Allister Heath How historians will look back on Brexit
As long as we pursue the right policies at home, the UK can thrive even if we exit in a sub-optimal way
It’s 2050, and those of us old enough to have lived through the farcical Brexit negotiations of 2018-19 still cringe in embarrassment when recalling that period of national incompetence. Our half-hearted attempt at extracting ourselves from the EU, as it was then known, was painful, far more so than the Brexiteers had predicted. The Establishment almost sabotaged the whole adventure, not least with its doomed, last-ditch proposals for a permanent, Turkey-style customs union and its outrageous, underhand European Defence Union plans.
But in the end the UK got through it. With the benefit of three decades of hindsight, it turned out that the unpleasant way that we left made little difference to our long-term prosperity. The fraught, traumatic process of going from In to Out proved to be less important, over the long sweep of history, than the fact that we resolved our relationship with Europe once and for all, and the positive psychological shock this created.
Today, 32 years on, our GDP per capita is higher than Germany’s, as well as, of course, that of France; Switzerland and Norway are the only European economies that remain wealthier than us, although the Republic of Catalonia is doing well.
Even the most optimistic of Brexiteers wouldn’t have dreamed of such an outcome back in late 2018, that bleakest of years. It is a period in British history which is now studied in conjunction with the Suez Crisis, the Maastricht treaty and the Iraq War to explain why the Foreign Office was so unceremoniously abolished in 2024, replaced by the integrated Ministry for Defence and External Affairs.
But while 2018 was horrid, 2019 was the start of Britain’s fightback. The short-term hit to the economy from Brexit was almost cancelled out by the massive £42 billion of tax cuts in the Budget of early 2019, a record 2 per cent of GDP. The reductions to VAT and the £5 billion increase in public spending helped buy off just enough Labour MPS, and the Budget passed by one vote, despite the rebellion by kamikaze Remainers.
The Tory triumph of 2022 was key: had Jeremy Corbyn won, or the new Centrist Party done well, the game would have been up before it even began. Instead, the National Tory Unionist government was re-elected with a reasonable majority, and it pushed through a series of seminal constitutional and economic reforms.
The House of Lords was first to go: it had destroyed itself by seeking to block Brexit. The old, 19th-century civil service was next, swept away after a special commission published a report into its catastrophic failures: nobody today can believe that there was a time when ministers weren’t allowed to act as CEOS for their own departments, and hire and fire personnel as they liked. This reform helped bring about positive change at the Treasury in particular, which was remodelled as a pro-competitiveness department staffed by free-market economists, designing every tax policy with the aim of maximising growth.
Another revolutionary shift was the introduction of a semi-swiss system of referendums in 2028: it had become clear after the betrayal of 2016-18 that pure representative democracy could no longer be trusted and that a much greater use of direct, legally binding decision-making was required. That was also how the planning system was liberalised to allow the construction of two million new suburban homes and six new towns – the measure passed because it came with guarantees that the right sort of homes would be built – and how what is now known as the National Health System was created out of the ashes of the old NHS. Referendums, it turned out, were the only way to renew our broken institutions; the public was far more amenable to sensible change than once believed.
The first big lesson, historians argue in their tomes chronicling the 2020s to the 2040s – the period now known as the 30 Glory Years – was that the domestic reforms allowed by our new freedoms and mindset proved to be far more valuable than the cost in slightly reduced trade with the EU.
The second big lesson was that, as is so often true throughout history, smaller, breakaway countries that are forced to attract capital from abroad make a much greater effort than large, technocratic empires. The UK’S outlook became global, not merely European. Taxes were slashed, trade deals signed with nations all over the world, the UK joined the Trans-pacific Partnership, and it became much easier again for businesses to operate.
Skilled migrants were welcomed, despite a permanent overall reduction in immigration; welfare reform and temporary work visas took care of labour shortages; the precautionary principle was scrapped, with Northern Ireland emerging as a hub for biotech and genetically modified foods research; the extra runways at Heathrow and Gatwick opened on time; and the UK pioneered driverless technologies, using the money that would have been spent on HS2 to build three new special motorways.
The abolition of stamp duty, inheritance tax and capital gains tax in the 2020s were game-changers, as was the Great Tax Simplification Act of 2026. Improvements in secondary education, the opening of thousands of free schools, the rollback of secondrate universities and their replacement by new technical colleges helped rejuvenate poorer parts of the UK.
The final lesson was that Remainers had over-estimated the durability of the EU: our departure was a terrible blow, punching a massive black hole in its budget. The far-left Jean-luc Mélenchon was elected president of France in 2022: his nationalisations and 100 per cent top rate of tax allowed the City to regain the 10,000 jobs it lost after Brexit. London was the only place for bankers to go, especially when the hardleft Linke-green coalition seized power in Germany and withdrew the country from Nato. Then came 2026, when Italy finally crashed out of the euro, triggering the Great Banking Crisis that changed European politics forever.
It was at that moment that the penny finally dropped in Britain, even among what was left of the Centrist Party, the last group committed to rejoining the EU: yes, it was tough, but we were right to leave. But one question continues to puzzle the younger generation of historians in 2050: why did it take so long for the British Establishment to come to its senses?