Britain doesn't need to be in Europe to strike important trade deals Far from greater economic freedom, under such a system producers start to need permission to produce things. Note how every aspect of economic life the European Single Market touches gets swathed in red tape. Worse, since permission is needed to produce and sell things, every vested interest begins to lobby to have the rules written to their advantage. Instead of big businesses trying to persuade willing customers to buy their products, they spend their marketing budgets paying lobbyists to rig the rules against the competition and the customer. It is precisely because the various vested interests are trying to cut cozy deals behind closed doors through TTIP that the negotiations are taking ages. TTIP is not about free trade. It is crony corporatism at its worst. Of course, if Britain was to leave the EU, and the cozy corporatist cartel called Brussels, we could have genuine free trade agreements. Not only with the EU and the United States, but with China, India and much if the rest of the world. "But we need to be in the EU to strike such deals," claim the various vested interests. Trade does not depend on the might of your public administration or the grandeur of your technocrats. Trade happens when a person in one country produces something that someone in another wants to buy. That holds true weather you are in a country of over one billion people or under a million. And it explains why tiny Iceland now has a free trade deal with China.