It’s odd isn’t it? We’ve had all that discussion about “crashing out” of the European Union on “WTO terms”. Yet we’ve heard very little about the World Trade Organisation itself, how it makes its rules and whether they can be enforced. Isn’t it about time we did?

For it seems almost entirely to have escaped political attention that, just at the moment we are contemplating relying on it, the WTO faces a political crisis. It is already unable to make rulings on some of the cases before it. Before this year is out, it may be unable to make any rulings at all.

President Trump is putting pressure on the WTO in his dispute with China JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS

A bit of history first. In 1948, 53 countries signed the Havana Charter which envisaged the creation of an International Trade Organisation