Fox hints he’d have quit if UK stayed in customs union

LIAM FOX has indicated he would have quit the Government if Theresa May’s Chequers Brexit plan had kept the UK in the customs union.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the Trade Secretary said that assurances that Britain would be free to vary tariffs and quotas after Brexit convinced him to stay. He says he did not follow Boris Johnson and David Davis out of the door because he has a duty to prepare the country for life beyond the European Union.

But he warned against any further concessions to Brussels, saying that forcing Britain to remain bound by free movement of EU migrants will cross a “red line”. The comments came as Mr Fox was visiting Washington DC for talks with senior US administration officials about the prospect of a UK-US free trade deal after Brexit.

Mrs May lost two of her most senior Brexiteers when she outlined a Chequers Brexit compromise plan that will keep Britain closer to Brussels after leaving the EU. The deal included adopting a “common rule book” with the EU on agricultural products, meaning the UK cannot abandon regulations that America wants to ditch in a free trade deal.

Mr Fox declined to say what the Prime Minister had told him during a private conversation after which he agreed to back the Chequers plan.

But asked if there was a point when he was unsure, Mr Fox said: “My view was that we had to have our ability to trade on tariffs and quotas.

“Obviously if we’d stayed in a customs union or single market we would not have the freedom to be able to have that manoeuvre and that would have been unacceptable.” Asked whether accepting free movement of EU migrants was a red line for him in forthcoming Brexit talks, Mr Fox said: “I think it’s a red line for the British public.

“I think they made clear in the referendum what the parameters were within which the Government could negotiate. We’ve had a general election where the public again made clear they wanted parties that would stick with the referendum result.”