IN an agnostic age, the need for religious certainty sometimes leads people into politics.

It takes hard work and compromise to make headway with complex problems, but simplistic political creeds cut through all that. Zealots can subordinate all other considerations to their sacred priorities – which with this Government means economic growth.

There is always collateral damage. So how far will a true believer march down a destructive path before they come out of their reverie and notice the burning buildings?

That is very much a live question right now, with the rafters of the British economy smouldering. Apparently it’s not bad enough yet for Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss to change course.

But the British economy is not the only casualty of this Government’s ideology – our food standards and environmental protections are too.

Here in Scotland, ministers, public agencies and campaigners are wrestling with another big mess created by this blinkered Brexit-obsessed Government. This one is down to the Retained EU Law Bill, known to Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg as the Brexit Freedoms Bill.

The legislation, published last month, will eject all EU-derived laws from the statute book on December 31, 2023, unless they are actively retained. That means things like food safety law and workers’ protections – laws that we all rely on in our everyday lives.

If these laws expired, it would create the sort of chaos that would make the current economic mess seem like a passing squall.

The laws relate to labelling for food allergens, setting limits on chemical contaminants in food and minimum levels of food hygiene.

Holiday pay, safe limits on working hours, protections for natural environments and a host of other things would also be affected.

They even relate to the safety and composition of baby foods.

If the bill passes in its current form, there will be a frantic period when the Scottish Government, like the UK Government, will have to race against the clock to review all these laws.

The bill won’t get Royal Assent until perhaps early summer, and then MPs and MSPs will go on recess. Parliamentarians will have to work like demons next autumn to ensure this stuff does not drop off the statute book – time they could (and should) be spending on other more pressing priorities. It’s not clear they will have enough time to do it properly, even if they want to keep these laws.

The Scottish Government is likely to replace them in their existing form, to stay abreast of EU law, but the UK Government? Ministers make no bones about their desire to change or reject a great many of these laws.

And if that happens, the Scottish Government won’t be able to stop food produced to lower standards in other parts of the UK being sold here.

The Internal Markets Act of 2020 saw to that. It stipulates that goods made in or imported into one part of the UK may be sold in all other parts of the UK. This means goods that do not reach the standards set by Holyrood could still be sold here.

Scottish ministers say the Retained EU Law Bill represents a “significant further undermining of devolution”, because it allows UK ministers to act in devolved areas without the consent of Holyrood.

It certainly shows a cavalier attitude towards the Union.

Above all, however, it represents an unnecessary threat to standards and indeed to business certainty. Everything is to be subject to the cliff edge of December 31 2023, unless a time-limited exemption is made, regardless of how critical it is. Something like 800 legal provisions apply to food and feed additives alone, and if something sunsets because it’s been overlooked, or because civil servants have run out of time, there’s no easy way of reinstating it.

Unions have expressed anxiety about whether these laws can be reviewed effectively against a backdrop of 90,000 civil service job losses, while legal experts have warned the whole exercise could end up being a “bonfire of rights”.

The chair of Food Standards Scotland, Heather Kelman, said that the bill “poses a significant risk” to Scotland’s ability to uphold high safety and food standards, pointing out that much of the legislation in question was developed over the course of decades, with significant UK input.

“This bill confuses ‘red tape’ with consumer protection and indicates that the latter is now less of a priority and of less importance than when we were in the EU,” says Kelman.

So what’s it all for? The symbolic value of “getting Brexit done”?

In part, yes, but there is a lingering suspicion that UK Government ministers’ real intent is to lower standards as part of this rushed process, to clear the way for those highly-elusive trade deals they’ve so far conspicuously failed to make.

Jacob Rees-Mogg makes no secret of his desire to do away with EU-derived law, telling the House of Commons in June that only “perhaps dozens” of the laws might be retained – out of over 2400.

We should not be surprised. It was always a deeply dubious part of the Brexit pitch that ministers wanted “freedom” from EU laws, but had no intention of reducing standards. Brexiters like Michael Gove have repeatedly insisted high food and environmental standards will be maintained, but Gove is now a marginalised figure. Rees-Mogg, Truss and Kwarteng make a virtue of despising regulation on principle. Senior US figures have warned that a US-UK trade deal will be difficult if the UK sticks to EU-level regulations which ban, among other things, hormone-treated beef and chlorine-washed chicken. Don’t be surprised, then, if ministers try to amend or dump some of these provisions.

They will do so with limited scrutiny. The IPPR think tank points out, for instance, that ministers could make changes to EU-derived employment protections without the need for an Act of Parliament but through secondary legislation, which involves less parliamentary oversight. It will be easier to push through such changes when the alternative is the law falling off the statute book altogether.

“Whichever way consumers voted on Brexit, they did not vote for a race to the bottom of lower standards and a de-regulated landscape that reduces consumer protection,” said the FSS’s Kelman in her statement. “We cannot imagine that this is what the UK Government intends.”

We’ll see.

Read more by Rebecca McQuillan:

For the first time in 15 years, Labour mean to win back Scotland. Can they do it?

Nurse strike ballots, A&E delays, the toughest winter ahead – no, it’s not just down to Covid