“We have left the EU so we need to look at what to do in order to grow the UK economy and not keep talking about a vote from seven years ago”.

The government’s Business and Trade secretary, Kemi Badenoch, has hailed the UK’s biggest trade agreement since Brexit as ‘very significant’ despite the fact that it will increase UK gross domestic product by just 0.08 per cent over a decade.

After two years of negotiating, the government has finally concluded talks on joining the  Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

The CPTPP is a free trade agreement between 11 countries across the Indo-Pacific, including Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam – and now the UK.

The government says that as a result of the partnership, trade barriers and tariffs between the countries will be reduced with the hope of bolstering the economies of its members.

Badenoch appeared on Times Radio this morning, not only to praise the deal, which doesn’t do much to alleviate the 4% hit to UK GDP as a result of the Brexit vote, but also to tell people to stop talking about the Brexit vote.

She said: “I am unbelievably excited about it. It may not sound like that because I am talking on four hours sleep but it is one of the biggest trade deals we have ever done”.

Badenoch added: “We have left the EU so we need to look at what to do in order to grow the UK economy and not keep talking about a vote from seven years ago”.

‘Not keep talking about a vote from seven years ago’. This from a party that has spent the last seven years banging on about Brexit freedoms while constantly changing leaders amid internal party squabbling over the course to take following the vote.

Brexit is a Tory obsession.

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

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