The trade deal with Australia will do nothing to make up for the cost of Brexit

The benefits of this trade deal are welcome, but negligible against the costs of the hard form of Brexit dictated by Boris Johnson

(Dave Brown)

The Independent has always been strongly in favour of free trade. Provided it is underpinned by rules to protect human rights and the environment, trade is a liberating engine of prosperity. For that reason we warmly welcome the UK-Australia trade agreement – while roundly condemning the British government that negotiated it.

In accordance with conventional economic theory, the UK-Australia deal is in our mutual interests. Trade benefits both parties, which is why it happens, and making it easier means greater potential benefit for both sides. Removing tariffs and restrictions is generally a good thing. Free movement of people, or freer movement, is also a good thing; and so the proposals to make it easier for young people to travel and work in the two countries are also welcome.

Some critics might point out that the estimated benefits to the UK of the deal, which is some months from being finalised, amount to just two hundredths of 1 per cent of our national income over a 15-year period. This is too negative. What matters is the principle, and the principle of removing barriers to trade and free movement is a good one.

The reason we condemn Boris Johnson’s government is that he has acted against this principle more than he has promoted it. By cutting Britain off from its closest and most important market, he has done far more harm than could be compensated for by any number of agreements such as those with Australia.

Of course, The Independent respects the vote of the British people to leave the European Union, but in our view that was a vote to leave the political structures of the EU rather than to disengage from economic cooperation. It was Mr Johnson and his takeover of the Conservative Party that led to a form of Brexit that was more economically damaging than it needed to be.

Economists will argue over the precise estimates, but benefits of the trade deal with Australia are negligible, while the costs of Brexit are substantial. Indeed, they have been rather more significant and immediate, especially in Northern Ireland, than predicted by many economists, who were accused by Leavers of promoting “project fear”.

So far, Liz Truss, the international trade secretary, has done an impressive and remarkable job of self-promotion. She has sold a series of “copy and paste” trade deals designed to replicate the relationship Britain had with a number of countries through the EU as a new era of British trading dynamism – when they are nothing of the kind. Where she has been able to add liberalisation to existing trade relationships, these have been incremental advances of the kind that would probably have been achieved through the EU in any case.

None of her hyperactive pitch to the grassroots Conservative Party membership can begin to compensate for the damage done by the form of Brexit that those Tory members have enthusiastically endorsed. Mr Johnson leads the first British government since the war to raise barriers to trade, while pretending to lead a “global Britain”.

Three cheers for the UK-Australia trade deal, but a thousand boos for the UK-EU trade destruction agreement signed by the same government.