Brexit cost the UK the only good thing Margaret Thatcher ever did

Margaret Thatcher greets Jacques Delors, the European Commission president, in London, 1989. Photograph: Johnny Eggitt/AFP/Getty Images

Both chancellor Jeremy Hunt and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves went to the annual Davos World Economic Forum last week proclaiming that Britain was “open to business”.

These mundane statements of the obvious reminded me of the character in one of Michael Frayn’s ­novels who had an open mind – “open at the front and open at the back”.