Bad for business

On the subject of embracing the world, Boris Johnson is part-way through a five-day tour of South America. The intention behind the trip, which includes the first visit by a foreign secretary to Peru in 50 years, is to underline the prospects for boosting British exports to non-eu countries after we leave the EU. But the UK can only sign “unhindered” trade deals with such countries if it is outside the EU’S customs union, a fact of which Mr Johnson is keen to remind the Prime Minister today.

The tortuous nature of the Brexit negotiations, with the EU and between ministers, has left the public bewildered, and the reasons the country voted to leave – not least to regain control of its trade policy – threaten to get lost amid a morass of detail. Mr Johnson asks his Brexiteer colleagues to be patient and to give Theresa May “time and space” to negotiate a good Brexit deal. But with the clock ticking down to the June EU summit, it is not clear that time is on the Government’s side. It has yet to agree a customs plan that would solve the Irish border issue while still enabling the UK to trade freely with the rest of the world, and EU negotiators expect an answer to this conundrum within weeks.

Former Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson and the DUP’S Sammy Wilson write on the page opposite that the Northern Ireland border is being “cynically and recklessly exploited by Remainers”. If this mess is not sorted out, the danger is that it will embolden Remainers in the Commons to vote to keep the UK in the customs union indefinitely. All Mr Johnson’s efforts to win business for British companies abroad would then come to naught.