Trump says
Johnson's Brexit could rule out US trade deal
US
president uses LBC Radio interview with Nigel Farage to promote co-operation
between Brexit party and Tories
Rowena
Mason Deputy political editor
Fri 1 Nov
2019 07.54 GMTFirst published on Thu 31 Oct 2019 18.24 GMT
Johnson's Brexit could rule out US trade deal,
Trump tells Farage - video
Donald
Trump has intervened in the UK’s nascent election campaign, calling on Boris
Johnson to team up with Nigel Farage to form an “unstoppable force” and
claiming Jeremy Corbyn would be “so bad for your country”.
Speaking to
Farage on LBC Radio, the US president also said Johnson’s Brexit deal could
prevent the UK from agreeing a trade deal with the US.
Trump said
the US “can’t make a trade deal with the UK” under “certain aspects of the
deal”, despite Johnson’s claims it would allow the UK to have an independent
trade policy.
One of
Labour’s main attacks against Johnson has been that the prime minister would be
too close to Trump and allow a sell-off of public services to US companies as
the price of a trade deal, with the NHS potentially on the line.
Trump told
LBC listeners that he was not interested in buying the NHS, and criticised
Corbyn as “so bad for your country”.
“He’d be so
bad, he’d take you in such a bad way. He’d take you into such bad places,” he
added.
Trump told
Farage he had reservations over Johnson’s deal, because it could prevent trade
with the US, but he denied Corbyn’s claims it would mean the NHS was up for
sale to American health corporations.
“I don’t
even know where [it] started with respect to us taking over your healthcare
system. I mean it’s so ridiculous. I think Corbyn put that out there, but to
even think, it was never even mentioned, I never even heard it until I went
over to visit with the Queen,” he said.
During that
trip, Trump had fuelled speculation that the US would want access to NHS
contracts for US corporations by saying that “everything is on the table”. He
later backtracked by saying: “I don’t see [the NHS] being on the table.”
A No 10
spokesman contradicted Trump’s claim that a UK-US trade deal might not be
possible under Johnson’s Brexit withdrawal agreement. “The PM negotiated a new
deal which ensures that we take back control of our laws, trade, borders and
money – a deal which people said he could never negotiate. Under this new deal
the whole of the UK will leave the EU customs union, which means we can strike
our own free trade deals.”
On Johnson,
the US president said: “We want to do trade with the UK but to be honest with
you, this deal, under certain aspects of the deal, you can’t do it. You can’t
trade. We can’t make a trade deal with the UK. I think we can do many times the
numbers we’re doing right now, and certainly much bigger numbers than you’re
doing under the EU. Boris wants to be very careful with it. Under certain ways
we would be precluded, which would be ridiculous.”
In remarks
that are unlikely to be welcomed in Downing Street, Trump said Johnson was a
“fantastic man and [the] exact right guy for the times”, and added that he
could form an “unstoppable force” by pairing with Farage.
Trump also
told Farage that Johnson “has a lot of respect and like for you”.
“He
respects you a lot, I can tell you that, he respects you a lot, I don’t know if
you know that or not,” Trump told Farage. “But, cause I have no idea I have
enough to do over here without having to worry about the psychology of two
brilliant people over there, frankly ... I wish you two guys could get
together, I think it would be a great thing.”
Responding
to the US president’s comments, Corbyn accused Trump of “trying to interfere in
Britain’s election to get his friend Boris Johnson elected”.
“It was
Trump who said in June the NHS is ‘on the table’. And he knows if Labour wins
US corporations won’t get their hands on it. Our NHS is not for sale,” Corbyn
tweeted.
Farage
agreed with Trump’s criticism of Johnson’s deal, as he has been arguing that it
represents “Brexit in name only”. He vowed the Brexit party would challenge the
Conservatives at the ballot box.
However,
Farage has refused to be drawn over reports the Brexit party is engulfed in a
row over how many seats it should contest at the election. Some Brexit party
supporters and candidates are concerned that the leave vote could split and
boost Corbyn’s chances. Farage described the idea that his party may only focus
on 20 to 30 leave-voting Labour seats in the north of England as “idle
speculation”.
At the
Brexit party launch on Friday, Farage will reveal his strategy for the campaign
after coming under pressure from two different factions in his party. On the
one side, some pragmatists are warning that standing in Tory-Labour marginals
could help Corbyn.
But many of
his candidates are desperate to run and oppose Johnson’s deal, which they see
as not being a “real” Brexit.
Farage, who
has been at a Trump hotel in Washington DC this week, explained his party’s
dilemma on a podcast alongside the former Trump aide Steve Bannon.
“Here’s the
problem. We’ve got the forces of remain, the globalists. We’ve got the Liberal
Democrats who want to literally cancel the results of the referendum. Labour,
they want a second referendum. We’ve then got my position which is we leave the
EU institutions and become an independent country.
“Boris
Johnson, who is very jolly, brings a lot of energy and optimism and is a
thousand times better than Theresa May, [but] he has basically picked up Mrs
May’s failed deal. It is not a deal … Boris is trying to deliver Brexit in name
only to an exhausted public ... it’s not great. If Boris signs this then my
view is that we will not have a proper trade deal with the US.”
He also
dismissed fears about food and medicine shortages during a no-deal Brexit,
saying: “During the war, the German U-boats sunk a lot of ships and we still
didn’t starve.”
Robert
Hayward, a Tory peer and election analyst, said on Thursday that the
Conservatives could actually suffer in some places if the Brexit party stood
down its candidates.
“There is
no certainty that the withdrawal of Brexit party candidates will automatically
help the Tories,” he said. “In large swathes of the Midlands, north and Wales,
Brexit voters are ex-Labour voters and would – to misuse a well known phrase –
‘rather die in a ditch’ than vote Tory. There are therefore many marginals in
those areas where the presence of a Brexit candidate would help the Tories not
hinder them.”
There was
disaffection among some Brexit party candidates about the idea of drastically
reducing the number of seats the party contested.
Ahmad
Malik, the candidate for Chesham and Amersham, tweeted that the Brexit party
was “NOT an appendage or facsimile of the Conservatives”, and added: “How can
you ‘split’ a vote that doesn’t exist?” Malik urged leave supporters to “hold
your nerve and resolve”.
His tweet
was shared by other party candidates who would be expected to stand down if the
party rolled back its election efforts, including Malcolm McLeod in Rochester
and Strood, and even some based in leave-dominated Labour seats, such as Faye
Clements in Middlesbrough.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário