Sometimes the truth hurts. Scott Bessent, the US Treasury secretary, was characteristically direct last week in Davos when asked about Danish pension funds selling US government securities.

'Denmark's investment in US Treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant,' he said.

Ouch. Actually, I think there are reasons to be concerned about the US fiscal deficit, reflected in the yield on the country's ten-year debt being the second-highest of a G7 country, after the UK.

Those fears are acknowledged by my colleague Alex Brummer. But the jab at Denmark caught the contempt in which Europe is regarded, not just by the present administration, but in a more measured form by the global investment community.

There are exceptions of course, and many European companies are doing wonderfully.

As for Denmark, it is not only a delightful place to live, ranked as one of the happiest countries in the world, it is also home to Novo Nordisk, at one stage last year Europe's most valuable company, thanks to its diabetes and weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy.

But the general rule is that if you want to invest in growth don't put your money in the Continent.

The UK is in a strange, intermediate position. We are not doing as well as we should be, but in high-tech investment we rank third after the US and China, raising more cash for start-ups than France and Germany combined.

At a macro-economic level, despite everything, our growth last year seems to have been equal third with France in the G7 nations, after the US and Canada.

If you believe the forecasts, we will remain third after the US and Canada, but pulling clear of France for another three years.

The trouble is that being third is not very good. It's only about 1.5 per cent growth a year. That's not enough to lift living standards, or dent our massive national debt.

The fact that the big European countries are expected to do even worse is small comfort. So how can we up our game?

Beware of one-size-fits-all answers, as there are a string of things holding us back, including over-regulation, planning controls, business taxes and so on.

But one issue that has not received enough attention is the damage to our economy from absurdly high energy prices.

We have the most expensive electricity of any major economy in the world – four or five times that of the US and double the average level on the Continent.

We see that in our household bills, and that is bad enough. But what we are less aware of is the extent to which we are running down our manufacturing base. Steel, chemicals, car plants, all use a lot of power. So swathes of industry are shutting down or cutting back. Our chemical industry is effectively shutting down.

Scotland is particularly hard hit as next month ExxonMobil will close the UK's last ethylene cracker in Fife and Ineos has shut the last remaining synthetic ethanol plant just across the Firth of Forth in Grangemouth.

In the past five years we have shut ten big chemical complexes. It has been done in the push for Net Zero emissions, but as Ineos chairman Sir Jim Ratcliffe says: 'De-industrialising Britain achieves nothing for the environment. It merely shifts production and emissions elsewhere.'

We are a hugely successful service economy. Nearly 60 per cent of our exports are services, the highest proportion of any big country, and in terms of absolute value second only to the US.

But we need industry too. Aside from the social and economic costs of killing what were until recently thriving enterprises, it cannot make strategic sense to make ourselves dependent on imports of gas and oil when we still have lots under the North Sea. Or, for that matter, relying on electricity via undersea cables that could be sliced by a hostile foreign power in a few hours.

It's tempting to blame it all on Energy Minister Ed Miliband, and he carries some blame. But his policy was inherited from previous governments. It's nuts.

I am not surprised when people in the present US administration sneer at us, but I am depressed that our successive politicians can be so seriously stupid.