Emily Thornberry – 2021 Comments on the UK-Australian Trade Deal
The comments made by Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade, on 15 June 2021.
With this deal, and the precedent it sets for New Zealand, America, Canada and Brazil, the government will send thousands of farmers to the wall, undermine our standards of animal welfare and environmental protection, and threaten the conservation of our countryside.
Instead of using the opportunity of Britain’s first post-Brexit trade deal to create jobs in every sector, drive our economic recovery, and raise standards around the world, the government has done the opposite with this agreement on agriculture.
No other country in the world would accept such a terrible deal for its farming industry, and neither should we. Any Tory MP backing this deal today needs to have a hard look in the mirror, and ask how they would reacted if it had been proposed by Brussels instead.
What makes this deal all the more indefensible is that, while Australia is getting everything it wanted and more, we are getting next to nothing in return, with a miniscule 0.025% increase in UK growth the most optimistic projection the government can come up with.
