Sir Martin Donnelly, former permanent secretary at the UK Department of International Trade is giving a speech tonight (HERE) directly contradicting Liam Fox's assertion that leaving the EU and the customs union will allow us to sign more lucrative trade deals with non-EU countries. In an interview this morning about his speech, he had this great quote:
He said Brexit is like "giving up a three-course meal now in favour of the promise of a packet of crisps",
When told about it our vacuous foreign secretary said he disagreed "very strongly" with Sir Martin "of the Brussels commission", arguing that there is an "insatiable" market for UK services outside the EU.
I don't think anybody asked BoJo why it was that the world couldn't sate its appetite for British services at the moment. Which EU directive had Britain signed up to which precluded us from selling services to the rest of the world? Of course, there isn't one. Nothing prevents us selling as many services as we like to anybody we want to.
And being outside the EU won't help matters at all. Free trade deals do not cover services so we will be no better off outside the EU than we are now inside. In fact we are giving up frictionless access to the world's largest and richest free market in services for our biggest and most successful sector in exchange for - well, nothing. The ability to do what we can already do now.
Brexit is completely insane.
