Brexit is often presented as a Catch-22, where we are so enmeshed in the EU that any separation must produce intolerable pain, at least in the short term. John Springford, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform who has carried out a lengthy study of the economic costs of Brexit, says: “The trade-off is an uncomfortable one for Britain if it votes to leave. It’s leave the EU and get your sovereignty back, regulate your economy as you see fit, but lose market access and damage your economy. Or you leave the EU, sign up to the EEA [European economic area] or try to have a bespoke trade agreement with the EU like the Swiss one. But that would mean you’d have to sign up to most of the regulations – you’d have no control over them – and you’d have to agree to the free movement of labour. It seemed to us that both of these alternatives are far worse than EU membership.”
With the Commonwealth’s overall GDP set to overtake the EU’s in 2019, the UK should look to embrace the global market.
Rory Broomfield, director of the Freedom Association
Mark Reckless is more optimistic about the prospects for post-Brexit Britain: “We’re paying £20bn into the EU budget each year. Because of our membership of the EU, we’re not able to trade freely with the rest of the world, and the EU has a poor record of opening their markets to our exporters, particularly high-value-added business services. The prospect of being able to sell British agricultural and food markets to the world would leave the British economy in a much better condition post-Brexit than it is now.”