MP and Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond appeared on “The Andrew Marr Show” recently to discuss Brexit. He said that if a trade deal isn’t reached, Britain will “fight back” and won’t just “slink off as a wounded animal.”
Marr asked Hammond if the UK would be cutting business taxes as a way of incentivising overseas investors to do trade with the UK as opposed to the EU. This is Hammond’s answer.
‘People can read what they like into it’
As is customary with politicians when asked a difficult question, Hammond didn’t provide a firm and solid yes-or-no answer to the question.
He instead said, “People can read what they like into it.” He told Marr he was “not going to speculate now” on the issue of “how the UK would respond” to an outcome that he doesn’t believe we will come to.
Hammond did tell Marr that Britain is “going into a negotiation” with the EU. Everyone in Parliament is apparently operating under the assumption that “a comprehensive free trade deal” will be reached with the UK’s partners in the EU, despite Brexit. But Hammond wants the British people to know that “the alternative isn’t Britain just slinking away into a corner.”
