Britain should look east post-Brexit

Melbourne

FOR Britain and the European Union, Brexit should be an opportunity to reset, not a time for retribution. The EU's overly ambitious but underachieving drive for economic centralisation has distracted from the desperate need for strong reforms in Europe's major economies. Outside the EU, the UK should focus on these reforms and engage with growing and dynamic regions of the global economy, while doing its best to continue engaging with its sclerotic neighbours.

From my distant vantage point, the debates preceding the UK's June referendum were "little more than the amusements of my daily newspaper" (to quote a famous Englishman) in that the impact for our region was likely to be trivial. The major EU economies have been shrinking rapidly in terms of their global economic weight for decades, and this has mattered very little to Asia's rapidly growing economies.