Hi John,
A damaging trade deal with the United States has been a central feature of this General Election campaign. The redacted papers we managed to get out of the government earlier this year – blacked out papers from secret trade talks the government has been holding with 21 countries – were held up by Jeremy Corbyn at the start of the campaign.
Leaks of the US-UK trade talks came to light a few days later, confirming our worst fears. Trump’s administration does indeed want access to parts of our NHS, as well as threatening food standards, and introducing a corporate court system to protect US multinationals from proper regulation and taxation. They’ve even banned the mention of climate change in the talks!
But we still don’t have access to the majority of the papers we asked for, papers which detail talks with countries including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and China. What has the government put on the table in these discussions? And what is it demanding from many developing countries in return?
Tomorrow I am going to court to demand the government release all of these secret trade papers. As you will know only too well, trade deals today can affect all of us, changing the food we eat, how we run our public services and whether we’re able to take effective action to deal with the climate emergency. For developing countries, in particular, these issues can mean life of death for millions of people.
We don’t think it can possibly be right that neither we, nor our MPs, are allowed to know what our government is putting on the table in these trade talks. On Thursday I will challenge the government’s attempt to keep us in the dark. I’ll let you know as soon as we have a verdict.
This General Election has been so important for all the issues Global Justice Now campaigns on. In recent days we’ve heard reports that Boris Johnson is planning to ‘better align’ aid spending with Britain’s ‘commercial’ interests overseas. We’ve seen the Prime Minister using the worst ‘dog whistle’ politics when he implied that migrants shouldn’t see Britain as their home. And we now know that Boris Johnson wants to prioritise a US trade deal, which will threaten our public services, our food standards and our ability to fight climate change.
Britain is at a crossroads. I cannot remember a more important election in my lifetime. The results will not just affect us here in Britain but for people right around the world.
Please vote tomorrow.
Nick Dearden
Director of Global Justice Now
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