UK's delusions of grandeur creating sea of trouble

The United Kingdom is to become the 12th member of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. It will be the first new member since the major Asia-Pacific trade partnership was created in 2018, and the first European country to join the pact.

While the UK government has hailed it as evidence that the country is "seizing the opportunities of our new post-Brexit trade freedoms" — which it certainly needs to do having got itself in a pretty rotten pickle with that rash move — the impact of CPTPP membership on the UK economy is expected to be fairly small.

In Tokyo, Japanese government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno offered a better insight into the UK's motivations, saying the UK's accession "will have great meaning for forming a free and fair economic order".