Since last year’s Brexit referendum, the UK has been likened to a suicide who jumps off a 100-storey building and, as he falls past the 50th floor, shouts “so far, so good”. This comparison is unfair to suicides. The real economic and political message today is “so far, so bad”.

The “deal” to begin negotiations for a post-Brexit relationship, announced at the EU summit on December 15, followed Prime Minister Theresa May’s capitulation on all of the demands made by European leaders: €50bn ($59bn) of budget contributions, European court jurisdiction over the rights of EU citizens in Britain, and a permanently open border with Ireland.