Turning the clock back is not the answer we are looking for

Ten years on from the EU referendum, it's time to take stock.

- GINA MILLER

My verdict? Not only is Britain paying the price for that single vote in 2016, but also for the political cowardice that has followed it.

Brexit was sold as control, prosperity and renewal. But what it has delivered is weaker growth, deeper division and a governing class that reaches for slogans instead of strategy. Brexit did not cause every problem we face in the UK, but it has made almost all of them deeper and harder to solve.

This is a truth that few of our politicians have the honesty to explain to the public. In 2016, we were already burdened with low investment, weak productivity, regional inequality and public services stretched thin by poor choices made after the global financial crisis. Brexit amplified those weaknesses; it did not heal them. It added friction to trade, uncertainty to business and instability and growing mistrust in our political system.

What should trouble us today is not the original decision to leave. It is how every government since has managed the aftermath, choosing denial over reality, and pretending the hard choices could be deferred indefinitely. That is not leadership. It is the avoidance of it.