So can you take us through what did go wrong with Brexit?

So on a macro level, as you say, what went wrong was that we did a reverse trade deal with our largest trade partner.

You know, trade deals typically remove trade barriers.

This was a trade deal that erected trade barriers.

And it was one of the most extraordinary things when Boris Johnson announcing that trade deal said, you know, my friends, if anything, this will allow us to do more trade with Europe, not less.

That was nonsense.

it landed, as you say, much harder on small businesses.

of our proximity to what is still our biggest market and should be our biggest impediment-free market in a way that we can exercise the proper influence on the course and the development of the future European Union.

How much investment are we talking about here?

So I went to an investment conference in Casablanca where nearly a hundred Chinese companies were listening to the pitch from the, uh, Moroccan government about why they should come and invest in Morocco.

There are tax breaks, there is plentiful, uh, labor, green energy, and of course, access to those trade deals that I just mentioned.

So Moroccan business groups say they're getting delegations two to three a week.

Now, what does that translate into? Well, we went out about twenty-five miles, uh, south of Tangier, the big port city, where, you know, rising out of these scrubby hills is a new industrial park where a lot of these Chinese companies are building factories, both to create parts that are gonna be shipped into the European automobile supply chains, but also parts that could go to the two European car makers, Renault, the French maker, and Stellantis, that owns Peugeot and other brands, that have factories in Morocco.

So what exactly can the bloc do about it?

So first thing they can do is they can, uh, impose quotas and actually put up what they call anti-dumping duties.

And indeed, they did that on a, a case that was settled last year on aluminum wheels, and they said that these aluminum wheels were being subsidized both by the Moroccans unfairly and by the Chinese through this thing called the Belt and Road Initiative, which is China's outbound investment, uh, strategy scheme, and they slapped forty percent odd tariffs on these aluminum wheels.

What about the UK? Would it get anything out of the deal besides, you know, avoiding tariffs?

Well, that's a pretty big besides because it's pretty clear that the White House is gonna go hard after Europe. And so for Labour, the idea that we get a sweetheart deal with Washington, that we can avoid the worst of tariffs, that's gonna be a victory for Keir Starmer and it will vindicate his belief that the UK can have a strong relationship both with the US in Washington, and with Brussels. Of course, that's not without its risks because if the US demands too much from Starmer, that could have two effects. One is he could give away things like the digital services tax that are popular with British voters and will make him look like he's kowtowing to Donald Trump. There's also a risk that if he gives too much to Washington to get this deal, that then that causes problems with his relationship with the EU. And of course, the UK is also trying to reset its post-Brexit trade deal with the EU, and so Starmer's trying to walk a delicate line here, trying to walk a balance, trying to avoid things that are gonna make his life difficult, both with his party at home and with his relationship with the EU.

Yeah.

It leaves it in a very delicate place. I think the trouble is gonna come when the price of a deal with the US starts to crystallize, and so this idea that we're all talking, we can all be friends comes to a dead stop potentially when either we say, "Nope, we just can't accept the US demand to get rid of our digital service tax," or we make concessions to the US that make life very difficult with the EU. And so the question I think is just where the balance is going to land, and frankly, how hard the US is prepared to push its demands. The US has or is defining tariffs incredibly broadly, so it's not just that there's a straight tariff on a particular good. It's anything that might be construed as inimical to trade. So like VAT is one of the areas that they're looking at. And so in that sense, everything is on the table.