John Baron is a Tory MP and keen Brexiteer often heard in the House pushing the PM into an ever harder Brexit. He is one of those people who appear on the surface to be bright and knowledgeable but it's clear he has a problem with detail. On Wednesday he spoke (HERE - column 506) in the Withdrawal bill debate at committee stage (against the Amendment 7 motion - although he and the government eventually lost) where part of his contribution was this:
"While most of us want a deal, those who criticise the Prime Minister’s position that no deal is better than a bad deal create a series of straw men to support their case. The term “no deal” itself is something of a misnomer, because it creates the idea of some sort of cliff edge. Nothing could be further from the truth. Trade flows regardless of trade deals. The UK would simply revert to using the same WTO rules that govern its trade with countries such as the United States, China, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil—hardly unimportant countries".
Either through ignorance or wilful stupidity, Mr Baron does not apparently realise we do not trade with any of those countries on strictly WTO terms. Two minutes looking at the EU treaties database (HERE) reveals the EU has a series of bilateral deals with these countries as follows:
The USA - 59
China - 15
Australia - 20
New Zealand - 16
Brazil - 14
Not all of these involve trade but many of them do and we will lose every single one when we leave on March 29th 2019 (or 2021 depending on what is negotiated). And they do not include many other multilateral agreements which also govern trade, nor indeed the large free trade deals the EU have signed with 50+ other countries.
John Baron also thinks "a trade deal with the EU will be easy to negotiate because many of the trade barriers have already been removed". We shall see if he's right.
