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It makes almost no sense for the Brexit debacle to have come down to the issue of an ‘independent British trade policy’. Trade was not a central issue at the referendum and remains wildly misunderstood by public and politicians alike. But we are where we are. If we end up crashing out by accident, or the May government tears itself apart, it will be on the pretext that significant numbers of Tory MPs want that independent trade policy and cannot stomach the restrictions that a customs union would put on Britain’s freedom over trade. It’s hard to know where to start with trying to dismantle the trade illusion, so long

Maybe we will go for a Norway-Double Plus. Or A Canada-Minus. Or Common Market 2.0, or a WTO-Light, an EEA-Doubled, or an Enhanced EFTA or even a Singapore Sling or a White Russian. Okay, scratch those last two. I seem to have mixed up a list of options for leaving the European Union with a cocktail menu. But that pair aside – and who knows, maybe late on a Thursday night MPs will vote them through instead – they are all ways that we might eventually leave. Amid all the arguments over our departure, however, one point is easily overlooked. For the economy, after we sailed through the original deadline

Cripes. At this rate the CBI will be putting out reports on Brexit’s potential benefits, George Osborne will be reminding us he could always see its upside, and even the FT will be running leaders saying Brexit doesn’t quite mean the end of the world. There have been plenty of twists and turns in our tortured departure from the European Union but few quite so unexpected as the apparent conversion of the Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney to the cause. In a speech yesterday, Carney didn’t opt for any of the apocalyptic stuff – no food on the shelves at Tesco, pensioners dying in hospitals because of

Wealth taxes are back in fashion. In the United States, Senator Elizabeth Warren is proposing an ‘ultra-millionaire tax’. In the UK, there are calls for greater taxation of property from a coalition stretching from Lord Willetts, a former Conservative minister, to Owen Jones and other Corbynista activists. I say ‘back’ in fashion, because these taxes appear to be subject to a cycle of sorts – endlessly proposed, debated, then… quietly set aside. Most of the recent UK examples have focused on property. The Tories’ ‘dementia tax’ – a phrase coined by Policy Exchange’s Will Heaven in The Spectator – is remembered all too well from the ill-fated 2017 election. Before

With all the dramatic votes this week, it could easily have been missed that an important debate about immigration also took place in the chamber on Monday, on the government’s new proposals to limit immigration after Britain leaves the EU. Pulling no punches was the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, Jess Phillips, who used a speech to pour scorn on the fact that people who earned under £30,000 would be classed as unskilled under the new proposals, and therefore would find it more difficult to emigrate to the UK. But it was Phillips’ remarks about her colleagues in the House of Commons that caught Mr Steerpike’s attention. Pointing out that she

Brexit has become the inverse of a pair of rose-tinted spectacles. It is the lens through which all negative economic news has come to be interpreted – and magnified. Yesterday, the IMF published its latest forecasts for global economic growth. One might well ask what use this material is, given the IMF’s past record at economic forecasting. But whether these forecasts are of any value or not, they have, predictably enough, been jumped on by the Remain-supporting media in order to scribble yet another chapter of anti-Brexit narrative. Indeed, according to this narrative, it is not just Britain which seems to be suffering now from the moronic, misinformed decision of

After suffering what could be the largest Commons defeat in over a hundred years – far surpassing anyone’s expectations, it’s fair to say that Theresa May will not be happy with the way things went this evening. So she might take comfort in the fact that her deal did at least have one positive outcome: providing a small boost to the economy –  though probably not in the way she intended. In response to her Brexit deal being voted down by a massive margin, the pound briefly fell, and then rebounded sharply against the Euro and the Dollar, a clear sign that the uncertainty of the Brexit process was still

Britain’s foreign aid department was on the defensive this week, following a Mail on Sunday article casting scorn on the decision to spend £200 million in aid on Bangladesh, after the violent and possibly rigged spectacle of the country’s election at the end of last year. In a blistering response, the Department for International Development (DfID), called out the Mail’s headline, which it said was ‘factually inaccurate’ and said that ‘No UK aid was given to the Government of Bangladesh, the Bangladeshi Election Commission or any Bangladeshi political parties for this election.’ But while it may be true that the department has not given money directly to the Bangladeshi government,

The ports will be clogged up with lorries. The shelves at Tesco will be empty. Doctors will be rationing antibiotics, and the army will be called out to deliver food. As we approach the deadline for our departure from the European Union, as the Prime Minister returns empty handed yet again from yet another catastrophic round of negotiations in Brussels, and as the cliff-edge gets closer and closer, the conventional wisdom is that the pressure on Britain to agree to something – anything! – becomes more and more intense. And yet, as so often in the through-the-looking glass world of Brexit, that conventional wisdom is a bit off target. And

Hats off to Ross Clark for his timely highlighting of the perils of a Corbyn-led government. For those who remember the 1970s, the spectre of an unreconstructed far-left socialist and his acolyte ensconced as neighbours in Downing Street is a terrifying yet wearyingly predictable scenario. Unfettered by opposition, they would see Britain’s economy as being ripe for experimentation. Some of Corbyn’s policy pronouncements which are already in the public domain are alarming enough. Even more concerning should be the as yet unuttered thoughts lurking in the corners of Corbynista minds; the authoritarian student politics and divisive dogma. If Corbyn is elected, we can look forward to a huge amount of

So will those Remainers seemingly hoping for a Brexit-related recession get what they want after all? This morning Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for the service sector certainly points in that direction. The index, which is really just a questionnaire to businesses but which can give advance warning of swings in economic growth, fell to 50.4 in November, down from 52.2 in October and 54 in September. Anything above 50 denotes growth – so it doesn’t indicate we are yet in recession – but it suggests a steep plunge in activity and confidence which could well take us there. It would be foolish to deny any link with the Brexit crisis.