Six years post-Brexit, Britain remains haunted by the EU in a neurosis that is not reciprocated in Brussels or other capitals.

Liz Truss becoming Prime Minister is the end of what little hope remained that the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill would be scrapped.

The UK government’s Northern Ireland Protocol Bill has now begun its journey through Parliament. If passed, it will unilaterally set aside significant sections of the Protocol – breaching international law and risking a trade war in the middle of a cost of living crisis.

With a potential trade war looming, Conservatives are stuck in an ever-more destructive disagreement over what Britain should look like outside the EU.

While the picture’s hardly pretty and certainly not what advocates of Brexit envisioned, none of it surprises economists. As a former Bank of England official observed: “You run a trade war against yourself, bad things happen.”