Possibly. I have learned from a friendly American source that the QM2 is off Shanghai housing a trade summit for three days designed to improve trade with China post Brexit. Mark Garnier, the UK trade minister is hosting the event. No reports of this appear in the media. So that is interesting. If you read between the lines of May’s Article 50 letter she is looking for a Special Relationship with Europe not unlike the one we have with the US, but with free trade.
We already know that we are working on the same thing with China and now are closer to Beijing than any other Western country. We even gave Xi Jinping, the Chinese President, a gilded State Visit, including an address to Parliament. China is important because with its centralized control, it can potentially deliver a trade deal much faster than either the EU or the US, helping to mitigate the potential shock of Brexit to the UK. Indeed securing a deal that helped grow our exports could well be sufficient to hold Scotland within the Union.
May’s problem is that in order to get any kind of worthwhile free trade deal with the EU, she will have to concede so much that it will seem to the hardliners in her party and in the country, that leaving is pointless. On the other hand hard Brexit, she now realizes and so does the rest of the government, would be an electoral disaster. Because people have constantly been told that Brexit will make them better off. If, or perhaps when, that turns out not to be the case, angry voters will be after blood. Hers.
So I could be be onto something here, or perhaps not. There may be a grand strategic plan. Or it might be that, as many report, the government is just splashing about out of its depth in a pool of wishful thinking, without a clue how either to stay afloat or climb out.
You decide.