New freedoms lie ahead that could be the start of Britain's new golden era

It’s 2050, and those of us old enough to have lived through the farcical Brexit negotiations of 2018-2019 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, than that of France; Switzerland and Norway are the only European economies that remain wealthier than us, although the Republic of Catalonia is doing well.