Leaving on WTO terms does not mean we do nothing else. It means we accelerate our trade deals with the United States, our accession to the Trans Pacific Partnership, and our direct negotiations with the key countries with whom we have Free Trade Agreements through the EU, in particular, Switzerland, South Korea, the EFTA countries, Mexico and Canada. Indeed, our growth in existing trade under WTO rules is more spectacular with countries outside the EU than inside it. In 2017, for the ninth year in a row, UK exports to the EU have been massively outstripped by those to countries outside it.

The WTO rules are the foundation of open trading systems between nations: it is the goal of the WTO to reduce trade barriers, not to impose them. Our trade with countries with whom we don’t have preferential trading arrangements are underpinned by WTO rules and a network of Mutual Recognition Agreements which we could and should replicate. There is no reason why other countries who want to trade with us won’t want to do this. Businesses across the EU will want to protect their existing market share of sales, and see them grow, so will still be doing their best to sell to us at as competitive a price against the rest of the world as their costs allow, especially with the prospect of a US trade war and punitive tariffs levied by the Trump administration.