Freedom of movement, which embodies a humanistic ideal about the potential of individuals to learn and take initiative, is essential in a knowledge-based, post-industrial society.  The debate over freedom of movement highlights the flaws in BREXIT based on a fundamental misunderstanding of “laissez-faire” which Walter Lippmann, in The Great Society, exposed in 1937.

Lippmann argued that state planning and the arbitrary exercise of power by the executive were a greater threat to the economy than the economic mismanagement is to the state. To recover rule-making autonomy while protecting rule of law - another fundamental EU principle, the UK has to reorder its domestic institutions.  

After attacking the EU and especially the Eurozone for lack of control of crises, BREXIT has generated a meta-crisis by itself, but one which may affect the UK far more than the EU.   The UK is the most centralized European country, an advantage when facing a well-defined, external threat but a disadvantage when coping with rapid social-economic change. Is the UK prepared?

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Josef Konvitz, historian, former diplomat and authority on economic and urban governance, is Honorary Professor at the University of Glasgow and Chair of the PASCAL Board. From 1992 to 2003 he directed the OECD’s work on urban affairs, and from 2003 to 2011, the OECD programme on regulatory policy.