[heero_yuy]

Quote from Bloomberg:


The U.K. must not enter into a new customs union with the European Union after it leaves the bloc, Trade Secretary Liam Fox said, setting a new red line for Theresa May’s negotiations with Brussels and her own party on Brexit.

Fox, a long-standing euroskeptic, told Bloomberg that the U.K. must not sign up to the EU’s common external tariff, which binds all EU member countries to the same rates. His comments follow a report in the Financial Times that said May’s officials are considering keeping Britain in a new customs union, and the external tariff arrangement.

“It is very difficult to see how being in a customs union is compatible with having an independent trade policy because we would therefore be dependent on what the EU negotiated in terms of its trading policies and we’d be following behind that,” Fox said Friday in Shanghai. “One of the reasons we are leaving the European Union is to take control, and that’s not possible with a common external tariff.”

Fox’s comments represent a potentially explosive intervention in the U.K. political debate at a time when the Cabinet remains divided on the kind of relationship Britain should seek with the EU after it leaves. The country’s main business lobby wants the U.K. to remain in the customs union, and the opposition Labour Party is advocating a similar arrangement.