𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

It is nearly 10 long years since the British people voted to leave the European Union. Too much time has already been wasted searching for a halfway house.

The additional uncertainty has held back growth. Net migration has surged. The carving out of Northern Ireland has undermined the integrity of the UK.

But even this “botched Brexit” has not been the disaster that many predicted. The UK still leads the rest of Europe as a destination for foreign investment. There has been some good progress in lowering barriers to trade with the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, trade in services has boomed. The City of London continues to flourish and is now a champion of the benefits of smarter regulation.

And the UK has already saved tens of billions of pounds in contributions to the EU Budget.

It is still hard to separate the impact of Brexit from other shocks, notably the UK’s relatively high energy costs. But the performance of the UK economy has been similar to that of France, and much better than that of Germany.

The really big gap has been between Europe’s weakness and America’s strength. EU policymakers are experts in “managed decline” and masters of overregulation. It would be madness to seek to realign more closely with a failing economic bloc.

Rejoining a customs union with the EU would mean tearing up our new trade deals with other countries. Adopting the EU emissions scheme and imposing additional carbon taxes will raise costs even further.

The UK is being asked to overpay to rejoin the EU’s inferior student exchange programme and even for the right to contribute to Europe’s defence.

Instead, we should go back to basics. The vote to leave the EU was a vote to regain control of borders, laws and money. Polling shows that the British people still want the UK government to make policy in a wide range of areas. This is simply incompatible with giving sovereignty back to the EU.

The UK must be able to diverge from European regulations, especially in growth sectors such as AI and life sciences. We need to be able to run our own trade policy, and choose who comes to live, work or study here.

Britain’s economy can thrive again – but only if properly unbound from the EU.

• Julian Jessop is a Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs. The views here are his own.