by Our Foreign Desk

CAPITALIST powers moved closer to sealing anti-democratic free trade deals in Japan yesterday while warning the British electorate against voting to leave the EU.

Leaders gathered at a Group of Seven (G7) summit in the city of Shima agreed to accelerate negotiations towards an agreement to remove barriers to trade between the EU and Japan.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said such a deal would benefit both sides to the tune of £89 billion.

Mr Cameron claimed that agreement and others, including the similarly anti-democratic Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), could boost the world economy by half a trillion US dollars (£340bn).

He took the occasion to promote the Remain campaign in next month’s referendum on Britain’s EU membership.
Denying he was a “closet Brexiteer,” Mr Cameron said Britain should “listen to our friends” in the G7.

The summit’s joint declaration stated that a British “exit from the EU would reverse the trend toward greater global trade, investment and the jobs they create and is a further serious risk to growth.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the British referendum was not formally discussed at the summit, while adding: “There was the signal that all who sat here want Britain to stay part of the EU.”

French President Francois Hollande said: “We didn’t strictly speaking talk about Brexit. It is not for us to say what the British people should be doing, this is a matter of sovereignty for the British people.”

But he added that the G7 leaders “did talk about the risk that could follow if the UK were to leave,” which he said would be “bad news for the UK as well as for the world.”

The leaders also reiterated their support for the coup regime in Ukraine and criticism of former group member Russia, as well as attacking China over steel exports and its territorial claims in the South China Sea.

In addition, the summit endorsed a tax transparency programme drawn up at an anti-corruption summit in London earlier this month.

But humanitarian charity Oxfam said the G7 had “sided with the tax-dodgers and missed this opportunity to end the destructive era of tax havens” by failing to back a global public register of company ownership and publication of tax payments.