Great time to be dissing 27 prosperous neighbours, 22 miles away in the World’s biggest free trade area, also leaving free trade in most services and access to another 53 countries, to go on a hair brained search for distant free trade.
Australia+ NZ = 1.9% of UK exports. Try doubling that if you’re lucky and compare it to 50% of UK exports to the EU including bullion, recently having increased Mr Hannon and not always falling. It gets to 2/3 if you include the other 53 countries with FTA’s.
Even the biggest, USA is only 15% of British exports and according to the people behind the scenes who actually write and negotiate trade deals in Washington, an early deal is unlikely whatever Trump blurts out on Twitter. The fact is that trade is not fair, while USA and China are looking to play dirty for advantage. USA wants to cut the UK surplus or reverse it, using cheap agricultural products but banning more competitive UK financial services.
Try selling in Brazil, Russia, India or South Africa. They are mainly poor, incredibly corrupt, expensive to ship to and relatively difficult and expensive to do business trips or communicate with effectively. Most businesses give up when they are repeatedly sent to get more and more stamps to facilitate this and that from officials cousins in Brazil, which each cost progressively more money, or shipments go missing.
This is not about any rational search for greater UK trade. It is about a few very rich individuals in the Tories, wanting to be free of the EU Savings Directive and sell tax evasion schemes, to create instability in markets to clean up millions from short selling and to facilitate a race to the bottom on the gig economy, deregulating and cutting the cost of UK labour, while opening up it’s competition with the Indian sub continent (Britannia Unchained).
There’s a few up north who would do their nut if they found out the aim was precisely for a more brutal version of globalisation than what we have had.
Confirms what many of us on the continent knew, that Brexit aside, Britain is one of the most tolerant & welcoming countries in Europe. If only more British politicians were willing to explain the positive effects of migration instead of leaving it to those exploiting fears. pic.twitter.com/JwQ4wJR7O7
— Guy Verhofstadt (@guyverhofstadt) July 10, 2018