UK trade policy: time to stop the secret deals and get systematic
Trade can be a dirty business.Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was tolerated as a “special representative for trade and investment” in the noughties despite allegations that he kept convicted gun smugglers for friends, while Peter Mandelson’s ability to schmooze the rich and famous repeatedly overruled concerns about his probity.To close a deal, there are always compromises to be made, and sometimes the terms are unsavoury.Britain is at the forefront of international deal making.It has been a trading nation for as long as it has existed.
And even before that.Recent studies have shown the Cornish were trading tin and copper long before even the Romans arrived in the UK.The question is, as trade routes become dominated by new powers, such as China and India, does the UK pursue its interests in the same old ways or attempt to clean up its act.Keir Starmer told us what he thought last year when he appointed Mandelson to be US ambassador, and in so doing, became yet another prime minister to put the art of the deal before more ethical concerns.When Liz Truss appointed Ian Botham as a trade envoy to Australia, the former cricketer’s qualifications for the job were not immediately obvious.
Last week, a group of MPs said the prime minister had spurned an opportunity to show he wanted to promote more sophisticated, secure and transparent trading relationships when he refused to appoint a “cross-government minister for economic security”.Liam Byrne, the business and trade committee chair and former Treasury minister, said deals were being done that needed more scrutiny, especially when Chinese companies are involved, to prevent them becoming national security issues later on.Byrne wants the government to be more mindful of the intrusion, coercion and spying that can accompany deals with big businesses in other countries.Byrne mentions China consistently in his warnings about trade deals and there are clear reasons to be concerned: China’s ruling Communist party is calculating and amoral in its dealings with the outside world.There are also the governments and powerful elites that have become corrupted by the discovery of natural mineral wealth before they adopted democratic institutions, or were handed them by former colonial rulers.
The financial waters have become even murkier in the last 30 years after an explosion in the money generated by the drug trade, which needs legitimate agencies to clean up the dirty cash.This is where corruption arrives on the doorstep of every country, regardless of their democratic history.Robin Cook wanted to establish Britain as an ethical trading nation when he became foreign secretary in the first Blair government.It was 1997 and China was emerging as big exporter.He gave a speech just 10 days after the election, in which he said: “The Labour government does not accept that political values can be left behind when we check in our passports to travel on diplomatic business.
Our foreign policy must have an ethical dimension.”In the 1980s, the £40bn al-Yamamah deal, initially for the supply of 120 Tornado aircraft and other military equipment, was agreed by the government of Margaret Thatcher and the son of the Saudi defence minister, Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud.Thirty years later a report on the deal emerged to show how civil servants appeared to have lied about illicit commissions being paid to lubricate the deal.Cook lasted almost four years in the job, but his ethical foreign policy proved to be temporary.Those who see al-Yamamah as expedient won.
Cook was described as naive when he embarked on his mission and it was probably a fair criticism.Byrne’s mission is more focused and hard headed.Yet it still prompts the question.Can Britain navigate relationships with the likes of India, China, South Africa and Brazil in a way that avoids backroom deals.The Liberal Democrats would say the answer is to get back inside the EU.
That might happen 20 years from now, but the obstacles are many.Access to the single market and the customs union are strict.Switzerland and Norway have discovered this, and both have accepted being rule takers to gain access.Last month, trade minister Chris Bryant announced new trade envoys for France, Germany and Italy in an effort to build bridges beyond Brussels.It was Bryant who, in 2011, criticised “AirMiles Andy” for being a close friend of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saif and the convicted Libyan gun smuggler Tarek Kaituni.
The trade minister’s plan to use some of the smartest Labour MPs outside government to link up with officials on the continent might help secure trade access at the margins.But Byrne is right that the more pressing issuing is how to protect ourselves from the temptation of cheap stuff, especially from China.And the kind of major deals – in defence, in the NHS and infrastructure – that store up problems for the future.Beijing’s seduction of the UK, now that it lies outside any major trading bloc, is just beginning.Beijing wants to tempt us with cheap electric cars, cheap telecoms equipment and cheap artificial intelligence now the EU and the US have placed stricter limits on trade.
In response, the UK needs a more systematic way of deciding what to buy.No more secret deals.No more laissez-faire.
