Liz Truss wants growth at 2.5 per cent. That figure will allow the UK to pay off the huge cost of her energy subsidy – predicted at around £40 billion – while also putting the public finances on a more sustainable footing. The problem is that growth is elusive. Between the financial crash and the Covid lockdowns, the UK’s average growth rate was just 1.3 per cent.
One of the few sure-fire ways to grow the economy is trade. New markets give companies the chance to grow their sales purely by matching up new consumers with goods that they want. The power to do this, to set our own trade arrangements in a way that aligned with British interests, became a central argument in the Brexit debate. But the new trade secretary Kemi Badenoch isn’t happy with our Brexit-obsessed trade discussions. ‘I’m Brexit fatigued. Everything is framed through the lens of Brexit.
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