If you want a benefit of Brexit, here it is: British employers must now innovate again | Larry Elliott

Our economic model relied on a bottomless supply of cheap workers. Firms must now invest to boost productivity

Strikes by nurses. Strikes by teachers. Strikes by train drivers, civil servants and college lecturers. This might not quite be a rerun of the winter of discontent 44 years ago but it is starting to look rather like it.

While it has been the standoff between the government and public sector workers that has attracted most of the media attention, there has also been widespread action in the private sector. Just this week, the Unite union announced that 180 members at the Drax power station would strike after rejecting an 8% pay offer, that tanker drivers employed by JW Suckling were balloting for industrial action, and that grounds maintenance staff on an outsourced Welwyn and Hatfield council contract had ended a lengthy dispute after securing a 13% pay increase.

Larry Elliott is the Guardian's economics editor