Rory Broomfield Managing Director at Investments In Time, Executive Director at the Margaret Thatcher Centre and was Director of The Freedom Association and its Better Off Out campaign during the Brexit Referendum. He is also a political commentator.
So much has been written over the past 10 years on whether Brexit has been a success, what that might mean and whether or not – especially for those on the Left – the UK should overturn the votes of nearly 17 and a half million people and take the UK back into the regulatory sphereof the EU – stripping the UK of its legal, political and trading independence.
Instead of trying to rerun old debates, I suggest that politicians should look to the future and make the most of what opportunities the UK has because of Brexit – especially when it could allow the UK to become more innovative, economically wealthy and solve many issues that we are grappling with today.
For context, some of these stem from a book, Cutting the Gordian Knot , which I co-authored with Iain Murray, Vice-President of the US thank tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute. It was the runner up in the Institute of Economic Affairs’s Brexit Prize, ran in 2014, updated with a second edition being published in 2016, and highlighted how the UK government could leave the EU.
The paper, written whilst I was Director of The Freedom Association, also outlined the opportunities that the UK could implement to become more prosperous. Frankly, the book illustrated how the UK could become Better Off Out (the campaign group, run by The Freedom Association, that I was also director of).
Some ideas have been implemented; some have not. The UK is no longer a member of the Common Agricultural Policy, the Common Fisheries Policy, the European Arrest Warrant, the European Court of Justice and many other functions of the EU’s legislative and judicial reach.
The UK can, and has, made free trade arrangements free from the EU with countries, trading blocs and even individual states within the US. The UK is, however, still a member of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and its Court (ECtHR) and still has over 60 per cent of unamended EU law still on its Statute Book (now called Retained EU Laws (REULs)).
Leaving the ECHR (and presumably the ECtHR) is now the accepted policy of all main-stream political parties on the Right. Reforming the remaining EU laws should be. After an initial review under the previous government, 2,417 were initially identified. This subsequently rose to 6,925 individual pieces of law across 400 unique policy areas. Given that this body of legislation could represent over £6,000 for every household in the UK, a commitment to reviewing and amending the laws so that they reflect the reality of the 21st century would be a positive action.
It also would be positive because the numbers of the civil service have ballooned over the past ten years. According to the Office of National Statistics, the number of people working in the Civil Service was 418,343 as of 31 March 2016. According to the Cabinet Office, total headcount is 549,660 and 516,150 on a full-time equivalent basis (FTE), as of 31 March 2025.
This, some might say, has no direct correlation with Brexit.
However, it is a fact that, whilst there have been some legislative amendments, a range of competences and laws taken back from Brussels are still sitting in Whitehall – waiting to be devolved downwards, or abolished altogether.
This has a drag on productivity, innovation and growth. The only obvious beneficiaries from this are those that have a vested interest in the growth of public sector bureaucracy, along with payroll and pension liabilities for taxpayers.
To rework the famous quote from Margaret Thatcher at Bruges (“We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels“): we have not successfully freed ourselves from Brussels, only to see Brussels re-imposed at a domestic level with a bureaucratic super-state exercising a new dominance from Whitehall.
Concerns over immigration, including on both issues of numbers and quality have, in the run up to the Brexit referendum and especially since, also become increasingly important to address.
The UK has changed its immigration system since leaving the EU, however, it can still be improved.
It is important to remember, when considering the immigration issue that, like prior to the Brexit vote, the vast majority of the non-native born population in the UK still comes from countries outside the EU. According to the Office of National Statistics, non-EU nationals make up 75 per cent of arrivals (dominated by India, China, Nigeria, and Pakistan).
Therefore, the immigration issue is not primarily an EU issue.
The previous Conservative government extended the points-based system applied to non-EU nationals post-Brexit. This reduced some transitional costs that Iain Murray and I outlined in our book. However, it didn’t implement the next stage as suggested by Iain Murray and I: an immigration tariff system. This is a simple, nationality-neutral immigration tariff.
Many immigrants already pay substantial amounts of money to gain the opportunity to work in a dynamic economy like the UK’s. Sadly, many more pay considerable sums to human traffickers and are then forced to work in conditions of near-slavery, such as in sex work, to pay off their traffickers.
