Brexit: the UK will be freed to go out and forge our own trade agreements, and one of those towards the top of the list is with Australia.   Good old Oz: they’ll help us out, they’re more or less British anyway.  Like Hell they are.

Former Australian  Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has called the Brexit Trade Plan – if it can be so honoured – “utter bollocks.”  Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said much the same, explaining that to walk away from a market of 500m people is madness, and that, whether we like it or not, Australia’s place in the world is as part of the Asia Pacific region.  From an Australian perspective the trade that matters is with China, Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand, the Philipinnes… not the UK.  And as it happens, far from being sun-burnt cousins, most Australians are well aware that the Australian founding fathers were British rejects: “what goes around comes around,”  as you might say.