK’s border checks now has a new policy – it will take it on trust that goods coming in from the EU meet current British standards.

Given that Britain is looking to reduce standards to that of the USA with Brexit – the EU has nothing to worry about as all goods passing through will have passed these checks before they arrive.

“Obviously there are caveats, but the U.K. is effectively saying it trusts that products entering from the EU conform to U.K. requirements,” said Sam Lowe, director of trade at Flint Global. “We’re outsourcing a large proportion of our import health regime to the EU.”

There’s another problem with Brexit. Until the new British border model comes into force, which could easily be delayed from 2023 further out, Britain risks the considerable annoyance of non-EU nations as they will have to jump through more hoops to export to the UK than those in the bloc do.

As Politico reports – “That amounts to discrimination under World Trade Organization rules, according to Nic Lockhart, a trade lawyer based in Geneva working for Sidley Austin.”

When you decide to abandon physical inspections for goods from one source — here the EU — and you don’t do the same thing for goods from another source, then you’re effectively advantaging goods from the EU because they’re subject to less stringent requirements,” he explained.

So far from taking back control – Britain has to outsource policing of trade to the EU, only to find it is breaking WTO rules as it does so.

However, the upside is that with the WTO itself struggling to function, British ministers have calculated that it’s worth the risk!

The UK also argues the legal risk is worth it because bringing in new checks could have led to bare shelves in the supermarkets, which would not have been a good look to the electorate, especially in the light of an escalating cost-of-living crisis.

However, it is true to say that outsourcing the policing of borders to a foreign entity also means you don’t have control when it comes to criminality and illicit trade as a result of the ditched border checks.

Again, Politico reports that – Anna Sergi, an expert in organized crime at the University of Essex, said the British ejection from various EU policing institutions had reduced the chance of criminals being be caught when sending illicit goods to the U.K.

She said – “the fact EU police would not be alerting British forces to suspected crime means Britain could become a haven for things like illegal tobacco and hard drugs, while the lack of border checks will reduce barriers further.”

In another cunning plan by the UK to ease border congestion – trucks that say they are empty will not need to be checked. Cunning as though that may sound – it breaches EU border regulations.

One senior business leader said about the ditched import checks: “If you’re a criminal and you’re shipping illicit goods, you must be licking your lips and cracking open the champagne because the chances of getting your illicit goods through is infinitely higher.”

Another business figure said the longer the checks on goods imports are postponed, “the wider the window for bad operators to come in and take advantage of the situation.”

What the UK is hoping, and that is all this is … hoping, is that police in the EU will catch criminals on the Continent before their goods reach British shores. There’s not much incentive for them to do so though as they are effectively exporting criminality away from the EU.