A member of Thursday’s Question Time audience in Hull wanted to know if the UK – US trade deal is a victory for the government, and the panelists didn’t hold back
The Question Time panelists engaged in a heated debate tonight following the announcement of a UK-US trade deal earlier today.
On the panel on Thursday May 8 was James Murray MP, Graham Stuart MP, Richard Tice MP, Calum Miller MP and the trade union leader Jo Grady. During tonight’s episode the pannel reacted to comments made by Kemi Badenoch, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, in which she said: “We cut our tariffs — America tripled theirs … we’ve just been shafted!”
Today, Donald Trump and Keir Starmer announced the UK and US have reached a “breakthrough” deal to reduce tariffs. The US President said the agreement would be “so good” for both countries as he lavished praise on the PM and “special relationship” during a call from the Oval Office. It is the first agreement the White House has reached with a country since Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on global imports to the US.
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During BBC Question Time an audience member asked: “Is the UK – US trade deal a victory for the government?”
When asked by host Fiona Bruce if he would echo Kemi Badenoch’s comment about being ‘shafted’ Graham Stuart, who has been an MP for Beverley and Holderness since 2005, answered: “I don’t think it’s a great deal, and the truth is that’s what he does, he seeks to shaft people, that’s his business career isn’t it. It’s what he’s done, Donald Trump. The way he’s done it he seeks to extort from people. He’s a classic kind of bully and he’s the worst face of capitalism and he’s taken that into the most powerful country in the world.”
He added: “So we have been shafted, whether we have less shafted than we would have been if we hadn’t engaged in the way that we have time will tell. We don’t know all the details yet we don’t know the legalities around it and this isn’t even the final deal. We’re talking about that happening over the coming year that we negotiate a full one. So, it’s pretty hard to be too definitive today apart from to look at it and on the face of it it isn’t a great deal for us.”
James Murray chipped in saying: “It’s good news for Britain, it’s good news for our auto sector, it’s good news for steel manufacturers, it’s good news for British farmers.” He went on to say: “This gives us the basis for which we can have further discussions over the US to have an even stronger relationship in future.”
Jo Grady voiced her opinion on whether the US trade deal is a victory for the government saying: “I don’t know it’s a silver lining in an otherwise horrendous week, can we rely on promises from Trump No. But there’s a recurring theme that’s actually already come up so far in the discussion tonight … and that is, is this a victory for working people?”
She went on to say: “We should be paying attention to the politicians who encouraged us to take a gamble on Brexit and now we are seeing trade deals that we are manifestly on the negative receiving end of. ” She added: “We as working people are going to be able to afford to buy fewer things.”
She concluded: “We need to as a working class movement in the UK or wherever you sit start realising that politicians from mainstream parties, many of them are part of a political elite, a trans-national political elite. We know that your leader is big pals with Donald Trump. They are profiting from our misery. They are profiting from this stare of affairs and they are peddling hate to us to distract us from realising that is what is going on.”
Richard Tice concluded his thoughts on the topic by saying: “This deal, the information we’ve got so far, it’s work in progress.”
Next week, on May 15, Question Time will be in Aldershot and on May 22 in Dulwich.