Sir Keir Starmer has had quite the week.

Firstly, last Tuesday, we had the eventual delivery of a well-trailed speech in the garden of Downing Street. Sadly, the contents of the speech were as previewed.

The message from Sir Keir was that things are in even worse shape than Labour “ever imagined”. He talked about things getting worse before they get better. The Labour leader also spoke about “tough” choices. He went on about Labour’s “difficult decision to mend the public finances”, and “unpopular decisions”.

Sir Keir also talked about a “painful” Budget in October and having “no other choice”.

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It was an utterly dismal speech.

And, as observed in my column in The Herald last Wednesday, “it was difficult to shake the notion that we were back in 2010 again”.

The column continued: “The parallels with the start of the David Cameron and George Osborne administration seemed crystal clear in the sense that the line seems to be that things are bad, are going to get worse and everyone will just have to accept that.”

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And it pointed out Sir Keir does have choices. It noted he has chosen to continue with the fiscal constraints put in place by the economically incompetent Tories. And the column highlighted the fact Sir Keir has ensured any consideration of rejoining the single market is off the table.

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And this brings us to a big part of the rest of Sir Keir’s week.

This involved something of a song and dance about his wish for a “reset” of relationships with the European Union.

To be fair to Sir Keir, his assessment of the degree of damage done to these relationships by the previous Conservative government was on the money.

And it is better to hear some warm words towards our European neighbours from the Prime Minister than the hostility we saw under the Conservatives.

Sadly, however, what Sir Keir appears to mean in terms of his wish to “turn a corner on Brexit” amounts to a hill of beans.

He made it plain, yet again, that he was not talking about reversing Brexit, in a week in which he travelled to Germany for talks with the country’s Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

And that gets us to the heart of the matter.

As my column in The Herald on Friday observed: “It is not difficult at all to detangle Sir Keir’s rhetoric from the reality of the situation, to determine whether this big talk will lead to anything which makes a big difference in alleviating the colossal damage from Brexit.

“This hard Brexit damage arises from two things. Firstly, there is the loss of free movement of people between the UK and European Economic Area, which has reduced to an enormous extent the country’s potential for economic growth. This loss has fuelled greatly the UK’s skills and labour shortages crisis. Secondly, the UK lost frictionless trade with its biggest trading partner, the European Economic Area, as a result of the Boris Johnson Brexit.

“So the crux of what is going on here boils down to the simple question of whether or not Sir Keir is planning to regain these things through rejoining the European single market. The answer, of course, is that he is not.”

This simple reality represents a huge negative for economic growth in Scotland and the UK as a whole, for exporters, for companies weighed down by skills and labour shortages, and crucially for the living standards that Sir Keir claims to be so interested in.

It is a lamentable situation.

And it looks inevitable we will see a complete lack of action on Brexit in terms of anything that might shift the dial for the UK economy by mitigating some of the huge damage done. Sir Keir seems happy to speak warmly about relations with the EU while shying away from what needs to be done.

What is required is simple: the UK needs to rejoin the European single market.

That is, of course, something Labour has ruled out and that Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner says will never happen.

It was not all disappointing news last week, thankfully.

There was some further good news on the inward investment front for Scotland.

Australian financial technology group HALO Technologies is establishing an operations and development centre in Glasgow, creating more than 60 jobs over the next two years.

What was particularly positive was its comments about Glasgow, at a time when the city is not without its challenges in terms of bouncing back from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

HALO Technologies chief executive George Paxton said: “We know that Glasgow, a world-class city with a highly skilled workforce, will make the perfect base for our UK operations.”

Douglas Boyce, chief executive officer of wholly owned subsidiary HALO Invest, said: “We had the opportunity to locate anywhere in the UK, but Glasgow demonstrated itself as the ideal city for us to base ourselves with its well-established mix of financial services and fintech talent.”

There was also decent enough news on the Scottish economy, with official figures showing growth of 0.6% quarter on quarter in the three months to June.

It was good to hear Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes highlighting the “challenges” of Brexit, albeit in a week in which Sir Keir offered no hope he would be addressing these meaningfully.