The Brexiteers are in raptures. Not only has their idol Donald Trump, won the US election but now he is rumoured to be considering offering Britain a trade deal that would pull us even further away from the EU’s orbit.
Reform leader Nigel Farage told the Sunday Express that prime minister Keir Starmer had “a big dilemma over trade. Does he act in the British national interest for Brexit and negotiate a deal or does he let the EU dictate policy, because the Trump tariff regime is coming but we can avoid it.”
In the Sunday Telegraph, new Tory leader Kemi Badenoch wrote: “A US-UK FTA is one of the biggest Brexit prizes. The opportunities for collaboration in artificial intelligence, global supply chains, energy security, and financial services, among other issues, are bottomless and boundless. It could be Starmer’s silver bullet to deliver the economic growth he claims to want.”
She added, in her typically measured way, that “anything less (than accepting a Trump trade deal) would be yet another betrayal of the British people’s trust.” Yet back on planet Earth, accepting the terms that this isolationist president is likely to demand is going to demand three betrayals – of the British economy, of Ukraine and of our neighbours and former partners in Europe, with whom Starmer is sensibly trying to forge closer links.
Brexiteers like Farage and Badenoch don’t care about the last bit, even though a closer relationship with Europe would offer far more to Britain than any deal with the US.
They will accept even a rotten trade deal offered by Trump and hail it as a triumph that vindicates Brexit by excluding the UK from the tariffs he is planning to levy on other European countries. These could be anywhere from 10% to 20%.
Farage and Badenoch claim that the chance of being left out of this trade war means we should again turn our backs on our biggest trading partner and nearest neighbours. They are Trump’s useful idiots.
One of the president-elect’s core beliefs is that America has been taken for a fool for years by its allies. He aims to set things right, and if that means betraying them to their enemies, so be it.
Trump sees Europe not as a huge free market allied to the USA that acts as a useful bulwark against the rise of China, but as nothing more than an economic competitor and therefore something that must be destroyed.
In fact, according to Lord Kim Darroch, our former ambassador in Washington and former head of mission in Brussels, Trump thinks the EU is “worse than China”. No wonder he supported Brexit and aligns himself with Farage, Viktor Orbán and other tinpot populists who want to see European unity crumble for their own ends.
It is for these reasons alone – the chance to have a go at a trading rival for Trump, the chance to prop up a crumbling Brexit for Farage and Badenoch – that a trade deal will probably be put in front of Keir Starmer, one that the British right and their supporters in the press will insist he snaps up. But it is worth reminding ourselves what America will demand for such a deal.
First, Trump will insist that we take America’s chlorinated chicken, hormone beef and GM crops. This alone would wreck British agriculture but far more importantly it will also wreck our food export industry – the EU will never accept such raw materials in its food chain, and British firms will find it very difficult to guarantee none of their products have been polluted by American imports.
Yet the Brexiteers will happily whore our world-class food system to get closer to Trump.
Secondly, the US will demand the opening up of the NHS to their health companies, and the end of NHS bargaining power, which massively reduces what we pay for drugs and medicines. The NHS will as a result become much more expensive, and exposed to all the worst American health policies. Remember Americans have a lower life expectancy than we do despite spending twice what we do on healthcare.
Yet the Brexiteers will happily whore the NHS to get closer to Trump.
Third, any putrid scraps that Trump might deign to throw our way in the form of a trade deal will do us no good at all. We do 15% of our trade with the USA but 50% with Europe.
The EU will doubtless react to a Trump trade war with its own tariffs on American exports, and we will be caught in the middle. Brussels is not going to let those American exports in via the British back door. We will do far more damage to our trade with the EU than we could possibly gain from a Trump trade deal.
Yet the Brexiteers will happily whore our economy just to get closer to Trump.
And lastly, though this won’t be written into any agreement, Trump will want Britain to turn its face away as he tries to sell Ukraine out to Vladmir Putin.
The Brexiteers will happily whore out our international reputation just to get closer to Trump.
No patriotic British government could ever agree to such a deal. Starmer should refuse it.
He should admit that for the next four years at least, the special relationship is dead and that our future lies in alignment with Europe. He should be working night and day with the EU to create a viable European defence structure and a deterrent policy against the now freshly reinvigorated Russian threat.
The new Tory Party leadership and Reform would kick back against that. Let them. And let them continue to delude themselves that Trump’s victory means he loves them, that Britain has a new best friend in the White House, that the general election was an aberration, and the right are headed back into power, that populism works, that bigotry is fine as long as it wins elections, that tomorrow belongs to them.
They do not see that Trump doesn’t give a damn about them or Britain, or the stability of Europe. They just see that he is a far right winner.
They will happily whore our country just to get closer to Trump.
