Britain\u2019s becalmed economy is bringing down yet another hapless government. Just witness the travails of Rachel Reeves, the nation\u2019s first ever female chancellor of the Exchequer, who in recent weeks told the world that she would break a promise by raising taxes and then reversed it in the face of government estimates that the economy was even weaker than thought.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s painfully depressing. What\u2019s most annoying is that the obvious response seems out of the question: Britain needs a big and ambitious free trade deal with the European Union.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a reason that\u2019s not going to happen. The country spent three decades tearing itself apart in a debate over whether to stay in the EU, voted narrowly to leave in 2016 and then indulged in even greater political bloodletting before thrashing out extremely disadvantageous terms on which to exit four years later. The most popular politician at present, according to polls, is the man who did more than anyone to make Brexit happen \u2014 Nigel Farage, who leads what is now called Reform U.K. Nobody on either side of the divide wants to reopen wounds that haven\u2019t even started to heal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain\u2019s becalmed economy is bringing down yet another hapless government. Just witness the travails of Rachel Reeves, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,3070,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,1201,15689,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-622321","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-british-economy","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-great-britain","16":"tag-trade","17":"tag-u-k","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115690077743656510","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}