Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is set to become the United Kingdom’s joint president of the Board of Trade, in an attempt to secure future trade deals on the world stage.
The former Australian Prime Minister, who was born in the United Kingdom, has now been reportedly asked by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to lead efforts in securing post-Brexit trade deals on the international stage, notably the United States, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.
Mr Abbott, a staunch supporter of the United Kingdom’s pro-sovereignty Brexit movement, has also been extremely outspoken on other areas of UK policy such as the growing migrant crisis in the English Channel.
On Tuesday a source within Whitehall told The Sun: “We are delighted to have him on board.”
The move was hailed by Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, who said: “Tony Abbott is a talented and deeply principled man with a great commitment to Brexit. This is a good appointment.”
The mission of the Board of Trade, which was established in 1622, is to “champion exports and inward and outward investment to deliver economic growth and prosperity”, and is typically staffed by British politicians and top businessmen.
Speaking on the prospect of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union without a deal, Mr Abbot said last year: “Let me reassure anyone in Britain, anxious about the prospect of no deal, that Australia does one hundred billion dollars’ worth of trade with the EU every single year, on this very basis.”
In a statement given to Breitbart London a top British conservative think-tank, The Bow Group, also praised the move to bring on the former Aussie PM, describing him as a “leading voice on the right globally” going on to note his love for Great Britain, the homeland of his father.
Bow Group chairman Ben Harris-Quinney said that when Mr Abbott led their 65th-anniversary celebrations a few years ago “he laid out what many in our own country miss, that Britain is globally revered as a world leader in culture, business and politics.”
“Sometimes it requires a bit of an outsider to remind us how great a country Britain is, and how we should be fiercely proud of that,” the conservative group leader said.
“He is uniquely well placed to lead trade missions in Australia, the US and across the Anglosphere to remake our place in the world post-Brexit,” he added.
Harris-Quinney said that the Conservative Party in the UK is “often bereft of conviction and talent” but that supporters of Brexit and Conservatives in the country should be “delighted” with the appointment of Abbott in a key trade position, who they characterised as a man of “principle and talent”.
“The only job he’d be better at is dealing with our immigration crisis, as his stop-the-boats policy is why Australia has fared far better at dealing with illegal immigration than Britain,” the Bow Group concluded.
In a June interview with Brexit leader Nigel Farage, Mr Abbott said that Prime Minister Boris Johnson needed to get his “mojo back” as illegal boat migration in the English Channel began to pick up with the warmer weather.
Abbott also correctly predicted in June that illegal migration would quickly turn from a “trickle” into a “flood” if the British government failed to implement a policy that would immediately return migrant boats back to France. He also pointed to the perception among migrants that if they reach British shores they are unlikely to face deportation.
“As long as ‘to arrive is to remain’, people smugglers will have a business model and those countries that lack the will to say ‘no’ are at risk of peaceful invasion. This is the prospect that faces Britain if swift action is not taken to stop people coming illegally by boat,” Abbott wrote.
Under Operation Sovereign Borders implemented Mr Abbott’s government in 2013, illegal boat migration was completely halted by a military-led policy which disincentivised people-smuggling gangs sending boat migrants from Indonesia and other countries, by immediately turning back boat migrants at sea.
Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka
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