Liam Fox will say that remaining in a customs union would leave the UK “with one arm tied behind our back”

Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, will rebuke Britain’s largest business group today and call for the country to prioritise “trading opportunities of the future” above existing economic ties to the EU.

In an attack on the Confederation of British Industry, which yesterday backed Labour’s new policy of remaining in a customs union, Dr Fox warns that such a move would leave the UK “with one arm tied behind our back” when negotiating future trade deals. Britain should move away from Europe’s economic and regulatory model altogether and seek new “multi-country alliances of the like-minded”.

Dr Fox has held tentative discussions about Britain signing up to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement that includes Australia, Japan, Canada and Mexico. He is understood to have been