Thread by @EmilyThornberry

I’m only one paragraph into the government’s new export strategy – from Boris Johnson’s foreword no less – but the signs are not good. Let’s do a quick fact-check on four of the Prime Minister's points, and remember this is just the first paragraph...(1 of 6).

1. Actually, 35 weeks passed between the UK taking its seat at the WTO on 4/2/20 and the next FTA being signed – with Ukraine – on 8/10/20, part of a last-minute rush that, amongst other things, means the Ukraine deal now needs to be re-written to correct the legal errors made.

2. So far in 2021/22, we’ve seen a belated rollover deal signed with Serbia in April, and a revised deal signed with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein in July. That’s it. Not a single trade agreement has been signed since we left the EU that we didn’t already have inside the EU.

3. Two-thirds? In 2019, we had free trade agreements covering 63% of UK trade, as a member of the EU and a party to the EU’s trade deals. In the first half of 2021, the share of UK trade covered by FTAs has fallen to 60.4%, as the value of our trade with Europe has collapsed.

4. It does go from A to Z as it happens. The Prime Minister has either forgotten about our trade deal with Zimbabwe, one of the many rolled over from our membership of the EU without any complaint about their human rights record, or didn’t want to highlight it.

Every time they publish some new trade strategy, I wonder if there’ll be some serious analysis of the opportunities and challenges in front of us, and an ambitious but practical plan about how we’ll approach them. And every time, we get nothing but this fantasy piffle.