It’s time Brexit Britain created a trade policy that focuses on its competitive advantages, says Daniel Dieppe

Brexit was never meant to be an economic success. At least, according to the Treasury estimates, which predicted a year-long recession, a 500,000 increase in unemployment and a reduction in growth between three and six per cent.

Yet in complex manufacturing, as the new Civitas report, The Quiet Triumph of British Engineering highlights, Brexit Britain has found some major success stories. Despite all the dislocation of the pandemic, supply chain problems and Brexit-related change, some home-produced technologies are in high global demand, and jobs, exports and production are set to grow quickly.

The primary reason for this success is its complexity. There are many headwinds blowing against manufacturing in the UK – including tariffs, high taxes and cyber attacks – but technological innovation and craftsmanship are not among them. It is a hard-won national competitive advantage. We dominate in top-end design, customisation, niche engineering and technological integration.

A whole raft of new investments in this field confirms this thesis. Earlier this year, Cornish Lithium announced the UK’s first geothermal lithium-production plant, utilising the green-lit lithium mining in County Durham; £2.4bn has been invested by Australia over ten years to

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