Welcome to Ian McConnell on Business, where each week the business editor takes the reins and gives his honest assessment of the economy and business world.

Rishi Sunak may have overseen some of the most dismal economic policymaking in recent memory but he is certainly not one to shy away from trying to claim credit is due anyway.

And he lived up to this track record in a speech last week to the Policy Exchange in London.

It was quite the far-reaching ramble, delivered with typical (and entirely unjustified) confidence.

In many ways, it was more of the same. However, in other important ways, it plumbed new depths.

Among the highlights, if you can call them that, was Mr Sunak’s remarkable omission of the Tory hard Brexit when he came to rhyming off “shocks” that have hit the UK economy in recent years.

Mr Sunak declared: “For all the dangers ahead, few are felt more acutely than people’s sense of financial insecurity. We’ve been pounded by a series of once-in-a-generation shocks.

“The worst international financial crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s. The first global pandemic since the Spanish flu in 1918.

“The biggest energy shock since the 1970s. Global forces, yet they are hitting our living standards here at home.”

He added: “We must be prepared strategically, economically, with robust plans and greater national resilience, to meet this time of instability with strength.”

So not only did he not mention the huge toll on the economy and by natural extension living standards from Brexit, but Mr Sunak also talked about “robust plans” to meet “instability”.

This was rich indeed, given what he and the Conservatives have done is delivered an act of incredible self-harm with Brexit.

We should make no mistake – this is a shock of great proportions. And it is most certainly “hitting our living standards here at home”.

Thankfully, independent forecasters and economists have been on hand to tell us what the Tories will not about Brexit.

Back in the spring of last year, Office for Budget Responsibility chairman Richard Hughes summed up Brexit’s effect as follows: “We think that in the long run it reduces our overall output by around 4% compared with had we remained in the EU.”

He added: “It’s a shock to the UK economy of the order of magnitude of those sorts of other shocks that we’ve seen from the pandemic, from the energy crisis.”

So it is odd from any rational perspective, although entirely understandable from a political one of course, that Mr Sunak did not name Brexit in his Policy Exchange speech as among the major shocks to have hit the UK economy.

Brexit’s effect is not only huge, it is very much ongoing. And the damage will continue unless something meaningful happens to mitigate it, with rejoining the single market at the least or going back into the European Union the only developments which would essentially put an end to the economic vandalism.

Anything short of this, such as what is being proposed by Labour in terms of trying to mitigate some of the Brexit harm, is relatively meaningless.

My column in The Herald last Wednesday observed that, as a general election looms, Labour continues to look quite frankly petrified about addressing Brexit in any kind of significant way.

The article also pointed out that, for anyone who might harbour hopes Labour would rebuild relationships with the EU in a way that leads to meaningful mitigation of the hard Brexit damage if it were to win the election, the UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE) think-tank’s latest “tracker” makes for grim reading.

It was interesting to see that Brexit and the crucial European issue did not feature in the Progressive Britain conference earlier this month, the column noted.

The Progressive Britain think-tank describes itself as “the new platform for policymaking, political education, and imaginative thinking to rebuild Labour and the nation”, and declares itself “rooted in the Labour Party”.

It says: “We’re focusing on the big things – our work covers all aspects of Labour policy, strategy and narrative to support the party to develop distinctive, dynamic and popular positions and messages in the run up to the next general [election].”

The “big things”, seemingly, do not include Brexit, and that is somewhat jaw-dropping, the column observed.

UKICE did contemplate what might happen next on the Brexit front as it published its latest UK-EU relations tracker, including in the event of Labour winning the election.

It said: “With red lines mostly unchanged, and trust still repairing, forging a closer relationship will not be straightforward.”

Labour’s “red lines”, of course, remain that it will not take the UK back into the single market or even the customs union if it wins the election.

UKICE meanwhile observed that the European Commission’s youth mobility scheme proposal was swiftly rejected not only by the Conservatives but also by Labour.

This is a grim situation.

Equally dismal is the determination of both Labour and the Conservatives to quite simply refuse to admit that Brexit is causing huge damage.