Leaving the EU will not set Britain's economy free

EU membership, British eurosceptics are fond of asserting, has become the principal obstacle to the country's prosperity. The regulatory and other costs of membership have ratcheted relentlessly upwards, just as the economic benefits of trading with an ageing and sclerotic region have fallen. Britain, to use a term now very much in vogue, has "shackled itself to a corpse". If the UK loosened its relations with the EU – or perhaps left the club altogether – it would free itself of the irksome regulatory burden that cripples British business and could focus on developing trading relations with faster-growing economies outside the EU.