Michael Gasiorek is Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory and Co-Director of the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex Business School. Justyna A. Robinson is a Reader in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Sussex and a Director of Concept Analytics Lab. In early 2023, the Labour Party launched a National Policy Forum. It comprised a series of public consultations across six core policy areas, with the stated aim of helping the Labour Party to ‘build their policy platform’.  A key part of the consultation process was to invite written submissions on these policy areas. One of the six policy areas was entitled Britain in the World, (to which the UKTPO/CITP also responded), which posed a set of seven questions all of which related to trade and trade policy. Questions 1. What is the role of international trade in promoting domestic economic growth, boosting jobs and driving up wages? 2. How can Labour ensure the UK’s international trade policy promotes growth and investment across the nations and regions of the UK? 3. How can Labour build resilience into the international trade system and better ensure the security of essential supply chains? 4. How will a Labour government’s trade policy reduce poverty and global inequality whilst promoting (a) human rights, [...]

22 September 2023.L. Alan Winters is Co-Director of the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy (CITP), Professor of Economics at University of Sussex Business School and Fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. When UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, spoke on climate policy on 20th September and talked the following day to the BBC’s Today programme, he did much more than delay the UK’s policies for achieving net zero. He said he was changing the terms of political debate. He spoke of honesty, pragmatism, transparency, and ‘getting opinions and advice from anybody’. Nothing could be more welcome to anybody who has engaged with UK policy over the last eight years, during which the greatest failing has been the lack of these characteristics at the highest political levels. I would like to celebrate the change in practice immediately, so let me pose a few straightforward questions to Mr Sunak to which a pragmatic government must surely have answers already. Climate Let me start with the climate policy announcements themselves: What are the estimates of how much his new climate policies will increase the UK’s total carbon dioxide emissions between now and 2050? What are the estimates of how much the new measures will reduce [...]

17 March 2023 Chloe Anthony is a Doctoral Researcher and Tutor at the University of Sussex Law School and Legal Researcher for the UK Environmental Law Association, Governance and Devolution Group. The UK Government and devolved administrations have committed to improving environmental protection post-Brexit. But how do the UK’s new trade agreements impact domestic environmental ambition? And are there legal safeguards against lowering levels of environmental protection? […]