Leading Brexiteer Liam Fox complains British people are too obsessed with Brexit

Cabinet minister Liam Fox has complained that British people are ignoring important opportunities in world trade because they are too obsessed with talking “about Brexit and Brexit and Brexit”.

The international trade secretary – a key figure in the Brexit camp – said competitors were focusing on how to exploit opportunities in China, the US and other growing markets, but that debate in the UK had too narrow a “bandwidth”.

It came after he suggested that Theresa May’s target to lower net migration to the tens of thousands could be dropped, setting him at odds with the prime minister.

At an event for business leaders at the Institute of Directors in London on Tuesday, Mr Fox said the UK’s competitors were planning for up to 15 years into the future and he wanted the UK to “widen our horizons, to lengthen our timeframes”.

He said: “It’s really important that we don’t have such a narrow bandwidth that we only think about Brexit.

“It’s really interesting when I go to China, when I go to other parts of the world, they talk about the global economy, they talk about tariffs, talk about the United States and China, they talk about the WTO [World Trade Organisation].

“And in the UK we talk about Brexit and Brexit and Brexit. It is an important issue, but it isn’t the only issue that is out there in terms of global trade.”

He was setting out his plan to make Britain a “21st century exporting superpower”, outlining the government’s desire to increase exports as a proportion of UK GDP to 35 per cent.

Official figures released in June showed exports of UK goods and services hit a record £620bn last year, accounting for 30 per cent of UK GDP.

International trade secretary Liam Fox

He argued that Brexit did not mean Britain would “pull up the drawbridge” but instead would be able to “embrace the opportunities that the changing pattern of global trade presents”.

He added: “We must raise our ambitions, widen our horizons and expand our timescales.

“Europe is, and will, continue to be an important market for our goods and services, but there is a world beyond Europe and a time beyond Brexit.”

Earlier in the day Mr Fox raised doubts over whether the government’s target to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands would last.

Asked on LBC Radio if it was the correct approach, he said: “Well, that is the government’s target at the moment. We will be reviewing what we do post-Brexit.”

Pushed on whether he supported the target, he said: “Naturally as a member of the cabinet I support the government’s policy, but I think that we do need to look in the future at how we match our employment opportunities with our migration policy.”

Anti-immigration politicians have attacked the government’s consistent failure to hit the target since it came in, while those in government around Ms May have been pushing for it to be scrapped for years.

Home secretary Sajid Javid has refused to explicitly say that he supported the target, but did insist he remained committed to the Conservative Party’s manifesto.

George Osborne, the former Conservative chancellor, said last year that no senior ministers supported the approach.

The Independent has been running the Drop The Target campaign for over a year in a bid to see the end of the blunt immigration policy, backed by Ms May since her days in the Home Office.