Martin Wolf

We did join late.

Join late.

What's holding the UK back?

It's a perfect example of a small country that didn't realize it was a small country.

They thought the people who sold this, sold this in part because they said this will stop all these immigrants.

It turned out, actually, we could do a stupendous job of accepting immigrants from everywhere else in the world as soon as we stopped the Europeans.

So they were sold a bill of goods on that.

It was pretty obvious.

They were told we would be able to do all sorts of wonderful deals on our own.

And we've done a few minor deals.

One of the deals we were promised was a free trade deal with America.

That certainly didn't happen.

The point is Britain on its own

is a minor power.

So the idea that the liberating ourselves from the EU will mean that we would suddenly have huge choices to transform ourselves and our relation to the world was a fantasy.

Now that's one side.

The other side of it is, of course, that a very large part of what we had in common with Europe

the welfare state.

We had a relatively undeveloped one, but we have it in common.

The problems of our economy, deindustrialization, the difficulty of coping with Chinese competition, for example, become more obvious.