Sir Keir Starmer

This is not the full list, but the new partnership has been backed by the Federation of Small Businesses, the CBI, the British Retail Consortium, Asda, Morrisons, Salmon Scotland, the Food & Drink Federation, the British Chamber of Commerce, Ryanair, Vodafone and producers of meat, milk and poultry—the list goes on and on. I wonder whether that long list of businesses coming out in support of the deal will temper the reaction of the Leader of the Opposition—but then again, for weeks now, she has been dismissive of the benefits of any trade deal, in defiance, frankly, of her party’s history. It is not just the Conservatives that I am talking about; the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), who is not here, and the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) have both shown, in their own way, that their parties simply do not get it; if your whole approach to our allies is about striking a pose, you do not get to strike a deal. What that means in a world like ours, where deals are ever more the currency of security and justice, is that you do not get to make a difference, and you do not get to deliver for Britain. That is what this partnership means. For years, we were told that this could not be done. What the Conservatives meant was that they could not do it. We were told that a deal with the US or India was impossible; what they meant was that it was impossible for them. We were told that a choice must be made between the US and EU; what they meant was that they could not do a deal with both. This Government can and will, because we stay in the room, we fight for the national interest, and we put the British people first. These deals represent a signal that we are back on the world stage—a global champion of free trade, playing our historic role on European security—but above all, they are deals that put money in the pockets of working people, because that is what independent, sovereign nations do. I commend this statement to the House.