The international trade secretary and leading Brexiter, Liam Fox, has backed Theresa May’s EU exit deal, giving the embattled prime minister a boost ahead of the looming Commons vote on the issue.
In backing the deal, Fox called the strategy a “balance” and urged MPs to consider the consequences of voting it down. But he rejected suggestions that no deal would represent a “disaster” and played down a string of official economic forecasts that emerged earlier this week that concluded the UK would be better off remaining in the EU.
Fox is due to make a speech on Friday in Bristol calling May’s deal a “firm and stable base” for leaving the EU.
Asked whether it was fair to say he was not enthusiastic about the deal but backing it through “gritted teeth”, Fox told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Well, it’s very difficult to get a deal that’s going to appeal equally to those who are fervently in favour of remaining and those who are fervently in favour of leaving.
“The government, however, has to achieve a balance and in the area of trade it has to be this: that the European Union accounts for about 44% [or] 45% of the UK’s exports of goods and services. It remains a very important market for us.
“So we have to maintain our access to that European market as we leave the European Union but without tying our hands unduly in terms of what we can achieve elsewhere in the growing markets of the world and, remember, that the IMF tells us that 90% of global growth in the next five years will be outside continental Europe. So it’s a balance between the two.”
His comments follow May ruling out any plan B involving a Norway-style compromise deal with Labour in order to deliver a parliamentary consensus on Brexit. Speaking on a trip to Argentina, where she is due to meet G20 leaders, the prime minister criticised Labour’s refusal to accept the backstop arrangement – designed to keep the Irish border open in the event of no deal.
She rejected a compromise proposal being developed by influential backbenchers that would mean the UK would be a member of the European Economic Area plus a negotiated customs union.
Asked about the difficult task facing the prime minister to win the Commons vote after at least 90 Conservative MPs said they would not back the deal, Fox also said: “Well, I think the prime minister has been changing the public mood. If you look at polling there’s clearly a shift there. Members of Parliament need to make their own decisions for themselves but they have to compare this particular deal against the alternatives.
“Those who don’t want us to leave the UK without a deal need to consider this would increase the chance of that were we to vote against it. I think that the public will expect us to take that balanced view. Trade changes and the way in which we weigh up the options will change over time.”
Fox said he believed cabinet members would vote for the deal and warned that those who do not “won’t be members of the cabinet”.
Asked whether he would personally be voting for it, he said: “I think that we have to have this balance. We could certainly have a trade policy that was much freer in terms of what we could get in free trade elsewhere in the world, that’s for sure.
“But the price could be the loss of access to the European market which, as I say, is 44% of Britain’s exports. That’s a lot of jobs, a lot of profits. The government is not there to do what we want. We’re there to do what’s in the national interest.”
On Wednesday, the Bank of England said GDP would have been at least 1% higher in five years’ time if the UK had voted to remain. Meanwhile, an official Whitehall analysis found that the UK would be worse off in all Brexit scenarios.
Asked about the often-used slogan that no deal would be better than a bad deal, Fox said: “I think as Roberto Azevêdo, the director general of the World Trade Organisation, has said, it wouldn’t be a disaster but it wouldn’t be a walk in the park either. And we have to understand that there are consequences to these. I think that the reactions to some of the Treasury analysis has been completely overblown.
“I think people have not understood, and I have to say that the media have been somewhat responsible for this, they didn’t understand the difference between forecasts and scenarios – and they are fundamentally different. A forecast is when you take all the variables and decide what the most likely outcome is when you take them all into account. A scenario isolates everything but one variable.”
MPs are due to vote on whether to accept or reject May’s deal on 11 December. Under the terms of the deal, free movement of people would end and the UK would stay in the customs union after a 21-month transition period if a wider trade deal is not ready to come into force.
