Brexit should be at heart of PM's levelling-up plan

There are now more checks on trade flowing into Northern Ireland than there are on trade through the EU's eastern frontier

- lain Duncan Smith

THE REMARKABLE election result in December 2019 and the euphoria that followed are but a distant memory now. With the core messages of Get Brexit Done and levelling-up ringing in their ears, people who had voted Conservative before cast their votes for the Tories in huge numbers, enough to give Boris Johnson the biggest majority of any Conservative government since Mrs Thatcher.

Yet within three months the Government was plunged into Covid, a greater crisis than any since the Second World War.

However, we must lift our heads up and remember what we were elected to do. Getting Brexit Done was about taking back control of our laws, our borders and our money - and by so doing building a better country for all.

Our departure from the EU has not, as was predicted by some, been massively disruptive. Claims that goods traffic to the Continent would be at a standstill, with vast tailbacks at ports and crowded lorry parks, turned out to be false.

And London remains far ahead of other European financial centres and is still a global giant.

Yet if we are serious about levelling-up then we need to be more ambitious for post-Brexit UK. The levers to do so are in our hands.

Perhaps the most significant reason for leaving the EU was to transform the UK economy by taking advantage of new freedoms.

Last year three of us published the Taskforce on Innovation Growth and Regulatory Reform report, (TIGGR) for the PM.