“God’s diplomacy”. My hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes) reminded us how Richard Cobden described free trade—and it is a description I very much wish I had had in mind last Friday, when I was asked rhetorically to describe free trade. The same person went on to ask me how, without taxation and redistribution in Europe, we would foster a culture of “diffused reciprocity”. After I had had a while to try to work out what that meant, I realised that I believe that trade is a far better way of showing people that we are co-dependent in this world—that we depend on one another for our livelihoods, our prosperity and our happiness—than tax and forced
redistribution through systems that people barely understand. That, I think, is the crux of the matter, which has been touched on elsewhere in the debate.
In so far as the European Union does deliver free trade, it does so through political union. The pattern of free trade through political union and political power beyond democratic control has run its course. If any Member disagrees, I invite them to look at the hollowing out of the centre ground of politics right around the world and to ask themselves why it is not just populism and nationalism on the right that are on the rise, but why populism and harder left policies are arising in a number of countries.
The truth is that several factors are at work in our world at the moment that have delivered us into a profound crisis of political economy. On another occasion, I would be glad to set it out, but in the interests of time let me just say that our trade policy and the tendency to political centralisation is one of the key pillars that has caused the crisis. I think we need a new system of free trade—one that can deliver four things: free trade, self-government, fighting crony capitalism at home and defending against distortions if not predatory practice in countries overseas. If we can deliver those four things, I think we can reinvigorate faith in free trade—a faith generally held right across the House—among working people, who can see that free trade and worldwide co-operation on a fair basis, in which people are not undercut by state subsidies in far-off places, is in all our interests.