As the government continues to develop its response to Trump’s tariffs and the changing global economic order, the Prime Minister’s muddled thinking is troubling me.

We now know that he wants to simultaneously “unleash” British business whilst “sheltering it from the storm,” like a parent who implores his child to “run, but not yet, and not too far.”

The PM’s instincts are clear; he doesn’t make a secret of his desire to build a more “active state” and as I noted in this column yesterday he seems certain to view this moment of economic and geopolitical rewiring as proof of the wisdom of his interventionist philosophy.

The problem at the heart of the........

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