We do seem to have a certain problem here

Those politicians who we depute to deal with international trade for us seem not to know what international trade is, its point nor its purpose. This is indeed a certain problem - for what’s the point of deputing policy making to those with no grasp of the subject under discussion?

Britain’s trade deal with New Zealand risks opening up its beef, dairy and sheep-meat producers to cheaper imports with few compensating benefits, a Commons report says.

The cross-party international trade committee has raised concerns over the elimination of tariffs on New Zealand goods under the free trade agreement, and has called for an analysis of the potential risks to the UK’s food security.

The MPs questioned whether the government has fully considered the “pros and cons” of liberalising tariffs given that its own impact assessment predicted the UK’s agriculture, forestry, fishing and semi-processed food sectors could contract from the increased competition. New Zealand’s beef, sheep-meat and dairy products are generally cheaper to produce.

As Adam Smith pointed out the purpose of all production is consumption. As can be derived from that - and from other logical chains - the point and purpose of trade is the imports. For it is the imports that we get to consume, exports being what we must labour over for other people to consume.

Which is what makes these complaints entirely and wholly barking. For those complaints are that Johnny Foreigner might produce food more cheaply than we can. Therefore we will be able to eat cheaper than if we relied solely upon our own stout yeomen. This is the complaint recall.

The discussion entirely ignores the compensating benefit that we become richer by having this deal. Which, given that the aim of having an economy, heck a civilisation at all, is to make us all better off seems to be rather a blindness in the political vision, doesn’t it?

Now, it’s true, we do rather come from the Continuity Neoliberals part of the spectrum but this isn’t (despite the way we talk of “trade preferences” in this field) a matter of preference or political shading. This is just a simple matter of fact.

The point and purpose of trade is to get our hands - or gullets - on those imports. So to argue that gaining access to cheaper food has “few compensating benefits” is to betray a profound ignorance of the basics of the subject under discussion.

There is much both chortling and agonising over the “Whither Britain?” question currently but we do think that the outcome is going to be rather better - whichever pathway is chosen - if Parliament were rather more heavily stocked by those with at least a vague understanding of the facts.

That’s not too much to ask, is it?