UK will get inferior deal, PM tells Sky News

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, in New York for the United Nations General Assembley, has told Sky News that the UK will be offered an “inferior” trade deal.

“Most of my colleagues want a fair deal for both the UK and Europe, but it has to be a deal that is inferior to membership, so you can’t have the cake and eat it.

“I don’t see a situation where Britain will be better off at the end of the deal.”

Malta is set to hold the rotating Presidency of the EU next year which means it will chair the initial Brexit negotiations if Theresa May triggers Article 50 early next year, as she has indicated.

Joseph Muscat said that a number of countries “will be wary – including my own – of giving the UK a deal which would undermine our own competitiveness.”