Lib Dems suspend Chris Rennard amid new inquiry into sexual harassment claims
The Liberal Democrat peer Chris Rennard has been suspended from the party amid a new investigation into sexual harassment allegations.The party said it had received advice that a 2013 inquiry into the claims made by four women against Lord Rennard was “flawed in several respects”.The Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, believes Rennard, 65, should not be a member of the House of Lords, the party added.In turn, Rennard, a former chief executive of the party who was awarded a life peerage in 1999, pointed to a series of investigations by police and lawyers that had concluded the allegations against him could not be proved.He previously said he was sorry if he had “inadvertently encroached” upon anyone’s “personal space”
FCA urged to investigate Peter Mandelson over potential insider trading
The Liberal Democrats have urged the UK’s financial regulator to immediately investigate Peter Mandelson, saying his apparent decision to leak highly confidential government information to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein may have led to insider trading.In a letter to Nikhil Rathi, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Daisy Cooper, the MP for St Albans and the Lib Dems’ deputy leader, said it was “crucial” to determine whether Mandelson or those he shared information with had profited from accessing “market-sensitive and confidential material” in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.“The sharing of confidential information with a private financier could easily have provided an unfair and lucrative advantage in the financial markets, either by Epstein himself or by his associates,” Cooper said in the letter, seen by the Guardian. “Mandelson could also have personally profited from this arrangement.”She added: “He and others must face criminal prosecution if they are found to have abused trading laws for financial benefit
‘Am I at peak popularity? I hope not’: on the road with Zack Polanski, from protest to podcast to Heaven nightclub
17 JANUARY 2026“I’m dying for a wee,” Zack Polanski says as he gets off the train at Wakefield Westgate. Why didn’t you go on the train, I ask? “It was very busy and too many people recognised me on the way to the toilet. I knew I’d never get there for all the conversations, so I came back.” When did it become hard for him to go to the toilet on a train? “2 September,” he says. “The day I was elected
‘I’m British, English and British Asian’, says Rishi Sunak in riposte to racially charged debate over identity
Rishi Sunak has described himself as being “British, English and British Asian” in a riposte to increasing racially charged language used by figures on the right.The UK’s first British Asian prime minister was speaking after his identity was questioned in recent debate sparked by a claim by the podcaster Konstantin Kisin that Sunak was not English because he was a “brown-skinned Hindu”.Suella Braverman, the London-born Reform MP and former home secretary, later appeared to give credence to Kisin’s claims by saying that she was not English and questioning whether others born in the country could necessarily have that identity.More recently, Matthew Goodwin, Reform UK’s candidate in the upcoming Gorton and Denton byelection, refused to disown a claim that UK-born people from minority ethnic backgrounds were not necessarily British.Speaking out for the first time since those interventions, the Southampton-born former Conservative leader said the racism directed at him and his siblings was “seared in his memory” and warned against Britain “slipping back” to a time when racism was more overt
Minister commissioned investigation of journalists looking into Labour thinktank
A Labour minister commissioned and reviewed a report in 2023 on journalists investigating the thinktank that would help propel Keir Starmer to power, the Guardian has learned.The research was paid for and subsequently reviewed by Josh Simons, now a minister in the Cabinet Office, when he was director of Labour Together, according to sources and documents seen by the Guardian.Simons is close to the prime minister’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who had previously run Labour Together and whose own role in the operation to gather material on journalists is under scrutiny.In an agreement addressed to Simons, drawn up by the PR firm APCO Worldwide, the firm agreed to “investigate the sourcing, funding and origins” of a November 2023 Sunday Times report about the thinktank, in addition to other journalistic investigations into the group.The agreement noted APCO would “establish who and what are behind the coordinated attacks on Labour Together”
Reform faces police investigation over ‘concerned neighbour’ byelection letters
Reform UK will face a police investigation in Gorton and Denton after admitting it sent out letters from a “concerned neighbour” which did not state they had been funded and distributed by the party.Greater Manchester police confirmed it had received a report about the breach of electoral law and said it would investigate. The Electoral Commission said the omission was a matter for the police, stressing that failing “to include an imprint in candidate election material is an offence”.Dozens of voters in the Gorton and Denton constituency reported receiving letters from a pensioner written in a handwriting-style font on Friday. The letters do not include an imprint saying who they have been funded and distributed by, as required by electoral law
People with dementia are still people, with joys and interests of their own | Letters
NHS hiring bans in cancer units shortsighted and dangerous, doctors warn
Most statin side-effects not caused by the drugs, study finds
Alton Towers to test excluding people with autism and ADHD from disability fast lane
Violence is part and parcel of how prisons function | Letter
Blanket rule on trans women in men’s prisons would deny their identity, says Scottish government