Is Boris Johnson’s government really conservative? In the wake of Boris’s plan to break a manifesto pledge and raise tax, it’s a question many have been asking – and one that a speech today by International Trade secretary Liz Truss aims to address. Truss – who has been tipped for a possible promotion to the Foreign Office amid rumours of a reshuffle – will use the event at Policy Exchange to outline Britain’s new trade policy.
Truss will link the UK’s trade policy with the government’s flagship domestic agenda: levelling up. She is expected to say that the ‘path to economic revival does not lie in retreating and retrenching, but in free trade and free enterprise. British employers can only benefit from free trade by selling their products, innovation, capital, and ideas overseas’.
For a while now there has been a debate playing out in the party between the so-called ‘Waitrose protectionists’ and the ‘Lidl free marketeers’
Her speech will also point to what Truss views as one of the boons of an independent trade policy: lower prices for consumers.
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