Liam Fox is to set out plans for the UK to become an export "superpower" (HERE) and this morning he sent his emissary Baroness Fairhead to sell this idea in an interview with Justin Webb on The Today programme in Radio 4. She totally failed. After 50 years in industry, the first half for a British subsidiary of an American company with a German plant and the second for French, Finnish and Italian companies I can tell you this is a pipe dream to end all pipe dreams.
She said we exported a record amount last year (but failed to explain we also imported a record amount) but this only represented about 30% of GDP, compared to Germany's 47%. We were in the "middle of the pack" she claimed but to show how easy it all would be she said in 2000 Germany was at 30% and had grown exports substantially to the present record level. Then came the killer question from Webb, the one that I and plenty of others have raised consistently, beginning well before the referendum:
But Germany did this inside the EU?
From Baroness Fairhead there was no answer beyond saying that Webb keeps, "wanting to have a renegotiation of the Brexit referendum"! (HERE).
Fox and the Brexiteers told us all the way through the campaign and afterwards that leaving the EU is crucial to achieving the objective of signing trade deals and increasing our exports to the rest of the world. Now we are told to move on.
Apparently we must give up our place in the single market and the customs union to achieve what Germany has achieved inside it. We must leave the world's richest, largest and closest trading bloc, the one that takes 45% of our exports (plus another 15-20% through FTAs with other countries) in order to increase our trade with smaller, lesser markets on the other side of the world - something that almost every major EU country already does better than we do.
It is clear and always has been clear we could do all that the Baroness is suggesting inside the EU. Our membership doesn't hold us back. We can be a member with all that that entails and trade with the rest of the world just as France, Italy, Holland, Belgium and Germany already do.
But this is Brexit. It never made sense from the start and it had gone downhill since then.
