The following is taken from the Centre for Policy Studies report 'The Free Ports Opportunity. How Brexit could boost trade, manufacturing and the North' authored by Rishi Sunak, Conservative MP for Richmond: 

Brexit will provide the UK with new economic freedom, and the Government should take the opportunity to create Free Ports across the nation. Free Ports will simultaneously: increase manufacturing output, create employment regionally where it is most needed, and promote trade. Using Free Ports to drive economic growth will also re-connect Britain with its proud maritime history as a trading nation and act as a beacon of British values, signalling the country’s openness to the world.

We have promoted this before, but make no apologies for promoting it again. Watch Jacob Rees-Mogg make the moral case for free markets during an Institute of Economic Affairs fringe event at last year's Conservative Party Conference. 

The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) has launched a new video this week highlighting the benefits of unilateral free trade post-Brexit. Do take a look at it. At just under three minutes, it's not going to take up much of your time, and it's well worth your time. 

The invisible hand of the free market, as Adam Smith described it, gives us choice, forces prices down, and if a genuine free market is allowed to flourish, also allows all of us trade our way to prosperity.

But free markets are under threat. Not only do we have an official opposition in Parliament ideologically opposed to capitalism, faith in free markets is gradually reducing, making it more likely that there will be a Marxist Government led by Jeremy Corbyn, or one of his acolytes, in a few years’ time - or possibly even sooner.

The following is a guest post by the Rev Dr Peter Mullen, Hon. Chaplain of The Freedom Association. 

 “A creeping sense of hostility to business” has taken hold in the Conservative party, says George Freeman, former head of Downing Street’s policy unit. This hostility is not “creeping,” George; under Mrs May it is galloping. Last Saturday the prime minister denounced “the unacceptable face of capitalism.” I suppose her statement was a follow-up to her disastrous election manifesto which a commentator at the time described as “somewhat to the left of Ed Miliband’s.” No wonder she lost her party’s majority when she began the campaign by alienating her core supporters. Alas we now have not only an extreme socialist opposition in this country; we also have a socialist government.

This is a guest post by Harry Clynch, an English undergraduate at Cambridge University, and an officer of the Cambridge University Conservative Association. 

The general election was a complete travesty for the Conservative Party. Through a grossly incompetent campaign, the Prime Minister managed to squander a twenty-point lead to put the most dangerous Labour leader in the party’s history within inches of Downing Street.

Of course, identity politics was a factor in this. Mrs May’s rather robotic approach to the election, and the symbolic damage done by such things as her refusal to partake in the televised debates, and her U-turn on what was already a flawed policy regarding social care (only exacerbated by her refusal to admit it even was a U-turn), always created the sense and atmosphere that the Conservatives were constantly trying to repair damage rather than guiding effortlessly towards a majority government, let along the huge Commons majority that some initially predicted.