HUGE BREXIT TRADE BOOST
New push for big deals outside the EU as shares soar
BRITAIN has a crack team in place ready to strike trade deals across the world in the run-up to Brexit, it was revealed yesterday.
As the stock market ended the year on a record high, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said his line-up of experienced negotiators has now passed the 100 mark.
“We have reached a milestone and this means we are ready to take advantage of the opportunities to grow our trade relationships across the world and negotiate trade agreements that benefit the whole of the UK,” he said.
His announcement came as the FTSE 100 index of blue chip companies closed at 7,687.77 – 3.9 per cent up since the start of December and 7.6 per cent higher than the last trading
day of 2016. The pound also rose yesterday against the euro and the dollar as investors showed their confidence in Britain’s booming economy.
Earlier this week forecasters at the Centre for Economics and Business Research admitted they had been “too pessimistic” about the impact of Brexit.
The predicted economic slowdown had failed to materialise and London had increased its lead as the world’s top financial centre – despite fears of a socalled “Brexodus” of City jobs.
Experience
Opponents have derided the Government for being short of trade negotiators to hammer out new deals.
Since Britain joined the EU it has had to rely on negotiators from Brussels to make trade agreements on the bloc’s behalf, leading to a shortage of talent in Whitehall. But Dr Fox revealed he now has more than 100 people on his staff with direct experience of trade talks in a range of different EU and international institutions.
In total, the department’s specialist Trade Policy Group, which includes policy makers, analysts and lawyers, has grown from zero in July last year when the department was created to more than 450 today.
More than 200 of them speak more than one language but not all have direct trade talks experience.
Overall Dr Fox’s department employs more than 3,740 people, including a global network of more than 1,380 dedicated to promoting British goods and services abroad and attracting investment.
Dr Fox said: “Not only does my team have experience of working within key multilateral organisations, including the World Trade Organisation, the EU and the United Nations, we also have people with experience from across the private sector. We are geared up to negotiate deals that deliver benefits to all sizes and sectors of business, from all areas of the UK, which will result in jobs, growth and savings for consumers throughout Great Britain.”
Earlier this month Dr Fox was in Argentina for the last major meeting of the World Trade Organisation before the UK leaves the EU in 2019 and becomes eligible to resume its seat on the 164-country body.
Opportunities
He told an audience in Buenos Aires: “People across the world are waking up to the opportunities that Brexit will bring in terms of the UK forging new relationships.
“The International Monetary Fund projects that around 90 per cent of world growth is likely to come from outside the EU.”
Britain does not expect to be free to implement trade deals until the end of the two-year transition period after we leave the EU in March 2019.
But Theresa May has said the UK will aim to strike and rubber stamp agreements during the transition, despite EU officials claiming that signing deals would breach their rules.
‘We are geared up to negotiate deals that deliver benefits to all areas of the UK’ International Trade Secretary Liam Fox
THIS week the Italian parliament was dissolved as the troubled country prepares for a general election in two months. The polls predict a three-way split between the leading parties with two of them directly opposed to the mass migration forced on their country by the EU, including Silvio Berlusconi’s revived centre-Right Forza party. Whatever the result it looks to herald more rocky times for the EU and its outdated policies.
Every time an EU official opens their mouth another vote is ratcheted up for any antiestablishment party. Leading Eurocrats say the answer to current crises is more Europe not less. That means they want to press on to a United States of Europe but the fact is that it’s not only the Brits who want out of this dangerous project but the rest of Europe too.
A recent poll revealed that most Europeans do not support this vision of Martin Schulz, former European Parliament president. Even his home country of Germany expressed lukewarm interest with only a third thinking it a good idea. In Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway barely 13 per cent thought a United States of Europe was the right direction, whereas a whopping 48 to 55 per cent across these Scandinavian countries rejected it outright.
WE ARE definitely not alone in turning against the prospect of an EU mega-state. Euroscepticism is spreading across the continent because voters can see that the EU is lacking in democracy and forces its will on anyone who disagrees.
Since the referendum Brussels has passed every EU law that Britain has opposed, adding an outrageous £63.6million to our EU bill. That’s 17 key votes out of 102 in the Council of Ministers on matters that will directly disadvantage the UK.
One of the motions imposes EU rules on our ports which, according to Brexit Secretary David Davis, will dent the commercial freedom of our ports to attract investment and potentially cost 400,000 jobs.
Until we leave the EU in 2019 we are still subject to EU laws and there is nothing we can do about it. The idea constantly proffered by pro-EU politicians that being part of the EU gives us more influence over these decisions is clearly nonsense when other countries blatantly ignore our concerns and outvote us.
This will only get worse during the so-called transition period that could plunge us into a two-year nightmare of being subject to all of Brussels diktats while having even less control over them. Remoaners want to extend this period of purgatory indefinitely.
This week the SNP called on Labour to help them oppose the Government and keep the UK inside both the single market and the customs union. SNP Commons leader Ian Blackford rejoiced in their successful amendments to the EU Withdrawal Bill and now wants to push on with other opposition parties to keep us shackled to the EU monolith.
Their soft Brexit is no Brexit at all. They want us to be dominated by Brussels with little say in decisions made over our lives. That is not freedom. That is serfdom. Of course two-faced Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn likes to have his cake and eat it over Brexit, reassuring northern Leave voters that there will be no second referendum but also putting every obstacle he can in the way of the Government’s Brexit progress to satisfy southern Remoaners.
A recent poll exposes this confusion with a third of Labour Remain voters thinking he is against Brexit while a third of Leave voters believing he’s in favour. Corbyn is happy for this confusion to carry on to the next election but the poll also reveals that more than half of Labour’s current voters oppose Brexit, pushing the party towards that position.
All this could be good news for the Tories if left-behind working-class Labour Leave supporters finally wake up to Corbyn’s deception. The YouGov poll says a quarter of Labour voters are open to changing their minds at the next election.
That possible electoral gain should make Theresa May and her Government even keener to expose the hypocrisy of Corbyn and parliamentary Remoaners. The fact that the EU continues to impose costly laws that harm our country while we are in the process of leaving it surely makes the case that a complete break with the EU would be preferable to a drawn-out transition.
REMOANERS portray this as a catastrophic tipping over a cliff edge but it is nothing of the sort. Measures can be quickly introduced to ensure that trade continues but importantly we will have gained back control of our ability to make laws that suit our interests. That’s what we voted for in 2016 and want to see happen in March 2019.
If we do not start seeing some kind of benefit to Brexit sooner rather than later then voters will express their discontent by voting for more extremist, antiestablishment parties and that could include a Marxist Labour party led by Jeremy Corbyn.
The lesson of May’s election campaign in 2017 was that Brexit voters are fed up with the status quo and cannot be counted on to back a lacklustre Tory party. They want to shake things up and that’s what seems likely to happen in Italy early in 2018 as their Five Star anti-establishment party is leading the polls.
Voters are looking for a clean break with the EU in 2019. This would also help make the Conservatives the radical protest vote party and save us from a disastrous two-faced Corbyn government.
‘Brussels has passed every law we opposed’