Liam Fox predicts free EU trade post-Brexit

Liam Fox toured an aviation company during his visit to Manchester

The UK's trade with the European Union will be "at least as free" after Brexit as it is now, Liam Fox says.

The International Trade Secretary said it was in other countries' interests to avoid tariffs which he said would "harm the people of Europe".

Liam Fox said products made in the UK could be sold around the world after Brexit

He also predicted the UK would be a standard-bearer for global free trade and that Brexit represented a "golden opportunity" to forge new links.


Lib Dem EU spokesman Nick Clegg said Mr Fox was "delusional" about Brexit. The UK is unable to negotiate trade deals independently while in the EU so Mr Fox will be negotiating new arrangements with other countries after Brexit, and has already had some talks with countries such as Australia.

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In a speech in Manchester, he said free trade had "transformed the world for the better" and that the UK had "a golden opportunity to forge a new role for ourselves in the world".

There was now a "post-geography trading world" and the UK would "carry the standard of free and open trade as a badge of honour" once it left the EU, he predicted.

Asked afterwards whether he was concerned about tariffs being put in place, he said: "Who does it harm more if we end up in a new tariff environment?

"Does it harm more those who sell more to the UK, or the UK? It's in everybody's interests that, as we move forward, that we have at least as free a trading environment as we have today."

Mr Fox also defended his recent comments that Britain was "too lazy and too fat" with businessmen preferring "golf on a Friday afternoon" to trying to boost the country's prosperity.

"What I said was as a country we have been too willing to rest upon the achievements of previous generations," he said. "I think the figures speak for themselves."

The former GP added: "When I was a doctor my job was not to tell people what they wanted to hear, it was to tell people what they needed to hear in order to put things right."