The New European (HERE) has an article about our globe trotting Trade Secretary Liam Fox and a visit he made recently to Australia. They report him saying he wants to "build a partnership" with Australia - a country on the other side of the world with a population roughly that of Romania - "for the 21st century". He used the occasion to attack us remoaners who he said were "wrong" and "unable to come to terms with the expressed will of the British people".
It didn't say how it was all received in the Australian press but looking at the wreckage of the deal that never was in Brussels this morning and the chaos that reigns in place of policy in government circles they must be wondering what he was talking about.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch where Mr Fox's civil servants are trying to make sense of the chaos, The Telegraph (HERE) report they are struggling to replicate the 40 or so trade deals we have at the moment through the EU. These are not new ones but those we will lose access to in 2019 as soon as we leave the EU. The cocky doctor said replicas would be ready one second after midnight on March 29th. But trade groups are warning of a shortage of capacity in Whitehall to tackle what is turning out to be an "increasingly complicated issue". You don't say? Complicated as in as complicated as the scaremongers said it would be?
The problems are down to a "lack of trained staff in Whitehall, the difficulty posed by dividing up existing EU tariff-free agricultural import quotas after Brexit and the impact of future 'rules of origin' requirements that are likely to result from the decision to leave the customs union".
The problems are down to a "lack of trained staff in Whitehall, the difficulty posed by dividing up existing EU tariff-free agricultural import quotas after Brexit and the impact of future 'rules of origin' requirements that are likely to result from the decision to leave the customs union".
Apparently, trade groups are privately raising alarm bells over the practicality of “rolling over” the EU agreements into bilateral UK deals. In an earlier article, The Telegraph (HERE) report that grandfathering the existing trade deals the EU has at present "may be more complex than first hoped".
That is "more complex" as a euphemism for impossible in many cases according to Philippe De Baere, of international law firm Van Bael & Bellis, who said such an approach misunderstood the complications involved with some trade deals. He claims that existing deals would need to remain as trilateral arrangements in many cases, if the UK wanted to be able to add value to imported goods and sell them into the EU.
Just to remind ourselves what Liam "the idiot" Fox said just two months ago, take a look at this article from The business insider (HERE). Some quotes from the article:
The Secretary of State for International Trade insisted the UK would easily be able to copy and paste all 40 of the EU's external trade deals "the second after midnight" on Brexit day in March 2019.
"We're going to replicate the 40 EU free trade agreements that exist before we leave the European Union so we've got no disruption of trade," Fox told a Conservative party fringe event in Manchester.
"I hear people saying 'oh we won't have any [free trade agreements] before we leave'. Well believe me we'll have up to 40 ready for one second after midnight in March 2019," he told cheering Tory activists.
The Trade Secretary added that "All these faint hearts saying we cannot do it - it's absolute rubbish."
Fox also dismissed claims that a no-deal Brexit would have a negative impact on the British economy.
It might be better if Liam Fox stopped swanning round the world at our expense and came back to face up to the difficulties his fantasy about "the emergence of a global Britain" is causing.
