The drumbeats get louder as the call of the wild pulses through the blood of the Conservative party again. The front page of the Telegraph on Thursday splashes, “Cabinet call on PM to ditch ECHR”. On their headcount, a third of the British cabinet want to join Russia and Belarus as pariah states outside the European convention on human rights.

A CERTAIN dreary and dismal familiarity has developed around the Tories’ desperate efforts to secure trade deals with countries outwith the European Union, having decided to turn their back on the UK’s biggest export market.

Britain has dramatically increased the value of weaponry and defence equipment it sells to the world’s most repressive regimes since vows by senior ministers to expand arms exports after the Brexit vote.

Ministers have been accused of pushing for post-Brexit trade deals with more than a dozen countries around the world that do not guarantee workers’ rights or systematically violate employee protections.

Ministers are desperate to sign new trade deals after damaging the UK economy with Brexit.

As Boris Johnson prepares to schmooze Saudi Arabia, Sam Bright reports on the UK’s growing trade relationships with despotic regimes.

In the last six months, Liam Fox has been on a whistle-stop tour of authoritarian regimes.