Liam Fox’s encomium to global free trade, delivered recently in Manchester, the original home of the idea  (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/30/globalisation-poverty-corruption-free-trade-liam-fox), gives me an excuse to re-post this blog of mine from April this year, on the early Victorian version of the ideology, which Fox appears to have disinterred wholesale; and without having learned any of the practical lessons against it of the past 150 years. https://bernardjporter.com/2016/04/30/global-utopia/. Take a look.

He’s right, however, to regard the European single market as an intrinsically anti-globalising institution in many respects. Theoretically, a country delivered from its protectionist rules should be able to trade more ‘freely’ in the world. That’s my worry.