From an intricate knowledge of regulatory alignment versus regulatory equivalence to the difference between the customs union and a customs union, everyone interested in British politics suddenly has very strong views on the technical details of trade policy.
But while most of us have been hurriedly scrubbing up on all things trade, for others this is their bread and butter. Allie Renison is head of trade policy at the Institute of Directors and is someone who actually knows what she is talking about on this all-important but often technical subject.
When it comes to Britain’s future trading relationship with the EU, Allie is an advocate for a partial customs union, which would minimise the impact of our departure on manufacturing firms embedded in European supply chains while giving the UK the freedom to forge its own trade policies and seek free trade deals with other countries in areas not covered by its deal with Europe.
For the latest episode of Free Exchange, I spoke to Allie about Britain’s options in its negotiations with Europe, the pros and cons of her proposal, what Trump really thinks about trade and, more generally, the health of free trade around the world.
This weekend the Telegraph ran a story with the striking headline ‘Burnham told to trade nuclear umbrella for access to single market’. The idea is the brainchild of Nick Boles, the former Conservative MP who quit the party in 2019 over Brexit, switched his allegiance to Labour and helped to advise Keir Starmer on the […]
The EU was born to ‘screw’ the US. That’s what Donald Trump told reporters in 2025: ‘That’s the purpose of it, and they’ve done a good job of it. But now I’m president.’ But that wasn’t always the United States’s view of the EU. As historian Andrew Roberts wrote, the American State Department ‘enthusiastically signed […]
Last week, Andy Burnham inaugurated ‘No 10 North’, his signature project, by working for the first time from the government’s new Manchester base, a self-styled ‘situation room for growth’. The symbolism was clear: power would no longer be concentrated in Whitehall. But the rhetoric remains stronger than the detail. The detail we have is concerning. […]
