The ruling Conservatives’ efforts to big up their paltry free trade deals with Australia and New Zealand took something of a comic turn this week, with the revelation that the UK Government was shipping signed copies of The Beano to the two countries.

The UK’S membership of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership offers little gain for the British economy.

The UK economy looks sickly against international comparisons, so let’s be honest about the three causes.

We are stuck in the Tory game of make-believe that everything is coming up roses in an English country garden. The reality is that following Brexit the rest of the world looks at England with a mixture of perplexity, pity, and amused contempt.

GIVEN the ruling Conservatives’ seeming penchant for pulling the wool over the electorate’s eyes on Brexit, it was heartening last week to hear Mark Carney deliver some home truths.

New Labour’s architect says only rebuilding bridges with the EU will solve what Sunak calls Britain’s ‘profound economic challenge’.

Keir Starmer must be brave and try and reunite us in some way with the rest of our continent.

With its economy in tatters, England is not having its finest hour. It is a time of transition for the United Kingdom... /

Boris Johnson’s plans to shred the Northern Ireland protocol have no basis in law, economics or diplomacy.

Rees-Mogg’s efforts to reap economic benefits from Brexit has come up woefully short.

A year after Britain left the European Union, you could be forgiven for thinking the current economic gloom has nothing to do with Brexit, and everything to do with Covid.

Six years on, it seems Europe still hasn’t got the memo. For that matter, neither has Britain. The United Kingdom, rather than leaping boldly into a brave new future, is imploding. Europe, meanwhile, seems to have found a new sense of purpose.

Brexit is forecast to do more permanent damage to the economy than Covid. But this self-inflicted wound can be healed.

The political implications of a no deal outcome threaten to be every bit as significant as its economic fallout, Anand Menon and Jonathan Portes write.