By Michael Hindley

The collapse of the trade negotiations between the UK and Canada comes as no surprise to those of us who predicted a sorry end to the promise that Brexit would leave a Britain, freed from shackles of Brussels, able to trade its way to prosperity and regain its former glory.

Let us put aside the historical fact that Britain’s predominance in global trade in the nineteenth century owed as much to the power of the Royal Navy and destruction of Indian competition, as it did to Britain’s inventiveness in production.

Shortly after the Leave vote, I sat down with a former high-ranking official of the World Trade Organization and speculated about the probable consequences of Brexit Britain ‘going it alone’. His predictions were alarmingly negative and have proved to be accurate.

The urgent question was: What would happen to the trade agreements made by the European Union to which the UK was a party? The only practical transition to trade life outside the EU was to agree to continue Britain’s adhesion to existing agreements, by means of ‘roll-overs’, that is, Britain would continue to trade under EU agreements until either Britain or the other party decided to change them bilaterally. This is precisely what happened: most of the early post-Brexit trade agreements were simply ‘roll-overs’ and not new agreements as the Brexiteers claimed. The catch was that the other party had the right to not accept the roll-over or continue it.

The early misplaced hope was that the ‘special relationship’ with the USA would step in and save the Brexiteers. The hapless Theresa May was dispatched on a toe-curling trip to hold hands in the White House with the anti-EU Trump.

Forgotten was Obama’s more accurate warning that leaving the EU would mean the UK was “at the back of the queue”. And so it proved. We still have no trade agreement with the USA, ‘Irish’ Joe Biden isn’t interested and Trump redux would be even less so.

Since then we have joined, under the leadership of Truss as Trade Minister, the dubious promise of an eventual deal with ‘Asia-Pacific’. All trade stats show the most advantageous trade takes place between neighbours. The nearest point of Asia-Pacific is about seven thousand miles away, while the world’s largest market is only twenty miles away, and there’s a tunnel to get there.

The promise of a deal with India fades while India’s major industrialist, Tata, pulls the plug on ‘British Steel’ – having soaked up government subsidies.

Australia and New Zealand have long ago become tough bargainers and successful traders, especially with Asia after their initial disappointments of losing favoured trade partners status when UK joined the EU in the early ‘70s.

It has been calculated that the Australia deal will generate an increase of less than 0.01% by the 2030s. The much admired former New Zealand PM, Jacinda Ardern, was staggered that the UK gave so much of what New Zealand wanted in desperation to have a ‘successful’ deal.

And now another failure, this time with Canada. What determines all trade talk is access to the partner’s markets. The EU offers Canada a market of over 500 million, the UK offers 60 million. Under the roll-over the UK got favourable treatment, because Canada was keener to make concessions to the EU than it is prepared to make to the UK.

British cheese exports to Canada have been on the rise because they were protected by the EU/Canada agreement; without that protective shield, we are truly on our own.

Finally it should be noted that Canada, like every other major trading democracy (including the EU) has a transparent system for participating in trade policy formation, scrutiny of trade negotiations, and the right of the elected assembly to finally ratify, then monitor, their trade agreements.

The UK has no such mechanism. It’s a democratic deficit I have long since drawn attention to.

Michael Hindley was Vice-President of the Euro-Parliament’s Trade Committee and a Trade Policy Adviser to the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC).

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/flissphil/122434631. Creator: Phillip Capper. Licence: CC BY 2.0 DEED Attribution 2.0 Generic