Tom Harwood: Inch by inch Britain will become freer

One of the new Brexit freedoms widely reported this morning is that the government is looking to allow shops, supermarkets, and market stalls to sell their goods in imperial units.

This has been met with scorn and derision online, with people performatively wailing that they will not be able to understand what they are buying any more.Clearly these people have never inched towards buying another pint, gone the extra mile, or piled on the pounds after eating tonnes of food over Christmas.

I quite like the imperfection of the imperial system. I will always be six foot - or thereabouts - rather than 182.8 centimetres.

But if you want to measure yourself in centimetres, be my guest. Just don't fine the man running the market stall in town for selling a pound of beef, instead of 0.4535 kg of the stuff.

It amazes me that people are getting outraged by choice. It isn't crazy to allow shops to sell in the units they want to sell in.

What is crazy is that under EU law shops are forbidden by law from using whatever units they want. Most will obviously continue to use the far less fun metric system, but finally those who choose not to will no longer be punished.

Someone asked me on Twitter "what is the point of giving shops the ability to use units which aren’t taught in schools?"

Which is entirely the wrong starting point. The starting point in these conversations must always be what is the point in the state intervening to stop someone doing what they want to do. And banning a system of measurement for the apparent purpose of continental unity does not in my view meet the very high bar required for legislation.

So yes, time to scrap the EU's British measurements ban.

This won't be the most significant regulatory reform by any stretch, but something not being hugely significant is no reason to avoid doing the right thing.

Inch by inch Britain will become freer.