Prime minister Rishi Sunak has said that Brexit gives the UK an “opportunity to trade even more” and that “the more we export, the better our businesses will do”.
Speaking in London yesterday (13 May) at a Policy Exchange event, he also said the country was facing “dangerous times”, and he claimed it would be less safe were the Labour Party to enter into government.
The comments were made in a “nakedly electioneering speech”, according to the FT.
What Sunak said on trade
Sunak’s speech was wide-ranging, covering defence, education, AI and healthcare, as well as the country’s economic prospects.
Regarding trade, he said:
“The UK is uniquely placed to benefit. We’ve always been an open, trading, maritime nation; and Brexit has given us the opportunity to trade even more.
“And we invent, discover, and produce new products and services that the world wants to buy.”
He added that “Brexit Britain” had overtaken France, Japan and the Netherlands to become the world’s fourth largest exporter and said that his government was looking to use the “freedom and flexibility of Brexit” to create better “conditions for a new British dynamism”.
This would include investment in a futureproofed infrastructure – “not just roads, railways, and buses, but gigabit broadband, research and development, computing power”.
“We in the UK now have the chance to be more agile, so that rather than stifling innovation and growth, we encourage it, in everything from financial services to agriculture, from healthcare to house building.”
‘Dangerous times’
Sunak further commented that a series of financial shocks – including Covid and the war in Ukraine – had created “dangerous times” in which “people’s sense of financial insecurity” had been affected.
“We must be prepared strategically, economically, with robust plans and greater national resilience, to meet this time of instability with strength,” he said, citing the example of the impact of the Red Sea crisis on “goods destined for our high streets”.
What the speech means
Grace Thompson, the UK public affairs lead at IOE&IT, noted that the link between trade and national security is becoming increasingly prevalent in Sunak’s public comments and the government’s broader economic strategy.
“Following deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden’s speech at Chatham House a few weeks ago, this is the second major speech from the government in recent weeks which has acknowledged both the instability of global supply chains affecting the UK, but also the solutions to be had through the efficient flow of international trade.
“As the prime minister sets out his campaigning direction ahead of a general election, we can probably expect more rhetoric in relation to both economic security and the UK’s wider position in the global trading arena.”
Skills
Sunak also said it was his government’s “duty” to give people of all ages the opportunity and funding needed to learn and retrain in skills that will support them with their careers, citing apprenticeships as a “path to success”.
“We’ll end rip-off degrees and massively expand the number of apprenticeships, because a degree is not the only path to success in the modern economy,” he said.
“And we’ll make sure that everyone has the funding they need to retrain or learn new skills, at any point in their lives, because in the future education won’t stop when you walk out of the school gates.”
You can find out more about apprenticeships in trade and customs roles, delivered by IOE&IT’s apprenticeship delivery partner IOEx Ltd, here.
Political context
The speech came shortly after a series of damaging local and regional election defeats for the Conservative Party at the start of May.
Sunak’s claims that the UK would be less safe under a Labour government have been widely reported in the national media.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer responded by saying that he knows “first-hand the importance of national security, which is why I’ve made such a commitment to the national security of our country”.
“This government talks about national security. But what’s its record? It’s hollowed out our armed forces, it’s wasted billions of pounds on procurement and doesn’t have a credible plan for the future,” the FT reports Starmer saying.
The Spectator’s Katy Balls says that Sunak’s team had been planning the speech for a while and says it could be instructive of how the Conservatives will look to fight the upcoming general election, likely to take place this year.
“If the election takes place in the Autumn, campaigning will overlap with Donald Trump’s tilt for the White House,” she writes.
“As a result, security will likely be a big factor. The bet Labour is making is that financial security will come first – and that the sense that voters are worse off than they were at the last election can be used to argue for change.
“The Tories will try to test this by pushing the idea that, in an era of turmoil, it is best to stick to what you know.