Industry minister Sarah Jones says economic benefits will outweigh costs amid Tory attacks
The shadow foreign secretary, Priti Patel, has said that the government’s deal with the EU is a betrayal of Brexit, and accused the prime minister of making “smug” comments when announcing it.
Speaking on the GB News channel, the Conservative MP for Witham said:
Keir Starmer never believed in Brexit. He spent all of his time campaigning to unpick Brexit. He was being dishonest with the British public. He basically did not go into the general election last year and say that his reset would mean that we’d become a rule taker all over again. He deceived the British public.
Quite frankly, that is utter rubbish from Keir Starmer. Not for the first time. It was Britain that led the international efforts when it came to Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. So I think he needs to go away and do some homework.
And of course, it was Conservatives in government that led the way when it came to Britain post-Brexit, our place in the world, securing those trade deals, over 70 trade agreements during our tenure in government.
We are not paying, through any of this, for access to markets. That is not what we are doing. We are not rejoining the EU. Where we will pay, and these things will be negotiated, where we will pay is where there are joint costs that need to be paid.