Why the UK trade deficit with the EU is woeful and widening | Larry Elliott

The single market benefits manufacturers far more than providers of services. Guess which Britain excels in

At the time it was big, big news. Three days before the general election, official figures showed that Britain's trade had taken a marked turn for the worse. Government claims that the economy was healthy took a knock.

That was June 1970, a time when the size of Britain's trade gap was front page stuff. Headlines screamed about the UK being back in the red. The TV news bulletins were full of it. Harold Wilson is supposed to have blamed it - along with England's defeat by West Germany in the World Cup - for his unexpected defeat at the hands of Ted Heath the following Thursday. All this for a trade deficit of just 31m, distorted by the arrival in Britain of a couple of Boeing's new jumbo jets.

Productivity is an economic measure of the efficiency of a workforce. It typically measures the level of output per hour of work, or per worker.