Brexit has broken our political Ice Age. Bring on the revolution before the big freeze takes hold again

There are three aspects to getting Brexit right: our relationship with the remaining 27 EU states; our relationship with the rest of the world; and our consequent domestic reforms.

So far, attention has focused disproportionately on the first but, in truth, this aspect is the most straightforward. No one on either side of the Channel is proposing tariffs. Our relationship with the EU won’t simply be that of a benign third country like, say, Japan.

We shall almost certainly replicate through bilateral treaties some of the obligations we currently have as EU members, retaining our commercial links as well as some research and educational ties – what Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s negotiator, calls “associate status”.

Our relationship with the other 165 states in the world matters more: they will account for more than 90 per cent of the economic growth in the 21st century. Theresa May has spoken of making post-EU Britain “the global leader in free trade”, and I can’t think of a nobler aim. Britain can become the first large, developed country to open its economy across the board, including in food and textiles.

Doing so will do more to enrich developing states than decades of government-to-government aid; it will also help the poorest people in Britain, who spend the highest proportion of their income on food and clothes. Free trade is not just an efficient allocator of resources; it is also a poverty alleviation mechanism, a conflict resolution mechanism, a social justice mechanism.

If, like Switzerland or Singapore, we throw open our markets to the world, we shall find, as they did, that there are domestic implications. Once we start trading on the basis of mutual product recognition rather than common standards, we shall have to deregulate at home, or our producers will be at a disadvantage. Some deregulation will follow naturally from Brexit: outside the EU’s alternative energy boondoggles, for example, we can cut fuel bills, making our factories more competitive as well as boosting household incomes and stimulating the economy.

Equally, though, there are reforms that, though they have nothing immediately to do with Brexit, will help make this country the best place in the region to do business. We need lower, flatter, simpler taxes, cheaper housing, a more streamlined welfare system.

Britain is currently in an unfrozen moment, as much attitudinally as institutionally. We want to make a success of independence. There is a sense that the world is watching to see if we stumble. Unfrozen moments do not last: our assumptions will soon congeal around a new status quo.

Before that happens, we can make some far-reaching reforms. We should aim to eliminate our tariff and non-tariff barriers with EU and non-EU states. We should trade on the basis that products legally for sale elsewhere can be legally sold here unless someone can show overwhelming cause. Once we do that, our domestic industries will start to lobby for deregulation rather than, as at present, seeking to raise barriers to entry.

Britain can become a global entrepôt: offshore, low-tax, lightly but effectively regulated, linked by its supply lines to every continent and archipelago. A chance like this won’t come again.

Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP. His forthcoming book What Next? will be published in October by Head of Zeus