Finally, UK trade policy is secure on a new path outside the EU

There can be no doubt the UK is now secure in a new trade strategy outside the EU. Lessons should be learned for practical politics to avoid the awful hostility arising from the decision.

If you can believe it, when I took over the European Research Group (ERG) in the aftermath of the EU referendum in 2016 and you had never heard of it, we remade it to unite the Conservative party around the strategy which it was then clear had to be carried through. The group’s task was to work with those trade experts who could elaborate that strategy, notably Shanker Singham and the then Legatum Institute Special Trade Commission.

This morning, as the UK’s free trade agreement (FTA) with the USA was trailed, days after the announcement of the UK’s FTA with India, I dug out a presentation I gave in July 2016 to Chiltern Chamber of Commerce on how we should leave the EU.

While the process was subsequently made vastly and unnecessarily difficult through huge resistance from an establishment determined not to comply with a public vote, that strategy is now for the most part what even the Labour party is implementing.

Historians will have to judge the villains and heroes but we can learn immediate lessons for practical politics.

Leaving the EU, A personal perspective – Steve Baker MP, Prepared for Chiltern Chamber of Commerce, 15 July 2016