A realistic path to a better relationship between Britain and the EU

ago this month, David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister at the time, gave a speech at the London headquarters of Bloomberg, a news organisation. In it Mr Cameron outlined his cunning plan to cement Britain’s place in the European Union, by triggering a fundamental reform of the bloc and then offering Britons an in-out referendum on membership. That went well. The 2016 vote to leave the bloc has exacerbated , gumming up trade and muting investment. It has soured Britain’s relationship with many of its natural allies and weakened the bonds of its own union. Worst of all, it has with a destructive strain of magical thinking. Mr Cameron himself was an early victim, badly overestimating the ’s willingness to change its fundamental principles in order to suit Britain. Brexiteers have been high on their own pixie dust from the start, whether conjuring up the gains to be had from leaving the or wishing away the issue of the Irish border. Remainers, too, succumb to hocus-pocus if they think that the split can be simply undone.