A couple of weeks into this new post and one thing that strikes me is the number of meetings, summits, and formats where the EU is at the table with Asian and Pacific countries (US, Canada, China, Japan, Korea, Australia, NZ, Indonesia, India etc) but the UK isn't. CPTPP feels v oversold to me.

CPTPP is just madness. When the government announced that they were pressing ahead with it was when I realised that Labour is not going to alter course. It's so very depressing.

As with so many things post-Brexit, we've just kind of swallowed the bitter pill of loss of exposure and influence without really tasting it. For a medium-ish power with history and pretensions to have walked away from so much clout is just madness.