By helping deliver scale and lower tariffs, trading blocs can help provide most or all businesses with the operational leverage otherwise the preserve of companies like the Great Globalisers above. But if the price of more highly operationally-leveraged, more integrated global economies and businesses is higher systemic risk, then to a lesser extent the same is also true of trading blocs. They may bring cross-country distribution advantages, but they are also more systemically risky, the more integrated and less accountable, the more so.

In Europe’s prolonged response to and thus extended recovery from the financial crisis, we see both the challenges it faces in making decisions and the direct results of its inabilities to do so. Not so much a failure of intent as a failure of speed and clarity, exaggerated by the need to diffuse the problem among member states and most critically a natural reflection of the extreme tensions between donors/lenders and receivers/borrowers within the bloc when things go wrong. Europe’s response to the immigration crisis evidences structural challenges that are almost identical, just as inevitable, even if more directly lethal.

Through greater integration, trading blocs reduce political, management and investment diversification, whilst on the plus side participants benefit from taking out the transaction costs via harmonizing tariffs, rules and regulations. European Union membership has certainly brought benefits from these developments to all member states in the past. Consistent with this is how it’s strengthened structural deflation through further economic integration, its European version of globalization, and brought the further inequality that comes with that. It seems intent on continuing down this path.

That there is such a strong groundswell of opinion even considering voting Brexit demonstrates most significantly that the prevailing economic orthodoxy isn’t working for western democracies and needs urgent review. It also signals why the economic arguments that a Remain vote will lead to stronger growth compared with the disaster if we vote Brexit are largely falling on deaf ears. Beyond the view that they are debatable and almost certainly unverifiable post event, and beyond the justifiably low credibility the public place on any forecasting, these voices seem to be saying, “Why should I care about “growth” so much, if I’m not benefiting from it?” It’s difficult for any economic estimate, forecast or projection to win support in that context.

It may be easier to do the opposite, but it’s more important now that we look forward rather than back. In considering a Remain vote we must now ask ourselves whether any social or economic gains from the past are repeatable in the future, just as it’s sensible to ask of a stock that’s risen substantially in price, what the prospects are of it outperforming again due to the same known factors. For the UK, consideration should also be given to the balance of economic trade and to the EU’s success as a trading bloc being in goods more than services. In short, how much further benefit is there for an increasingly services-oriented economy, such as the UK, from further European integration, when Europe’s share of global trade is at an all time low?

I would venture that the lion’s share of the transactional benefits from EU trade integration is probably in the bag, in the system and “in the price”; and that any such benefits are otherwise likely to be much less impactful going forward, particularly for the UK’s increasingly services-oriented trade. Whether Britain leaves or remains in Europe some tariffs will stay the same and some will not. But it’s in no one’s interests to move them much further or faster from where they are now, irrespective of Britain’s course. I fail to believe that trading rules, tariffs etc. between the UK and its trading partners will all rise across the board, all in a way that causes significant harm overall to the UK, or Europe. Specifically on trading with Europe, in line with the continuing threats which I appreciate European leaders are bound to make, I would expect negotiations to appear more difficult post-Brexit. They may be drawn-out, but will resolve. It will of course be easier in areas where the UK is more important to European trade, but I expect everyone to settle down to business again after an initial period of adjustment. The same will largely be true of a Remain vote, though here the agenda will be continue down the existing integration path, though perhaps with renewed vigour.

In short there will of course be winners and losers either way, but net-net, I don’t believe the aggregate picture will be much worse out of Europe than in it.