John Redwood is an arch Brexiteer and has been for years, even before the name was invented. We used to know him simply as a Eurosceptic but time has moved on and Mr Redwood has immatured into a raving Brexiteer. However, he has never taken the trouble to figure out what it is that he opposes in the EU. On Monday he was on Radio 4's Today programme telling us, against all logic and 99% of economists, that trading under WTO terms would be fine because "we already do so with the rest of the world".
To make sure that everyone could see how ignorant he was, he then tweeted the same thing (HERE) and got a storm of responses from (a) people who knew he was quite wrong and tried to explain it to him and (b) people who rejected absolutely unarguable evidence and believe his nonsense.
Some pointed him and others to the EU Treaties Office database (HERE) which lists alphabetically all of the bilateral and multilateral treaties that the EU have entered into, many of which govern trade between the EU and other countries. If I take the USA alone (HERE) it shows 56 bilateral treaties signed between 1967 and 2016. So, although we have no free trade agreement, to say we trade on WTO terms with any country is completely wide of the mark. And easily disproved.
There are 15 bilateral agreements with China and so on. All of which we will no longer be a party to after Brexit if we leave with no deal. Let us be clear, leaving without a deal would be a catastrophe from which this country might never recover from. Redwood is a fool I'm afraid but people believe him even when he's demonstrably wrong.
