The week that summed up the performative and inept nature of Brexit

That reality is central to the observation made by John Springford of the Centre for European Reform in his contribution to an excellent collection of essays on Labour and the economy produced by the Social Market Foundation think-tank (worth your time). Springford makes the obvious point that given the political constraints on alignment and not joining the EU single market and customs union, Labour is unlikely to offer “a dramatically different change of direction” if it wins power at the next general election.

That’s perhaps why Springford suggests Labour should embark on a “largely unilateral” trade strategy based around three pillars: 

• minimising regulatory divergence 
• ensuring new deals with the rest of the world also minimise divergence
• domestic, pro-trade policies, like better export finance and port infrastructure. 

As he concludes, rather underwhelmingly: “None of these measures would do much to offset the large, negative impact of Brexit, but taken together, they would prevent the situation from getting worse, and create a foundation to pursue more integration with the EU if the politics allows.”