The Remainers are regrouping amid the total failure to capitalise on Brexit

Ministers talk tough on the Protocol but otherwise have refused to seize the opportunities from leaving

I’m not especially keen on the idea of shipping Channel migrants to Rwanda; it seems cumbersome and expensive, with huge potential for catastrophe. But there is also something grating about the blanket outrage over the plan, with no credible alternative solutions offered. It’s all very well Labour and every bishop in the Lords vehemently opposing the scheme, but how, exactly, would they propose to disrupt the human traffickers’ horribly lucrative business model? I’m all ears.

Something similar is happening in the discussions over the Northern Ireland Protocol. To say it isn’t working would be an understatement. It has created an impossible situation that threatens the very foundations of the Good Friday Agreement, which all sides have a responsibility to uphold.

Some blame DUP truculence for the paralysis in Belfast, given its refusal to enter government until the Protocol is removed or revised. This overlooks the fact that every Unionist party opposes the Protocol. As one of the GFA’S architects, Lord Trimble, has pointed out, the lack of any Unionist buy-in has destroyed the cross-community consent at the heart of Northern Irish politics. The situation is unsustainable and something needs to change.

But the Government’s new legislation, designed to achieve exactly that, has provoked widespread fury. Some call its measures “extreme”, or an outrageous breach of international law, despite their focus on fixing practical problems with the Protocol’s operation. The hand-wringers yearn to restart talks with the EU, or for the UK simply to suck it up. A negotiated settlement, rooted in mutual goodwill, would clearly be the ideal. But goodwill is in noticeably short supply. Although NI-GB trade accounts for well under one per cent of the EU’S total GDP, it is subject to 20 per cent of all customs checks conducted across the bloc. Is this reasonable behaviour towards an alleged ally – or weaponising the border as punishment for Brexit?

Article 16 of the Protocol states that if talks fail and either party moves unilaterally, the other side may take “proportionate” and “strictly necessary” rebalancing measures. With so little trade affected, an all-out trade war with the UK in retaliation for the new legislation would seem disproportionate. Indeed, in his initial response, Maroš Šefčovič, vice-president of the European Commission, pledged “proportionality” in any EU reaction.

Nevertheless, trade relations look certain to deteriorate – and we should prepare for all eventualities anyway because you can never rule out a hyper-punitive EU approach. In the short term this could mean legal action, fines, and an end to bilateral cooperation in crucial areas. Further down the line, if nobody budges, it could mean targeted tariffs on UK goods, perhaps even ripping up the Brexit trade deal altogether.

This is where I start to lose faith that this Government could ever combine the same sense of purpose towards resolving the Protocol’s seemingly intractable problems, with the guile needed to weather the ensuing fallout.

Long before the Protocol row came to a head, the Government had neither shored up the UK’S position nor moved to make Brexit Britain more competitive. The Treasury ludicrously opted to raise corporation tax to 25 per cent, to French levels, just when we should have lowered it.

Ministers favour an odd circular logic; dismissing tax cuts on the basis that they would exacerbate inflation, even though these would help offset the consequences of spiralling prices. If they can’t even cut taxes because inflation is “too high”, how likely are they to make the changes to Britain’s economic model – deregulation, radical reductions in taxation – needed to answer trade retaliation from our largest trading partner?

Unsurprisingly, ideological drift has emboldened many still unreconciled to the referendum – Tory MP Tobias Ellwood recently demanded that we return to the single market to settle the “Irish problem” and offset cost-of-living increases, as if high inflation were a purely British phenomenon. Although some are better at hiding it than others, many see this as a first step towards rejoining the EU.

This would be disastrous – not least because we’d be re-entering a very different club from the one we left, presumably on worse terms. (Last month the Conference on the Future of Europe approved a radical overhaul of the EU which would abolish national vetoes and approve the launch of a European army.) But more of this will follow. Our total failure to reap the rewards of Brexit – absorbing all the costs of departure, while keeping the status quo in every other way – has buttressed the argument that leaving the EU carries only drawbacks.

In reality, many fields offer immense opportunities – particularly in areas which the EU is compromising or killing off through excessively stringent rules, like gene-editing and AI. Yet so far the Government has been depressingly slow to realise them. Instead, it favours a kind of scatter-gun industrial strategy – with muddled interventions in all sorts of areas, rather than aiming to produce the best economic conditions overall, and letting the market do the rest.

We should, above all, play to our strengths. So why, rather than abandoning the EU’S draconian approach to tech, does the Online Safety Bill place extraordinary burdens on start-ups that will repel investment? The UK’S major universities are among our greatest assets, accounting for seven in Europe’s top 10. But the plans for a long-awaited life sciences hub, the Oxford-cambridge Arc, have been slow to get off the ground – partly through local councils’ reluctance to sanction development and partly, one suspects, because building an elite Southern centre of expertise doesn’t quite fit into the levelling-up agenda.

One question emerges repeatedly: what are Brexit’s advantages? The answer is plenty, notably the vaccine rollout, which saved thousands of lives and allowed our economy to open up earlier. Some claim this could have happened within the EU. But picture the scene, a UK government, probably Remainer-led, confronting the European Medicines Agency, which in this alternative universe would still be headquartered in London, and saying “we’ll do our own procurement, thanks”. It is inconceivable. The vaccine experience (and the EU’S mean-spirited retaliation) revealed the value of being nimble. The tragedy is that we haven’t bothered to capitalise on it more.

Ministers dismiss tax cuts on the basis that they would exacerbate inflation, even though these would help offset spiralling prices