Best. Express. Headline. Ever.

Not to have a go at you but seriously this EEC/EU revisionism is ridiculous.
The EEC/EU is before any and everything else a political union.
It always has been & never was primarily merely an economic entity.

Besides, ‘we’ had already tried that.

It was called EFTA back then too and the UK was a member of it – and still our share of world trade declined alarmingly, why do you think we went into the EEC/EU in the 1st place?

We also had the Commonwealth.
It too failed miserably to halt the UK’s sliding share of trade.

All the ‘trade only’ stuff was tried and failed us.

Sadly we have had nothing but one bunch of politicians after another terrified of spelling out precisely why the UK needed to join Europe so desperately.
The history of our attempt to join and the reason why we needed to have it would seem been lost to at least 1 generation that really ought to know better.
Our politicians prefer to lie & foster the delusions of grandeurs long past and leave those likely to be gulled by such nonsense in their happy if laughably deluded state.

I have to say that I find the idea that ‘Europe’ should be solely concerned about business and trade only a tediously limited & at root a pretty nasty one at that.
As if ‘business’ doesn;t have sufficient ’space’ in our lives, some sort of counter-balance in favour of the people is more than simply required, it’s vital for us (which is, let’s be honest, why the right-wing in the US back the right-wing here and what lies at the heart for their loathing of Europe).