The Grenfell tragedy exposed Britain’s utter failure to learn from others. This is what turning inwards looks like

The nub of the problem is an insular self-regard that sees the UK as special. Born largely of ignorance about elsewhere, that consensus prevails until something calls it into question

It may seem perverse, on the day after the UK should have left the European Union (according to the last timetable but one), to consider what this country might learn from others. Was not the Brexit vote a statement about going it alone rather than submitting to common regulations and working as a group?

But leaving the EU – if and when it happens – does not have to mean that we go it alone even more than we currently do, nor should it – whatever is being mooted about a regulatory “race to the bottom”.

The current bureaucratic fashion for “evidence-based solutions” and “best practice” suggests another way, but is no more than jargon for approaches that should surely have been applied since time began. If they weren’t, why weren’t they?