Is Liam Fox’s ‘free-trading nation’ of the past a model for post-Brexit Britain?

Liam Fox, keen to negotiate trade deals outside the EU, has harked back to a golden age in which Britain was a ‘free trading nation’. But just how open was 19th-century Britain? Gordon Bannerman argues that the protectionist tradition was at least as strong as the impulse for free trade. Now, Britain no longer has an empire and it is difficult to compare the Victorian manufacturing-led economy with today’s services-led sector, where tariffs will be a major obstacle to trade with emerging economies. And although Tory protectionist instincts have faded, Fox faces a new challenge to free trade in the form of President Donald Trump.