BREXIT GETS A DOUBLE BOOST
■ Trade deal with US ‘by end of this year’ ■ Queen gives Royal Assent to our EU exit
BORIS Johnson’s hopes of a speedy trade deal with Donald Trump roared ahead yesterday when top US officials said it could happen by the end of the year.
And in a double boost for the Prime Minister, the Queen enshrined Brexit in law when she granted Royal Assent to his Brussels agreement.
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said a deal by December 31 would mean an “aggressive timeline”, but insisted it was an “absolute priority”
for the President and “we expect to complete that within this year”.
The upbeat predictions by Mr Mnuchin follow Downing Street indications that Mr Johnson wants the US talks to run alongside trade negotiations with Brussels.
US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said a trade deal should be easy because the US and UK economies had more in common with each other than with the EU.
He said: “Both are very heavily services-oriented and within services, such as financial services ,there’s already a pretty high degree of integration and coordination.”
Mr Ross also sought to dampen UK fears of higher drug prices as US pharmaceutical giants look to gain concessions from the NHS.
He said: “What we think is that drugs should have similar prices wherever they are. But I don’t believe we are in any position to tell the UK what they should pay for drugs.”
The Prime Minister’s spokesman said yesterday: “Both sides have been clear in public that they want to agree an ambitious free trade agreement as quickly as possible.
“Once we’ve left the EU in just over a week’s time, we will be free to start having discussions with countries around the world, including the US.”
Bernd Lange, who chairs the European Parliament’s Trade Committee, also expressed hope a
UK-EU deal could be achieved this year – and said the pair’s relations might be even better after Brexit.
Striking a very different tone from European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen last month, he told BBC Radio 4: “It is possible to have a trade deal done in this year.”
But Stefaan De Rynck, a senior adviser to EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, was less optimistic.
He said: “There should be no misunderstanding of the fact that the next phase will be more complicated to negotiate than the Withdrawal Agreement.”
Accusing the UK of setting a “rather short” timeframe, he said: “The construction of the text for
the Withdrawal Agreement wasn’t always easy – but compared to the construction of the text for the future relationship agreement, we are talking about two different kinds of exercises.
“The limitation of time must lead to some dose of realism on what can be achieved.”
Mr De Rynck insisted the EU was poised to make a “generous” offer to Britain.
He said: “We are looking at a possibility of a relationship in the trade side where we will have zero tariffs and zero
quotas between the EU and UK. And that is a pretty generous offer from the EU – I would say to consider that.
“Because this is a market of 450 million people at the doorstep of the UK. We need to stress this is not something that any other third country has.”
The Prime Minister’s spokesman said: “The EU made a formal commitment to get this completed by the end of 2020 and we expect that to happen.
“We now approach the next stage of this process in a friendly spirit and there is
no reason why we can’t get a comprehensive deal with the EU which works for both sides by the end of 2020.”
In the Commons yesterday, Deputy Speaker Nigel Evans interrupted a debate to announce that the EU Withdrawal Act 2020 had been given Royal Assent, clearing the way to leave the EU at 11pm next Friday.
The Prime Minister and EU chiefs Ms von der Leyen and Charles Michel are expected to sign the agreement today to confirm our departure from the bloc.
In a possible sign of looming celebrations, several cases of English sparkling wine were delivered to Downing Street yesterday.
Mr Johnson’s spokesman said:
“It has been a long three years, but we have got Brexit over the line and the PM wants to move the whole country forward as one to a brighter future.”
The Queen granted Royal Assent after Parliament finally approved the Bill earlier this week and the House of Lords dropped amendment demands, allowing it to pass.
In the Commons yesterday, the SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford claimed it should trigger a new Scottish independence referendum. He said: “There is a very clear message from this House that the rights of the people of Scotland are to be shut down and we will have no part of it.”
WITH each passing day the doom and gloom-mongers and naysayers of the Remain campaign become increasingly more irrelevant as the truth about Brexit and the success it will be for Britain becomes clearer.
Alongside the joy of the Queen giving assent to the Withdrawal Agreement Bill there were interventions yesterday which proved that Boris Johnson’s ambitious plans for this country are realistic.
To begin with Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that a trade deal between Britain and the US can be in place by the end of 2020. This opens up the world’s biggest market to UK businesses and consumers to tariff-free trade.
So it is perhaps not surprising that another piece of welcome news was the hint by the European Parliament’s trade committee chairman Bernd Lange that the EU and the UK can have a trade deal by the end of the year. This flies in the face of the threats and claims by the new European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen who has tried to pressurise Britain into staying trapped in the EU single market for years claiming a deal cannot be done before we leave.
But with Boris adamant that there will be no further delay beyond 2020 to full independence and the prospect of a US deal, reality appears to be dawning in Brussels. They can no longer rely on a Remainer Parliament to act against Britain’s best interests and the Prime Minister holds the trump cards.
As Chancellor Sajid Javid says, we should not throw our toys out of the pram.We should seek a good agreement but it must be on the best terms for Britain.