The imperial nostalgia of Indian Summers should not blind us to India today

[-:Undertaker:-]

What would be literally the best for GB is having us as masters and everyone else as slaves, which makes your advocacy of free trade with less developed countries make a lot of sense. When people cannot afford to say no to the demands of another it ceases to be democratic and fair

Again wrong because it is your advocacy of not having free trade with countries which keeps them stuck in poverty, the Single Market has been a key example of this as France has sought to protect its own domestic agricultural industry against cheaper imports from former African colonies as well as dumping their surplus on African markets meaning those countries are locked out of markets. That's a disadvantage both to consumers in France/the EU as well as African farmers. The only people benefitting from that state-protected monopoly are French farmers whilst everybody else loses out - it may well be the case that protecting the French farming industry has support in France, in which case fair enough: but that's not fair or an advantage for Great Britain's economic interests.

The record of history has been clear, that countries which embrace free trade benefit enormously on both sides. It's true that geopolitical and the realpolitik of power plays a part in FTAs: but then that's world politics for you and you can't ever escape that. You only have to look at the post-colonial examples of Maoist China/pre-1990s India/Zimbabwe/Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iraq, Venezuela who sought to shun free trade and be 'self-sufficent' compared with Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, post-General Pinochet Chile, post-Deng Xioping China and post-1990s India.

And besides, you ignore the elephant in the room: that FTAs are entirely by choice between countries. It's up to them to decide benefits vs negatives although the fact that better and better FTAs are being signed between countries around the world is proof that most now see the benefits in free trade.