Arch-Brexiter Liam Fox appears to be on a journey. Every so often, the trade secretary picks out one of the many gaping holes in the Brexit project. All he needs to do now is make that final leap and condemn the whole thing.
Take the time he pointed out that, when it comes to cutting deals with the EU, “if you are not at the table you are on the menu”. Or when he backed Jeremy Hunt in the Tory leadership race last week, arguing that a no-deal Brexit – which the foreign secretary has warned against – might be “used by those who seek to break up the UK” in both Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Fox’s latest revelation takes a hammer to one of the worst bits of Brexiter dogma: that leaving without a deal will be absolutely fine because we can fall back on World Trade Organisation rules.
The trade secretary has issued a strong warning about the problems facing the global trading system. “The WTO now faces one of the biggest tests since its establishment and, with all its functions under strain, it could become an existential crisis.”
July 20th
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Fox’s solution, however, is a rather confused. He demands “urgent and drastic action” from the leaders of G20 countries. But of course it is divisions and aggression from within the G20 that is doing the damage. The US and China are locked in a trade war. Populist nationalists have taken power from Italy to Brazil. Donald Trump is starving the WTO’s dispute resolution body of personnel.
Clearly exasperated, free-trade fanatic Fox goes on to attack the G20 group of leading nations: “If we do not identify the real threats to global prosperity and security and deal with them effectively, then who could blame our citizens for asking – what is the G20 for?”
So what does he want? Quit the EU, abandon the G20 and give up any hope for the WTO? Then rely on a world where might is right and the biggest powers boss around the smaller ones? We’d end up being bullied not just by Trump and China but even by the EU.
Staying in the EU is the obvious answer to Fox’s fears. We would be at the top table, poring over a menu of favourable free trade deals with other countries. And we would stay a strong Union of four nations. We would be part of one of the world’s biggest gangs. So Trump and China’s Xi Jinping wouldn’t be able to bully us. They would have to pay more attention to our values of tolerance and openness – shared values we can push in lockstep with 27 European allies.