Some good news for Labour with two trade deals in a week

The first was a comprehensive deal with India, which lost much of its PR value within days as India launched attacks on Pakistan and trade slipped off the political agenda. The higher profile deal is a less comprehensive one with the United States. This has good points in it for industry, but it is far from being the Brexit bonus some are claiming. The government recognises that the EU is and will remain our biggest market. A reset in trading and other relations will be concluded over the next two weeks, hopefully easing some of the remaining trade issues here, particularly around veterinary and human medicines, free movement for young people and mutual recognition of professional standards. The big test of the US trade deal is whether promises from the Chancellor Rachel Reeves on maintaining food standards will be met. Given events around inheritance tax, farmers have little trust or confidence in what she says. The NFU in London has already flagged up concerns about what a reciprocal agreement on beef imports will mean. This has been set at an initial modest tariff free rate of just 13,000 tonnes a year. The government insists it has not diluted standards and that beef treated with hormone growth promoters and indeed chlorine-washed chicken will remain banned. But the big question is how to secure assurances about growth promoter use, given that they cannot be reliably detected in meat. That raises doubts around standards for beef, particularly manufactured products, that are traded into the EU. Regardless of any assurances this deal confirms that, as with past deals with the southern hemisphere under the Conservatives, agriculture is vulnerable and politicians are not to be trusted. For the government and the Labour Party, the English local elections were a disaster; for the Conservatives they were worse, a total disaster that puts their future in doubt and brings forward the prospect of a split between one nation and right wing members. Reform was left ecstatic with a result that exceeded expectations. It thrusts the UK into a growing club where the far right influences or dominates politics. Three members of the G7 – Germany, France and Italy – have far right parties in or close to power. This is also the case in other EU member states, including the Netherlands. After the elections the government admitted its decision to means test winter fuel payments for pensioners was a poison pill during canvassing. This drove people into the arms of Reform, meaning it drew support away from both Labour and the Conservatives by appearing to be on the side of the people against the establishment, an echo of Trump’s appeal across the Atlantic. The government now regrets its decision on winter fuel payments. But politically, much as it might like to do so, it cannot back down. This mirrors inheritance tax and agricultural property relief. It will cost Labour many of the fifty rural seats it grabbed from the Tories last July. Like the fuel payments the government knows it got this wrong, but again it cannot back down or even correct it by changing the rules in favour of family farms and against those using the relief as a vehicle for tax avoidance. That would be the intelligent solution. A bold prime minister would respond by sacking his Chancellor over these two disasters. That is not going to happen, because it would hand a huge scalp to Reform and boost their progress. Since his era as prime minister Tony Blair has seen his reputation, as the person who made Labour electable, tarnished by war in the Middle East and his relationship with George Bush. That said, he was one of the best readers and manipulators of public opinion, which is how he made a deeply tarnished left wing Labour Party electable.

He got the old legal term about how something simple would be perceived by “the man on the Clapham omnibus”, translating this into his appeal to Ford Mondeo man. He has done this again by questioning the pursuit of the net zero commitment by the government. This is not about the case for eventually getting there or the need to tackle climate change, but the methods and crucially the lack of success in ensuring a majority of people understand and back what they are doing.