By Ben Kerrigan-
UK Chancellor, Phil Hammond, has come out fighting in a militant approach against it’s EU partners, insisting that Britain will ”fight back and not slink off like a wounded animal” if Britain does not get the deal it wants.
Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, Hammond was in a defiant mode against Eu leaders whom he feels have been deliberately stubborn against the UK.
Hammond said:
“If there is anybody in the European Union who thinks that if we don’t do a deal with the European Union, if we don’t continue to work closely together, Britain will simply slink off as a wounded animal, that is not going to happen”.
“British people have a great fighting spirit and we will fight back. We will forge new trade deals around the world. We will build our business globally.
“We will go on from strength to strength and we will do whatever we need to do to make the British economy competitive,” he said.
Hammond expressed the government’s readiness to cut business taxes in order to attract foreign investment away from the EU.The message he was conveying to EU leaders was that The British economy will thrive with or without an ideal brexit deal.
Hammond continued: “We are going into a negotiation. We expect to be able to achieve a comprehensive free trade deal with our European Union partners, but they should know that the alternative isn’t Britain just slinking away into a corner.”
However, the chancellor seemed to negate an earlier report by the Lords that in the absence of a trade deal Britain will have no obligations to pay any alleged Brexit bills. He said :
“We are a nation which abides by its international obligations. We always have done, we always will do, and everybody can be confident about that.” The chancellor was confident in plans to safeguard the economic interest and safety of the UK in the event of a hard brexit with potentially unforeseeen or devastating consequences.
” we have got reserves in the tank, so as we embark on the journey that we will be taking over the next couple of years, we are confident that we have got enough gas in the tank to see us through that journey”.
It is not likely for the chancellor’s combative rhetorics to help the course of negotiations, but the chancellor may have made his mind up that negotiations will not take a diffrent turn from the rhetoric we have been getting from EU bosses.