US offers trade deals ‘within year of Brexit’

President’s key aide says Britain is ‘the first in line’

DONALD Trump’s national security adviser last night declared that Britain and the US could do trade deals within a year of Brexit.

John Bolton declared the US will support a No Deal Brexit ‘enthusiastically’.

He said Britain was ‘first in line’ for an agreement and insisted Mr Trump wanted to ‘expedite’ a deal by locking down different sectors before reaching a more comprehensive arrangement.

He also took a swipe at ‘elites’ in the EU who, he claimed, wanted to ‘make the peasants vote again and again until they get it right’. His comments came after he met with Boris Johnson in Downing Street as part of a two-day trip to London.

Speaking at a briefing in Mayfair, he said: ‘Britain’s success is a statement about democratic rule and constitutional government. We see a successful exit as being very much in our interest. I thought both President Trump and I were leavers before there were leavers.’

Attacking the EU, he added: ‘The fashion in the European Union when the people vote the wrong way from the way that the elites want to go, is to make the peasants vote again and again until they get it right. There was a vote, everybody knew what the issue was ... the result is the way it was. That is democracy.’

Mr Bolton is the most senior Trump official to visit since Mr Johnson became PM on July 24. He said the relationship between the two leaders had got off to a ‘roaring start’ and they had already spoken five or six times on the phone.

He said the main purpose of his trip was to express President Trump’s ‘desire to see a successful exit from the European Union’ and offer any help. Speaking about the deal between the two countries, he raised the prospect of it being agreed ‘in pieces’. He said: ‘We want to move very quickly. We wish we could have moved further along in this with the prior government. We were ready to negotiate. We are ready to negotiate now.’

Mr Bolton said the countries could concentrate on areas they can agree on first, pointing to financial services, manufacturing sectors and industry. He said: ‘The idea of doing it in pieces rather than waiting for the whole thing is not unprecedented. I think here we see the importance and urgency of doing as much as we can agree on as rapidly as possible because of the impending October 31 exit date.’

Asked whether piecemeal trade agreements like this were allowed under WTO rules, Mr Bolton said: ‘Our trade negotiators seem to think it is.’ He said a trade deal wouldn’t necessarily take years, adding that the UK will be ‘first in line’ for a trade deal with the US.

He said: ‘A prior American president said that if the UK left the EU, it would go to the back of the queue on trade deals. To be clear, in the Trump administration, Britain’s constantly at the front of the trade queue, or line as we say.’

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted: ‘The Tories rolling out the red carpet for the US administration’s most hawkish member is the latest warning sign of Johnson putting Britain in hock to Trump’s USA. The UK in Trump’s pocket is a threat to the NHS, the environment and our peace and security.’

‘We want to move very quickly’