An immigration tariff, as suggested by Nobel Laureate Gary Becker and also by the Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh, would not only turn this criminal income into a government revenue stream but also virtually eliminate the degradation of would-be immigrants exploited by criminal traffickers.
Iain Murray and I set out how this might work in the book (both 2014 and 2016 editions) and believed that it would also significantly reduce the bureaucratic costs of the points-based system and, accordingly, allow for a reduction in the size of government spending. The tariff-system Murray and I advocated is nationality neutral, market-based, meritocratic and something that can be applied so that the UK reduces its levels of criminal activities.
If applied properly it could, indeed, also ensure we attract the best immigrants to our high value and internationalised sectors.
Of course, another area ripe for improvement that could very well be a vote winner, and certainly a growth creator, is changing energy policies – a shared competence for EU member states. Now outside the EU, the UK can be much more ambitious in its actions. However, reversing the horrific costs that net-zero policies are having on the UK would provide benefits in increasing readily available supply (oil and gas), reduce household energy costs and improve business investment for jobs and overall economic growth. Murray and I provide a number of ways that the UK could do this – and these options are still available for a future party of government to implement.
What can also be implemented, now that the UK is outside of the EU, are also changes to some tax policies – specifically value added tax. Within the EU, the UK was required to have a minimum of 15 per cent value added tax. Outside, it’s free to lower that rate. This is especially necessary in the hospitality industry, which is currently being hit with higher business rate rises over the next five years.
These moves would signal to business, and to voters, the intentions of a new forward-thinking government that wishes to make the UK the most competitive, safe, growth-friendly nation in Europe – outside the EU. It would also signal to young people that the party isn’t just for business owners and older voters.
After all, the UK currently has the highest levels of youth unemployment in over a decade – a critical problem that we need to fix.
The political party that does the above could very well win the next General Election. Adopting an open, market-based approach could offer a refreshing alternative to the status quo. The future can be a great one – only if the opportunities are embraced.
Rory Broomfield Managing Director at Investments In Time, Executive Director at the Margaret Thatcher Centre and was Director of The Freedom Association and its Better Off Out campaign during the Brexit Referendum. He is also a political commentator.
So much has been written over the past 10 years on whether Brexit has been a success, what that might mean and whether or not – especially for those on the Left – the UK should overturn the votes of nearly 17 and a half million people and take the UK back into the regulatory sphereof the EU – stripping the UK of its legal, political and trading independence.
Instead of trying to rerun old debates, I suggest that politicians should look to the future and make the most of what opportunities the UK has because of Brexit – especially when it could allow the UK to become more innovative, economically wealthy and solve many issues that we are grappling with today.
For context, some of these stem from a book, Cutting the Gordian Knot , which I co-authored with Iain Murray, Vice-President of the US thank tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute. It was the runner up in the Institute of Economic Affairs’s Brexit Prize, ran in 2014, updated with a second edition being published in 2016, and highlighted how the UK government could leave the EU.
The paper, written whilst I was Director of The Freedom Association, also outlined the opportunities that the UK could implement to become more prosperous. Frankly, the book illustrated how the UK could become Better Off Out (the campaign group, run by The Freedom Association, that I was also director of).
Some ideas have been implemented; some have not. The UK is no longer a member of the Common Agricultural Policy, the Common Fisheries Policy, the European Arrest Warrant, the European Court of Justice and many other functions of the EU’s legislative and judicial reach.
The UK can, and has, made free trade arrangements free from the EU with countries, trading blocs and even individual states within the US. The UK is, however, still a member of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and its Court (ECtHR) and still has over 60 per cent of unamended EU law still on its Statute Book (now called Retained EU Laws (REULs)).
Leaving the ECHR (and presumably the ECtHR) is now the accepted policy of all main-stream political parties on the Right. Reforming the remaining EU laws should be. After an initial review under the previous government, 2,417 were initially identified. This subsequently rose to 6,925 individual pieces of law across 400 unique policy areas. Given that this body of legislation could represent over £6,000 for every household in the UK, a commitment to reviewing and amending the laws so that they reflect the reality of the 21st century would be a positive action.
