The Daily Mail’s fishy tale about Brexit Britain’s exports

On the same day the New European published my colleague Liz Gerard’s brilliant critique of double standards at the Daily Mail, the right wing title was up to its old tricks.

“Brexit Britain becomes the world’s fourth BIGGEST exporter in blow to Remainers who said leaving the EU would be a disaster” read the online headline of a story which appeared in print under the byline of the paper’s policy editor Martin Beckford but was credited on its website to senior foreign reporter Elena Salvoni. The Mail cited United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) data apparently showing that “the UK has shot up from its previous ranking of seventh in 2021” and “has overtaken France, the Netherlands and Japan… for goods and services exports.”

To celebrate, the reclusive, publicity-shy trade secretary Kemi Badenoch was somehow tempted to break a personal silence that must have lasted seconds. She told the Mail: “These new figures show how the UK is punching above its weight on trade”. Tory MPs Andrea Leadsom, Michael Fabricant and Kit Malthouse were among those rushing to retweet the good news.

Call me a cynic, but there’s something about a Daily Mail story which quotes Kemi Badenoch and claims Brexit is a success that sets alarm bells ringing. And it turns out that the tale of Britain’s booming exports needed the same health warning as Badenoch’s insistence that her trade talks with Canada were ongoing (this came as news to the Canadians, who publicly declared they weren’t and have since slapped 6% duties on imports from the UK to prove it).

The British figures crowed about by the Mail and Badenoch date from 2022, are bloated by high UK inflation, are heavily reliant on financial services rather than the export of actual goods (which has fallen much faster than the G7 average) and include non-UK oil and gas passing through British ports en route to their final destination. That has already become far less significant as disruption to fuel chains stabilises after the shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Even the Mail recognises that things may not be as rosy as they seem. According to Salvoni’s version of the story about booming Britain, “the UK could slip down the table when the figures come out again next year, with a recent report finding that the value of total goods exports fell by £17.4 billion (4.4 per cent), between 2022 and 2023.

“Last month’s ONS report said this was primarily because of falling imports and exports of fuels. It added that, after adjusting for inflation, the UK imported and exported less in 2023 than it did in 2018.”

But if British exports do fall in a year’s time, will the Mail blame Brexit? Or will it still be attempting to persuade its readers that £1,500 in missing capital gains tax from Angela Rayner is a more significant number than the 4% of UK GDP that Brexit is costing the country every single year?