Tories pay the price for the harms of Brexit

MOST of the time, trade is an arcane subject only of interest to trade specialists and assorted business lobbies – and, of course, the editors of The Economist. But every now and again, it shifts from the far periphery to the molten core of British politics. This happened in the 1840s with the abolition of the Corn Laws, in the 1900s with the advent of imperial preference, in the 1970s with Britain’s entry into the European Common Market, and then again in 2016 with Brexit.

For the first six years of this Conservative government, the question of Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union was a hobby horse of has-beens and monomaniacs. Then prime minister David Cameron told his party to stop “banging on about Europe”.

But Cameron’s decision to concede an “in” or “out” vote to the eurosceptics in 2016 – a vote that he thought he would easily win – turned trade, in the form of Britain’s trading relationship with its biggest trading partner, into the defining issue of the Conservative’s years in power.