The inventor of the best vacuum cleaner could do well to vacuum clean some old thinking

Vacuum cleaning is wonderful – it takes away old dirt and makes space.

For new thinking, for example.

James Dyson has created the best vacuum cleaners in the world and built a successful business empire.

He was a major supporter of Brexit back in 2016.

Yes, we can understand Sir Dyson’s passion for a more independent UK back in 2016; he saw it avoiding bureaucracy, moving to more freedom and building a Singapore on the Thames.

But today, when we have more than three years of data on the economic outcome of Brexit, we would expect Sir Dyson to look at those data and adapt his judgement.

But NO – he is still today 100% convinced that Brexit was the right decision. The primary argument, he shared in an interview in a business magazine recently, is that countries are better off when they are independent than when they're part of a larger union. Smaller businesses are more nimble, innovative and prosperous than larger companies, he claims, and the same is true for nations.

The pros and cons of small versus large companies doesn’t lead to game-set-match, it’s more of a nuanced analysis of advantages and disadvantages. And when we look at nations staying alone, outside of economic unions, data shows clearly that Sir Dyson is wrong, indeed.

Let us start with his own country, the UK, which, after joining EU’s single market experienced a much more positive economic development than in the decades before. Why?! Because UK companies could sell more to a huge export market and import more efficiently. And the exposure to international competition that the membership in the single market led to was very healthy for many UK businesses, who had grown complacent and sleepy during the times of homegrown competition.

There are more examples. Look at the 10 countries that joined the EU after the breakup of the Soviet Union – Poland, Slovakia, Romania, The Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia – these countries have all seen huge economic growth since joining the EU . They became part of a union, with access to a much bigger market. Also, they had to enhance their institutions significantly. Compare the development of these ten countries to the ones which have stayed outside of the EU - like Belarus, Ukraine and Russia – and we find that these outsiders have performed way worse compared to the countries that joined the EU.

How about Switzerland, the richest and most successful country in Europe? Yes, it’s not a formal member of the EU, but with over one hundred agreements it is very closely connected and almost a full member.

Let us look at the performance of the UK after Brexit. Economic growth has been among the slowest in Europe. ?Inflation has been among the highest. Exports to the EU has declined a lot, whereas export to other new markets have not taken off. Foreign investments are down big time. And let us not forget the time-consuming impracticalities that both UK companies and UK citizens experience when they trade with and travel to Europe. And where are those big wins that were promised?

Sir Dyson was a strong proponent of Brexit and had a lot of arguments at the time of the vote. How about some vacuum cleaning of all those old arguments, making place for the current data of the actual development in the UK after leaving the EU? And for the stories of nations which have grown prosperous joining EU.

Vacuum cleaning is wonderful – it takes away old dirt and makes room for us to change our old views.