Brexit Is Like Repealing the Corn Laws All Over Again

An era of unparalleled, but not unprecedented, free trade and prosperity looms.

by Paul Marshall
January 10, 2017

Of all my uplifting reading over the Christmas period, none was more so than John Morley’s great “Life of Richard Cobden”. One great Liberal’s biography of another. It is uplifting not only because of the quality of the writing but also because of the many parallels between the Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 and Britain’s decision to leave the European Union in 2016.

Germany lacks the military ambitions of 1830s Prussia, but it is following the game plan of the Zollverein in most respects.

Cobden rose from modest beginnings as the son of a Sussex farmer to become a highly successful Stockport manufacturer of calico and one of the co-founders, with John Bright, of the Anti-Corn-Law League.