The roots of Brexit lie in Britain's broken economic model: we now urgently need a new social settlement

The roots of Brexit lie in Britain's broken growth model. This was acknowledged in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 vote but British negotiators have since acted as if the only goal in their dealings with the EU is to preserve the status quo. Chris Bickerton (Cambridge) argues that Britain's consumption-driven growth model needs to change and whilst Brexit is is not a sufficient condition for this change, it is probably a necessary condition for it. This is most visible in the way that the EU’s rules of free movement have interacted with the UK’s open and flexible labour market. This blog is based on a longer essay written for the think tank Policy Exchange.