Micklethwait: Goodbye to All That

The great sweep of economic history is a series of “rises” and “falls”—from the fall of Rome to the rise of China. The intriguing episodes that spark the “what ifs” of history come lower down—when a medium-size power suddenly reverses an inevitable-seeming trajectory. That’s what Britain did under Margaret Thatcher and her successors: a crumbling country unexpectedly overturning years of genteel decline to become Europe’s most cosmopolitan liberal entrepôt. My fear is this revival ended on June 23, 2016.

I can remember when my version of liberal Britain was born: in a sauna in San Francisco in 1981. I was visiting from the U.K., traveling around America with George, another 18-year-old, on our “gap year” between school and university. We were staying with George’s elderly cousin Antony, who had fled high-tax Britain, having made a lot of money on chickens. He took us to have a sauna with his equally elderly neighbor, a small intense man called Milton. They asked George and me about Thatcher, and when they discovered that we knew little, Milton took center stage, explaining how the prime minister, who took office in 1979, would break the unions, open up the economy, and transform Britain into a free-market exemplar.