The UK's decline isn't primarily about Brexit — a case for the longer view

Every analysis of UK economic performance I've seen post-2016 treats Brexit as the independent variable. But the UK's relative decline versus comparable European economies starts in the early 2000s, well before the referendum. The actually interesting drivers: chronic underinvestment in infrastructure (public and private), a planning system that makes housebuilding near-impossible in high-productivity areas, financial sector overdependence after deindustrialisation, and a political economy where short-term returns consistently win over long-term investment. Brexit almost certainly made the trade friction problem worse and the investment climate worse. But it's an accelerant, not an ignition source. Pretending a return to the EU would restore 2005-era growth rates is politically useful and analytically wrong. Source: UK in a Changing Europe has good comparative data if you want to look at the pre-2016 divergence: https://ukandeu.ac.uk/research-papers/uk-performance-in-context/