The biggest problem that the vote threw up was precisely the lack of clarity about what would come next; what unexpected surprises were to come next? What would the UK’s departure mean for Britain and for the European Union; what, indeed, would it mean for countries in other parts of the world? Would Brexit start a domino effect in Europe; might it even start a chain reaction elsewhere too, as countries stepped back from international commitments and out of regional or global institutions – and turned their backs on former partners and allies? In the days after the vote, press commentaries around the world began to harden. On 24 June 2016, for example, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that it respected the results and hoped for early agreements between London and Brussels to help clear up uncertainty. Three weeks later, voices in Beijing had a better grasp on what had happened – and in particular realised that the promises given by Brexit’s chief cheerleaders were hopelessly naïve at best and downright dissimulations at worst.

The author tracks his political journey from being a sceptical Remainer in 2016 to a persuaded Brexiteer in 2026. On economics, he accepts that Brexit has damaged Britain’s trade in goods and rate of economic growth in the short term – although not nearly as much as Remainer fearmongers prophesied. Yet, he reckons that loss will be more than compensated for in the long term by Brexit-freedoms to make trade agreements that open the likes of India up to British services, and to exploit artificial intelligence’s technological potential within a lighter, more flexible regulatory regime. However, the main reasons for the author’s conversion are constitutional. Brexit restores sovereignty to the British government, empowering it to address politically destabilising issues such as the control of the rate of immigration. It will allow Britain to withdraw from the European Convention of Human Rights, which is necessary to retrieve legislative power from unelected courts and restore it to Parliament. It renders Scottish independence even more economically irrational than it already is. And it thereby helps to make less likely the disintegration of the United Kingdom, which would weaken the West at a time when it needs to keep all its pillars standing strong.

The first decades of the twenty-first century were very different from the manufacturing revolution of the twentieth, when whole new industries, such as making cars, televisions and a myriad of new household appliances, created huge numbers of new, well-paid, skilled jobs. Instead, recent times have been more like the early stages of the industrial revolution two centuries ago, when living standards and life expectancy both fell. Around twenty years ago we started sending emails instead of letters, following news online rather than buying newspapers, ordering goods online rather than going to high street shops. Following the hollowing out of the old industries from the 1980s onwards, well-paid careers in imposing factories, familiar shops, banks and traditional post offices ended up being replaced by low-paid jobs staffing anonymous call centres, packing online orders, delivering take-away meals and driving Amazon vans. Not quite the dark satanic mills of 200 years ago, but not glad confident morning either. Previous generations assumed that steady growth would ensure better lives for their children. That confidence has evaporated across Western Europe and North America.