Workingman wrote:Suff you are conflating two different things.
The thread is about our position in the world regarding trade.
You tried to muddy the waters and score brownie points by bringing up the UN SC. I simply pointed out that it has nothing to do with trade.
What we have to do is deal with what is in front of us and that is the EU, its members, its institutions and their rules. That is what Starmer is trying to do whilst, at the same time, doing deals with other countries in ways that are not impinged upon by their existing EU deals.
That may be what they think is in front of us but reality is something entirely different. Since we left our exports to the EU, which were reducing every decade even as a member, have reduced slightly. Our imports have reduced a lot. Yet our imports from the US have grown a lot. So the trade relationship has changed and it was the EU that did it to themselves with their poe faced tantrums about what we could and could not ask for in terms of trade.
Now we have an opportunity staring us in the face. Our exports to the EU are never going to grow dramatically. But our exports to the US, with a good trade deal, especially if other countries do not get a good deal, could grow dramatically.
Starmer is determinedly throwing that away just as he is throwing away our fishing rights.
Nobody will ever invest in the UK if they cannot trust the government to follow through with anything and will derail anything the EU does not like.
That is where we are and it is because we are very prominent in trade, the #6 economy in the world, that the EU is so annoyed about it.
So Starmer needs to grow a spine, tell the EU where to get off, get a decent deal with the US and move on to better things.
I won't wait. What I will wait for is for Reform to eviscerate him at the next election and he will deserve every single seat loss they take from him.