Kemi Badenoch is wasting everyone’s time and money with this ludicrous survey on post-Brexit trade deals

I must admit that I had no idea that the British government was wasting its money this way, but apparently it is now into its sixth survey of public attitudes to Free Trade Agreements (FTAs).

Why, when it is government policy to sign as many FTAs as possible, when this was one of the main raison d’etres of Brexit and when the government pats itself on the back and claims huge victories every time it signs a FTA, it needs to find out or even cares what people think about them is a bit beyond me. But here are the results.

It turns out that the majority of the British public (67%) support the country signing free trade agreements (FTAs) with countries outside of the EU. Only 4% of the public said they opposed non-EU FTAs.

What a remarkably unremarkable result. It is like asking people “do you support the government trying to generate more wealth, or not?” Even though many of the FTAs signed since Brexit generate very little wealth for the country, though they have made Australian and New Zealand farmers very happy indeed.

Far be it for me to throw cold water on these results but the survey even goes into specifics that many trade experts would be hard pushed to know much about. Which suggests to me that the public just like the sound of Free Trade Agreements (they are three quite pleasant words after all) and really not much more.

Evidence for my cynicism can be found in the detailed analysis of the British public’s attitude to MERCOSUR.

You know, MERCOSUR. The world-famous South American trading block, consisting of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Yes, I know you were all about to jump in and say that Venezuela is a member too but it has been suspended.

Well, you may be amazed to discover that 68% of respondents have never heard of MERCOSUR, although 20% said they knew at least a little about it. This does rather suggest that 20% of people are lying and just trying to make themselves look knowledgeable.

I have been an international business and economics journalist for more than 30 years and I know virtually nothing about MERCOSUR. Where the fifth of the whole population who know more about it than me have been hiding all these years it is hard to say.

But still this does not prevent the population at large from having an opinion on the matter; a full 37% said they would support the UK establishing a free trade agreement with MERCOSUR, which suggests that many people who know nothing about it and have never even heard about it still want an FTA with it.

But let me be serious for a moment. This survey may have delighted Kemi Badenoch – who burbled to the Sun, one of only a handful of Brexit-friendly mainstream outlets to have credulously picked up on this drivel and presented it as a triumph, that she was “very pleased to see that the British public supports the government’s international trade agenda and sees the many benefits of signing new deals with countries around the world”.

But in reality it is a complete waste of taxpayers’ money designed to make the government look like it is following the will of the British people to sign FTAs. In fact, it would negotiate and sign them anyway because it has no choice but to try to look as if it has found some upside to Brexit.

What the survey doesn’t and can’t show is that the huge damage to UK trade and its economy caused by Brexit far, far outweigh any and all of these deals and always will.