Fox: ‘Don’t blame me if there isn’t a deal’

Liam Fox gives a speech on trade. Photograph: Isabel Infantes/EMPICS Entertainment. - Credit: EMPICS Entertainment

The man who predicted the Brexit negotiations would be the ‘easiest in human history’ now insists he shouldn’t be blamed if there isn’t a deal.

Liam Fox told the BBC that the government wants a deal with Europe – but that if there is no deal ‘it wouldn’t be the fault of the UK government, it would be the fault of its European partners’.

It comes less than a month after Fox claimed that ‘collective responsibility burned to the ground’ when May agreed to extending talks with the EU.

The disgraced former defence secretary, however, insisted things had moved on since his predictions earlier this month that there was a 60-40 chance of a no-deal Brexit.

He claimed there had been ‘an increasing engagement’ from Europe in recent weeks and now refused to get ‘scientific’ about the odds of a no deal.

Fox had previously claimed that ‘the free trade agreement that we will have to do with the European Union should be one of the easiest in human history’.

This week Theresa May managed to secure her first trade deal – replicating the current EU terms while offering no improvements.

The deal with Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Bostswana, South Africa and Mozambique will account for 0.7% of British exports – leaving 210 days to go until to get a deal with the rest of the world.