Cheap electric cars could be the latest Brexit benefit

If Starmer were to rejoin the EU tomorrow, arch-Remainer Gavin Esler tweeted the other day, what benefits of Brexit would you miss most? I’ve got one for him: affordable cars. 

Britain, even under a more EU-friendly Labour government, has declined to copy the EU – as well as the US – in imposing punitive tariffs on imports of Chinese-made electric cars. 

For some manufacturers the new EU tariffs will reach 37.6 per cent, which together with the existing 10 per cent tariff will bring it close to 50 per cent.

Britain, critics will say, will now become a target for ‘dumping’. That is another way of saying that UK motorists are about to enjoy a cornucopia of affordable electric cars – something which European manufacturers have failed completely to engineer. Indeed, they have dropped the cheaper models like the Ford Fiesta and Volkswagen Polo, which have no electric equivalents, in favour of pricey and ungainly SUVs, trying to rely on finance deals to push them at motorists who can’t really afford them.