Britain unlikely to regret its decision in the long run

But whether you agreed with it or not, the British people have made their decision

‘‘To escape from the protection we have in British rule by declaring independence would be like destroying a house before we have got another, In winter, with a small family; then asking a neighbour to take us in and finding he is unprepared.’’

Those were the words spoken by John Dickinson against the idea of American independence in 1776. One of the leading men of the day, Dickinson was an articulate voice for American grievances against the British government and was considered a leading patriot of the day. Nevertheless, political severance was a step too far, and he refused to sign the Declaration of Independence.

To Dickinson, the key to the continued prosperity of the American people lay in their continued union with Great Britain. Yes, there were a great many things wrong with the relationship, the opponents of independence argued, but they were all capable of remedy.

Conciliation, not separation, was the more sensible goal.

Dickinson was hardly alone in this. According to historians, the cause of independence attracted the active support of a bare majority (at most) of the residents of the thirteen colonies.

There were dire predictions about the ability of the new country to be able to go it alone without the protection and access to the biggest trading empire in history. The viability of the new United States outside the British mercantile system was something that people of the day very much doubted.

So there’s a kind of weird symmetry to the fact that, having fought so hard to resist the independence of the American colonists all those years ago, Britain must now summon up a similar resolve in the face of uncertainty over its decision to declare independence from the European Union.

Thanks to Hollywood, we’ve become accustomed to the view that the American rebellion was about giving force to new conceptions of liberty and freedom. In fact, at the time the colonists were largely concerned with defending the traditional rights of Englishmen against a parliament that was infringing on them. As one of the founding fathers wrote; ‘‘We claim nothing but the liberty and privileges of Englishmen in the same degree, as if we had continued among our brethren in Great Britain’’.

And there is a case to be made that Brexit fits into that same mould. From the bringing of law to England in 1100 with the Charter of Liberties through to the Magna Carta of 1215, habeas corpus, the Glorious Revolution and the Chartists on the mid 19th century, the taming of unaccountable power is one of the most persistent themes of British history.

The rejection of the European Union, which even some of its defenders concede is a fundamentally undemocratic and elitist institution, could well come to be seen as another episode in that story.

But whether you agreed with it or not, the British people have made their decision and they made it decisively (if narrowly). Their judgment has been delivered in a national referendum that generated the highest voter turnout in a quarter of a century. They did so despite the pleas, sneers and threats of their country’s political leadership, big businesses, bankers, religious leaders, trade unions, celebrities and angry social media users.

The EU is, first and foremost, an anti-competitive customs union and its outlook for the coming decades is pretty frightening. Beset by plummeting birth rates, allergic to innovation and in what appears to be a state of permanent stagnation it is the only trading bloc in the world that is in the decline.

From that perspective, the day that Britain is free to engage with the outside world once more probably can’t come soon enough.

That’s not to say there won’t be a price to pay in the short term. There always is, when it comes to divorce. We have already seen some economic turbulence in the wake of the referendum. We are sure to see more until the arrangements for British withdrawal begin to take shape and some sense of certainty can set in.

Of course, the same was true of the American colonists who in 1783 had won their independence only to find themselves discombobulated by the loss of imperial economic protections.

No longer able to sell food to the remaining imperial possessions in the New World, the new government faced a difficult few years and had to make some very tough decisions. Taken together with the political uncertainties of the time, this era has been christened the ‘‘Critical Period’’ of American history.

But thanks to some astute leadership things eventually settled down. Trading relations were rebuilt and, after a few lean years, the American economy was thriving again.

I don’t think many Americans regret their independence today, however rocky those first few years were.

And neither, in the long run, will the British.