TRADE Minister Liam Fox has told businesses to stop obsessing about Brexit.
The Eurosceptic, who last month said the chances of crashing out of Europe without a deal was now 60-40, told business leaders gathered at the Institute of Directors (IoD), that Brexit wasn’t the “only issue that is out there in terms of global trade”.
An exasperated Fox told the audience: “It’s really important that we don’t have such a narrow bandwidth that we only think about Brexit.
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“It’s really interesting when I go to China and other parts of the world and talk about the global economy, tariffs, the US and China, the WTO and in the UK we talk about Brexit, Brexit and Brexit. It’s an important issue but it’s not the only issue in terms of global trade.
“What we are trying to do today is to ... widen our horizons, to lengthen our time frames.
“Our competitors are not thinking about next year or the year after. They are thinking in five, 10, 15-year timescales about how they can improve their global position.”
Fox was at the IoD to launch the UK Government’s new strategy to expand the country’s exports from 30% to 35% of GDP.
Abandoning the EU did not mean Britain would “pull up the drawbridge,” he said, rather, it would be able to “embrace the opportunities that the changing pattern of global trade presents”.
The UK, he insisted, could be a “21st-century exporting superpower”.
Scottish Brexit secretary Michael Russell was sceptical. He tweeted: “There isn’t a single bit of this ‘ambition’ that couldn’t be achieved whilst remaining in #EU and thus avoiding a massive, disruptive and very harmful economic shock”.
In an earlier interview Fox also appeared to abandon the Tory shibboleth of reducing immigration to under 100,000. Speaking to LBC, he said: “I think that one of the things that was clear from the referendum was that the public do not want unlimited movement into the United Kingdom.
“The public can differentiate between people who come here with a job and will be contributing to the economy and those who under free movement were able to come to the United Kingdom and use our public services without ever having contributed to them.
“Well that’s the government target and we’ll be reviewing what we do post-Brexit.”
Meanwhile, David Mundell has urged warring Brexiteers and Remainers in the Conservative party to unite and rally round the Prime Minister’s Chequers plan.
Speaking to Politico’s morning newsletter, Playbook, the Scottish Secretary said there was no alternative but to accept what the Theresa May had put forward.
“People have to wake up to what the alternatives are,” Mundell said.
“I think people have to be challenged.
“If they don’t like the Chequers deal, what is their alternative?”
He added: “Clearly there is a group of people who would just leave the EU at any cost, in any circumstances.
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“And there is another group of people who would go back into the EU. Neither of those alternatives, I think, are generally acceptable to the wider public, nor would be of benefit now to the country.
“I think there is a growing reality that, other than extreme positions, there isn’t an alternative.”
May’s Chequers plan has proved deeply unpopular with most Brexiteers. Boris Johnson, and David Davis were two of the highest profile ministers who quit their post in protest.
Dominic Raab, who replaced Davis as Brexit Secretary, was in Brussels yesterday as negotiations resumed.
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