Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, The Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Cindy Yu and I'm joined by Fraser Nelson and Katie Balls.

So how easy will it be to get a trade deal with America post-Brexit?

And do we even want one?

White House National Security Advisor John Bolton is in London this week and has told Boris Johnson

that the US is keen to accelerate trade negotiations post-Brexit, starting with sector-by-sector

mini-deals. Katie, tell us about those.

Yes, so John Bolton was trying to talk up the prospect of a UK-US trade deal.

He said the UK would be first in line.

That is supposed to be a rebuke to Barack Obama, the former president who said that we'd be at the back of the queue if he left the EU.

Donald Trump has also suggested it would be first in line.

Yeah, I think under Theresa May when she was prime minister, there was always this like reluctance or cautiousness when talking about this US trade deal.

Partly because I think that she didn't want

to antagonise the EU, her focus was on getting a deal with the EU, but also because so many

critics would say, well, why do you even want to do a deal with the US that is going to lower

standards in the country? And you can see lots of the opponents, perhaps because they are anti-Brexit,

or just because they are suspicious of what the trade deal would bring, would say things like it would mean chlorinated chicken in the country. And there's also their attack, which is it would open up the NHS and people argue would lead to privatisation. So when it comes to the comments made by John Bolton yesterday, I think he talked about how if you wanted to do an

accelerated trade deal, so clearly these things take a long time, you could speed things up by

doing sector-by-sector mini trade deals. Now, he suggested manufacturing first. I think if you

look at the way the UK economy is, we are a heavy services economy. So perhaps wouldn't be

one of the most effect for the UK. But I do think that this is a positive for number 10.

Because one of the big criticisms, as I just mentioned, of this idea of doing a trade deal was,

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