Brexit is getting worse, not better. It is strangling the UK’s most important trading relationships. Now we have come through Covid it is getting easier to see that the UK is falling behind similar economies in terms of growth and productivity.

US investment bank Goldman Sachs calculated recently that the UK economy is 5% smaller compared to comparable countries than it was 8 years ago, before the Brexit vote.

Yet both major political parties don’t want to talk about Brexit and the build up of issues around it. That lack of honesty is poisoning the election campaign, perhaps best summed up by former government Minister Michael Heseltine who last week said that the July 4 general election will be “the most dishonest in modern times”. The leaders of the Conservative and Labour parties owe it to voters to acknowledge that Brexit is a disaster and to explain how they plan to deal with the situation.