Brexit has been back in the spotlight in the last week, in large part because of Rachel Reeves becoming the first UK Chancellor to attend a meeting of European Union finance ministers since the country’s utterly lamentable departure from the bloc.

There was something of a song and a dance around Ms Reeves’s trip to Brussels.

However, there was not surprisingly little correlation between the excitement over the visit and what it achieved.

The trip never looked likely to fuel any kind of hopes of meaningful mitigation of the Brexit damage.

The warm talk was of course better than the hostility to the EU shown by so many Conservative government ministers in the run-up to the UK being ripped out of the European single market at the end of 2020.

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Memories of the attitude towards the EU from Lord David Frost, Boris Johnson’s chief Brexit negotiator and former chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association, remain fresh.

It is without doubt good we have seen the back of that era.

However, Labour’s “red lines” on Brexit, seemingly drawn up with wooing of Leave voters in mind, remain destructive indeed for the UK economy and society.

They stand in the way of any major progress on tackling the huge Brexit damage.

This ongoing damage is the result of the UK losing frictionless trade........

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