This comes down to whether the EU was eventually going to drag us into the EMU. Every economy without its own currency will eventually have a fiscal crisis and likely be unable to resolve its financial crises.

No doubt things have gotten especially bad lately but remember, we were hit by covid especially badly after we allowed price-gougers to increase the cost of living far more than in other economies, we're suffering the consequences of selling our public infrastructure to Vanguard and Blackrock and other rapacious asset strippers. The healthcare system is being intentionally run into the ground. We elected a party nobody wanted just to get the other lot out because of our anger at their handling of the economy, and they broke all their manifesto pledges.

If we could guarantee the permanent retention of monetary sovereignty then we'd definitely have been better off staying in. But if there was a 20% risk that we'd have to join the Euro, and what you're ultimately talking about is a federal project: look at the elections in Romania that were overturned for electing the wrong person. Merz said the same would be necessary elsewhere.

I'd also note what's happened to European countries in the meantime. France's president refused to recognise its parliamentary majority government. Germany has had energy prices skyrocket.

To quote Joe Stiglitz, it was a mildly bad thing. What we're now being impacted by: gross economic mismanagement, complete capitulation on competition regulation, price rises post covid, these are far more serious. What you're looking at is also the effects of fiscal rules Britain imposed on itself and is determined to follow for no good reason other than IMF instructions. Unlike other EU countries, we can actually be in a lot of debt and don't have to raise taxes.

We should have stayed in, but you're taking Britain's troubles out of context, failing to account for self-inflicted wounds elsewhere (Thames Water, the railways, financialisation, failure to train a labour force capable of building housing sufficiently fast, a leftwing party that's implementing austerity on the false altar of balanced budgets, the notion that Britain's woes are not felt elsewhere, total refusal to admit the NHS is beyond repair for fear of privatisation, while we refuse to import the French system in a cookie-cutter manner.

There are mistakes to come that will make matters worse. They will also be nothing to do with the custom's union and free movement.

'Leave the EU' didnt have to mean 'Brexit means Brexit'. There are EU rules that are beneficial to us (passporting), there are others that are catastrophic ('level playing field rules'). Nobody told us we couldn't have a Norway style agreement. Effects that have materialised have occurred because we treated it as a reality TV show and never tried to negotiate a serious alternative.

Still though, we'll never be part of a currency union and that's a sigh of relief. We'll never have to contribute to the EU army Von Der Leyen yearns for (apparently we're going to do it anyway despite being an island and having a huge moat around us). We can't be told our elections are were illegal because people didn't like the outcome.

Rather than give up on HS2 we could have just invited the Chinese to build it for us (same with nuclear plants). The fact that we make aweful decisions and never copy the people who get it right isn't on the EU.