'What is wrong with these people?': James O'Brien ridicules Kemi Badenoch's trans-Pacific trade deal

31 March 2023, 13:01

James O'Brien on Kemi Badenoch's trans-Pacific trade partnership

By Alice Bourne

James O’Brien asked Kemi Badenoch if "she's seen a map", as he argued that the trans-Pacific alliance is a weak alternative to the EU.

After Kemi Badenoch told LBC this morning about the advantages of joining the Indo-Pacific bloc, James O’Brien has slammed the new “alliance” as a weak attempt at proving Remainers were wrong about Brexit.

This comes after the Prime Minister today announced a deal to join “CPTPP – a huge trade bloc in the Indo-Pacific” which, with Britain's admission, they claim “will now have a total GDP of £11 trillion.”

James began: “She couldn’t stop herself saying things like there’s strengths in numbers.

“I don’t know if she’s seen a map,” he then asked, but “if you're allying yourself with someone, which do you think is more helpful to have an alliance with your next door neighbour, or an alliance with someone in Mongolia or Peru?”

He then mocked: “Actually in this case I don’t even need to use Mongolia as a figure of speech because we are now joining a trading block that includes Peru.”

The government has said that: “Joining the dynamic Trans-Pacific partnership will cut tariffs on exports for UK industries including food, drink and cars and offer new advantages for business.”

James criticised the right wing press celebrating the deal: “Listen to this right, genuine headline in the United Kingdom in 2023: ‘Remainers are convinced that Britain is irrelevant, they’re set to be humiliated’. The failure of basic comprehension displayed in that headline is almost beyond my powers to articulate how stupid that position is.

“If like me you think it was stupid to become the first country in the history of humanity to impose economic sanctions on itself. If you think that was a stupid thing to do then you dream of nothing more than damage limitation.

“The idea that if we somehow signed some good trade deals it would be a humiliation for people that wished we hadn’t pulled out of the biggest trading bloc, the most successful trading bloc in history.

“I can’t get my head around how stupid that is,” he said, suggesting Remainers have not at all been proved wrong by this deal.

“I don’t understand what is wrong with these people,” he concluded.

“After 21 months of negotiations, this is the UK’s biggest trade deal since Brexit,” the government has said, with the UK becoming the “first European country to join CPTPP”. This, James has argued, is not a point of pride.