Wait 10 years to assess Brexit, insists Dominic Raab

Andrew Marr (right) speaking with Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab during the BBC1 current affairs programme, The Andrew Marr Show. - Credit: PA

Foreign secretary Dominic Raab has urged people to wait a decade before judging whether Brexit has worked or not.

Raab, appearing on The Andrew Marr Show, insisted that businesses take a “10-year view” to the troubles sparked by Brexit, before blaming the European Union for new bureaucracy.

“We have always been clear that there are changes that come with exiting the transition period, and what we’re trying to do is support businesses as best we can to manage those,” he told Marr.

“I think if you take a 10-year view, as well as looking at the short-term risk, which is right to do, actually the growth opportunities in the future are going to come from emerging and developing economies around the world.”

Questioned on whether the “obstacles” sparked by Brexit meant that businesses would be better off trading with other parts of the world, he explained he would not “put it quite in those terms”.

“It’s certainly right to say that we want to bank, if you like, the baseline of our European trade – it’s very important to us, and they are obviously our neighbours – but if you look at the opportunities for growth in the future for UK companies … the growth economies are going to come from the Indo-Pacific region.”

The Brexiteer added the government would attempt to “manage those short-term challenges” and “reduce and mitigate as far as we can the bureaucratic obstacles that the EU is imposing”.