A “game-changing” US-UK trade deal and a “significant” UK immigration reset, or an enormous confection of nothingness?

US-UK Trade: worse than it was, better than it might have been.
On 8^th May Donald Trump and Keir Starmer announced a hoooooge trade deal in a cringe-making joint press conference from the Oval Office and 10 Downing Street in which both leaders heaped praise on each other and their enormously professional and hard-working trade negotiators. This announcement was notable for the weird technological vibe cause by the Prime Minister popping up on a speakerphone on the Resolute desk to congratulate the President on his far-sighted, deep and meaningful re-casting of international trade norms, while JD Vance and Lord (Peter) Mandelson looked on. I guess Zoom doesn’t fit with national security considerations, oh but wait, surely there must be a Signal video function?

When the dust and dandruff had settled a more judicious examination of what the US-UK trade deal amounted to really struggled to justify the hype. The 10% Trump Tariff on goods imported from the UK will remain in place, but limited carve-outs are obtained for aluminium, steel and car imports, in all cases, however, volume limited: the UK can export 100,000 cars to the US free of tariffs (about equivalent to last year’s total car export quantity) and a quota of steel imports will be allowed to enter the US free of the 25% tariff so recently introduced, taking the steel situation back to the structure that existed before the whole “Liberation Day” tariff nonsense. Each country will allow the import of 13,000tonnes of beef. The UK had previously capped US beef imports at 1,000tonnes so yes a 13-fold increase, but as the US produces 12million tonnes of beef per annum this “extraordinary” increase will represent ~0.1% of the USA’s beef production. A swallow, or in this case a cow, does not a summer make.

It seems that the UK government have accepted the overall approach of the Trump administration. It doesn’t matter what you actually do or achieve, just announce it as an epochal deal to end all deals and then push off for a round of golf or another Arsenal match depending on taste.

Island of Strangers
Clearly spooked by Reform’s successes in last week’s local elections, the Labour Government unveiled a package of new-ish measures to combat illegal migration and reduce total immigration numbers. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was wheeled out to look simultaneously peeved and yet strangely placid to reveal a new White Paper “Restoring Control over the Immigration System.”

By doing so, however, Starmer set off a debate (on the left at least) about divisive language and attitudes that successfully obscured the fact that the proposals basically amount only to:

• doubling the period that legal immigrants have to wait in order to obtain “indefinite leave to remain” from 5 years to 10 years
• discontiuing the social care visa programme which has just about kept the UK care sector (looking after older people) afloat for the last five years
• introducting stricter English language requirements for visa applicants
• reducing international students’ post-degree right to remain in the UK from two years to just 18 months (can anyone hear the bottom of this barrel being scraped?)

Echoing the close-to-zero flimsiness of the US-UK trade deal, the much-heralded “UK immigration reset” is pretty much nothing. This was made all too clear by the explicit avoidance of any targetted reduction of, or fixed cap on future UK immigration numbers. Nevertheless, the inclusion of the “Island of Strangers” phrase will make some people think that the Government are doing “something” without actually delivering any material change at all.

Who would have thought that Call Me Keir would become the King of Spin so early in his reign of nothingness or that Nigel Farage would have spooked him so easily?

Thank you for reading this week’s blog. Same time, same place and hopefully different subjects next week (swears to have a week off tariffs…)

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