Britain was wise to cleave to Europe as the empire began to disintegrate. It’s time to do it again | Will Hutton

The party’s mission was to return capitalism to its 19th-century glories by following the tried and tested policies of laissez-faire, only this time determined to ensure that, when recovery was established, the working class gradually got a much fairer share of the spoils.

When adhering to the gold standard proved indefensible, they would lead a national government to preserve as much as possible of what had worked hitherto, and look to Britain’s vast empire to protect its stricken capitalism from high-risk “socialist” reform.

The system lasted until we joined the Common Market in the early 1970s, with the late, distinguished economic historian Prof Nicholas Crafts calculating the average tariff on manufacturing imports was still 14.5% in 1960, and only fell slightly over the next decade.

Britain’s more than 1,000 trade unions could organise closed shops, abandon wage agreements at will and protect outmoded working practices without challenge: firms were so profitable they could live with the results.

The results we know: the calamity of monetarism and excessive deindustrialisation, madly enthusiastic financial deregulation and the great crash of 2007/8, austerity and the fiasco of Liz Truss’s libertarian, unfunded, tax-cutting budget of 2022 leading to a run on the pound and doubled mortgage rates.

Brexit should be included in the list; the referendum might have been won by votes from the disillusioned ex-industrial heartlands, but its intellectual inspiration was to return to the vision of a free-market Britain buccaneering to success globally – the globe replacing empire.