Ayear ago this month, World Trade Organisation negotiators drove into a cul-de-sac. A year later, in Potsdam, they decided against turning round to find another route to their destination. Instead, they hit the gas and crashed into their neighbour’s house.

How will the WTO’s Pascal Lamy and the lead negotiators for the US, European Union and their counterparts in the developing world back out of the crash scene and get moving again? The answer does not lie in publishing a “Lamy draft” that offers the director-general’s best judgment as to where a deal lies, based on six years of fruitless negotiations.