Wasn’t a trade deal with India supposed to be one of the big gains from Brexit – an example of how Britain, once free from the protectionist grip of the EU, could go ‘out into the world’ and free up trade with fast-growing economies, rather than be stuck trading with Europe’s stagnant ones?
Markets certainly like the Anglo-India trade deal announced by the government on Tuesday. Sterling is up sharply against the euro and the dollar, signalling that investors are feeling positive about the prospects for a freer-trade Britain. Car manufacturers and the Scotch Whisky Association are pretty pleased, too, given that it means the end of punitive – indeed, positively Trumpian – tariffs on UK exports to India.
So why, then, have the Conservatives received the news so sourly? One by one, they have come out to condemn the government for its negotiations. According to shadow business minister Harriet Baldwin, the deal will be ‘subsidising Indian labour while undercutting British workers’.
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