UK economy will be ‘better placed to strike trade deals after Brexit’

BRITAIN’S economy will have a ‘better future’ outside the European Union, Theresa May said yesterday.

The Prime Minister said she was determined to confound doomsayers who claim leaving the EU will damage the economy.

Her assessment came as Jean-Claude Juncker gave his strongest admission yet that the EU may have to cave in to UK demands for a trade deal.

Despite previously advocating a hardline approach, the European Commission president said Brussels would have to grant Britain ‘extras’ amid pressure from businesses not to harm trading links.

Mr Juncker said the EU wanted to ‘make the UK a privileged partner’.

Mrs May backed Remain in the 2016 referendum and has repeatedly refused to say how she would vote now. But with Britain’s departure from the EU now just over a year away, she outlined a strikingly upbeat vision of our future.

She said our exit would leave Britain well placed to embrace emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and insisted that the UK would be free to strike new trade deals with fast-growing economies outside Europe.

Mrs May added: ‘Yes, I voted Remain but I also said the sky wasn’t going to fall in if we left the EU, and as people will see from the economic figures we have seen, that has indeed proved to be the case.

‘Outside the EU we can not only project that global Britain, but we can see a better future for our economy.’