‘Disbelief’ as US-UK trade deals under threat after Britain axes negotiators

Business community decries act of arson' as one-seventh of trade posts within British consulates in the US are scrapped

America was meant to be Britain's route to the sunlit uplands of Brexit. Then, after hopes of a free trade deal evaporated, successive Conservative governments have set their sights lower, by trying to forge closer ties with individual US states.

Now the civil servants responsible for delivering those state-level deals have been let go, in what a furious British businessman described as an act of arson".