Don't let doom and gloom drown out good news on trade

BRITAIN has, of course, chosen to isolate itself from the rest of the its Little mentality world, Englander helping to freeze it out of export markets

- Ross Clark

 How do we know this? Because frustrated Remainers keep telling us.

Yet there is one problem with this thesis it is not remotely true. As the Office for National Statistics revealed yesterday, we are trading with the rest of the world like never before.

In the year to September, we sold £ 876.6 billion worth of goods, an increase of 11.1 percent on the preceding 12 months - or a 4 percent rise when you take inflation into account. In 2022 we climbed from being the world's sixth-biggest exporter to being its fifth-biggest.

How depressing, though, that we rarely hear positive news like this reported. I am not saying the infighting on the Tory backbenches shouldn't reach the top of news bulletins - it matters, of course. But somewhere, surely, on our 24-hour rolling news channels space should be made to flag good news about the economy.

So why did Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch's announcement of the latest trade figures on Wednesday almost sink without a trace? Since Britain voted for Brexit in 2016, every time a think tank or global body produces some gloomy outlook for Britain, it is hammered into us.