It also would be positive because the numbers of the civil service have ballooned over the past ten years. According to the Office of National Statistics, the number of people working in the Civil Service was 418,343 as of 31 March 2016. According to the Cabinet Office, total headcount is 549,660 and 516,150 on a full-time equivalent basis (FTE), as of 31 March 2025.
This, some might say, has no direct correlation with Brexit.
However, it is a fact that, whilst there have been some legislative amendments, a range of competences and laws taken back from Brussels are still sitting in Whitehall – waiting to be devolved downwards, or abolished altogether.
This has a drag on productivity, innovation and growth. The only obvious beneficiaries from this are those that have a vested interest in the growth of public sector bureaucracy, along with payroll and pension liabilities for taxpayers.
To rework the famous quote from Margaret Thatcher at Bruges (“We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels“): we have not successfully freed ourselves from Brussels, only to see Brussels re-imposed at a domestic level with a bureaucratic super-state exercising a new dominance from Whitehall.
Concerns over immigration, including on both issues of numbers and quality have, in the run up to the Brexit referendum and especially since, also become increasingly important to address.
The UK has changed its immigration system since leaving the EU, however, it can still be improved.
It is important to remember, when considering the immigration issue that, like prior to the Brexit vote, the vast majority of the non-native born population in the UK still comes from countries outside the EU. According to the Office of National Statistics, non-EU nationals make up 75 per cent of arrivals (dominated by India, China, Nigeria, and Pakistan).
Therefore, the immigration issue is not primarily an EU issue.
The previous Conservative government extended the points-based system applied to non-EU nationals post-Brexit. This reduced some transitional costs that Iain Murray and I outlined in our book. However, it didn’t implement the next stage as suggested by Iain Murray and I: an immigration tariff system. This is a simple, nationality-neutral immigration tariff.
Many immigrants already pay substantial amounts of money to gain the opportunity to work in a dynamic economy like the UK’s. Sadly, many more pay considerable sums to human traffickers and are then forced to work in conditions of near-slavery, such as in sex work, to pay off their traffickers.
An immigration tariff, as suggested by Nobel Laureate Gary Becker and also by the Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh, would not only turn this criminal income into a government revenue stream but also virtually eliminate the degradation of would-be immigrants exploited by criminal traffickers.
Iain Murray and I set out how this might work in the book (both 2014 and 2016 editions) and believed that it would also significantly reduce the bureaucratic costs of the points-based system and, accordingly, allow for a reduction in the size of government spending. The tariff-system Murray and I advocated is nationality neutral, market-based, meritocratic and something that can be applied so that the UK reduces its levels of criminal activities.
If applied properly it could, indeed, also ensure we attract the best immigrants to our high value and internationalised sectors.
Of course, another area ripe for improvement that could very well be a vote winner, and certainly a growth creator, is changing energy policies – a shared competence for EU member states. Now outside the EU, the UK can be much more ambitious in its actions. However, reversing the horrific costs that net-zero policies are having on the UK would provide benefits in increasing readily available supply (oil and gas), reduce household energy costs and improve business investment for jobs and overall economic growth. Murray and I provide a number of ways that the UK could do this – and these options are still available for a future party of government to implement.
What can also be implemented, now that the UK is outside of the EU, are also changes to some tax policies – specifically value added tax. Within the EU, the UK was required to have a minimum of 15 per cent value added tax. Outside, it’s free to lower that rate. This is especially necessary in the hospitality industry, which is currently being hit with higher business rate rises over the next five years.
These moves would signal to business, and to voters, the intentions of a new forward-thinking government that wishes to make the UK the most competitive, safe, growth-friendly nation in Europe – outside the EU. It would also signal to young people that the party isn’t just for business owners and older voters.
After all, the UK currently has the highest levels of youth unemployment in over a decade – a critical problem that we need to fix.
The political party that does the above could very well win the next General Election. Adopting an open, market-based approach could offer a refreshing alternative to the status quo. The future can be a great one – only if the opportunities are embraced.