Britain | The impact of free trade

Collateral damage

Britain is unusually open to trade but unusually bad at mitigating its impact

|BLACKBURN

“LANCASHIRE invented the world,” Iain Trickett’s grandfather told him. The old man was half right. During the industrial revolution the county in north-west England pioneered machinery that churned out manufactured goods by the ton; other countries copied it. Traces of that past glory linger on. In a factory in Blackburn highly skilled workers produce top-of-the-range jackets and jeans for companies including Community Clothing, of which Mr Trickett is general manager. Boxes destined for London’s fanciest shops are stacked up by the door.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Collateral damage”

The new political divide

From the July 30th 2016 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

Discover more

British MPs vote in favour of assisted dying

A monumental social reform is closer to being realised

This illustration depicts Keith Starmer and Rachel Reeves set against a background of UK, US, and Chinese flag elements.

The slow death of a Labour buzzword

And what that says about Britain’s place in the world



Britain’s Supreme Court considers what a woman is

At last. Britons had been wondering what those 34m people who are not men might be

Can potholes fuel populism?

A new paper looks at one explanation for the rise of Reform UK

Are British voters as clueless as Labour’s intelligentsia thinks? 

How the idea of false consciousness conquered the governing party