As the Brexit negotiations evolve, especially on trade, the prime minister’s Oxford degree in geography should stand her in good stead. For, however these complex and contentious discussions end up, an enduring reality is that the UK’s economic fate and future lie in Europe and not in the romantic, swashbuckling notion of Global Britain. If we myopically insist on this fiction, it is likely to be our economic and constitutional undoing.

The essence of geography was captured in a letter to the King of Prussia in 1804 by Napoleon, who knew a thing or two about power and geography. He wrote La politique de toutes les puissances est dans leur geographie, or the politics of all powers derives from their geography.

Britain, as an island…Read more: