The White Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass claimed to believe six impossible things before breakfast. Alas, a recent pamphlet from the London-based Legatum Institute, fully matches the queen. This matters because the view it advances of the "Brexit prize" to be won by the UK is influential. Here, then, are six impossible things it argues. 1. The first is the statement that "historically, the British system of free trade made Britain, Europe and the world richer. The EU system that has replaced it — of protectionism and harmonised regulation — has constrained economic growth for Britain and the world." In fact, the volume of world trade is twice as high, relative to global output, now as at its peak before the First World War. Global output per head rose at just 1.3% a year between 1870 and 1914, the heyday of the imperial era. This is well below the 1.9% achieved between 1980 and 2008, the heyday of the latest era of globalisation. In the imperial era, free-trade I...
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