Vote-counting in the 2016 EU referendum had not even concluded before an army of disappointed Remain campaigners were trying to tell us that Britain had just condemned itself to a future as an isolated, xenophobic hellhole steeped in economic decline – while the EU sailed on confidently without us.

The then Conservative MP Anna Soubry reacted to news of a sinking pound by saying: “Yesterday we were told this was all scaremongering.

Here we are, can you believe it, this morning talking about an economy which is in this terrible shock. We have made a very, very bad mistake.”

Ever since, Remoaners have lost no opportunity to claim that Britain’s problems are all to do with Brexit. A few empty supermarket shelves in 2021 were attributed to our departure from the EU – oblivious to the fact that we were in the midst of a global pandemic and that supply chains were deeply disrupted as a result.

Think tanks make extravagant claims about how richer we would all be had we never left the EU – based on preposterous modelling which assumes the economy would have continued growing strongly through Covid and the energy crisis which followed the Ukraine war.

Those who try to sell us these narratives must count on us not looking too carefully at what has been happening across the Channel.

They must hope we haven’t noticed that Germany is entering its third year of recession, or that France is as far up to its eyeballs in debt as Britain is – and worse, the National Rally and the Socialists between them have just squashed any hope that President Macron might rein up public spending by, for example, increasing France’s absurdly low retirement age.

Remoaners hope, too, that we haven’t noticed that European healthcare systems, like ours, are struggling to cope with an ageing population. In Germany, stroke patients have been driven 90 miles to find a hospital bed.

In Spain, doctors have gone on strike over what they see as the collapse of their public health system. Even before Covid, the Netherlands was so short of paediatric beds that children were having to be sent to Belgian hospitals.

Europe likes to pride itself on its public services, which are often held up as an example of the superiority of European civilisation over that of America. But without economic growth, no country can afford to maintain good public services.

As for the idea that Britain, divorced from the nice, liberal EU, has descended into xenophobia and racism, surely not even the most ardent Remoaners can fail to have noticed that it is other European countries which have all the far right parties – Britain doesn’t have a functioning one of any size.

Time and again, before and after Brexit, studies which compare social attitudes have come to the conclusion that Britain is just about the least racist and xenophobic country in Europe, sometimes vying with Portugal and Scandinavian countries for the honour.

None of this is to say, of course, that Britain does not have deep economic problems.

Our economy is flatlining, productivity has never recovered properly since the 2008 financial crisis. Government borrowing is far too high, and has been for the past 20 years, beginning with Gordon Brown’s spending splurge long before Brexit.

The reality is that Britain is locked into the same low economic orbit as is the rest of Europe, and has been for years.

Europe is in this position because its economic policies do not favour growth. The EU, along with many individual governments, see industries as pieces of heritage.

Existing jobs and factories must be preserved, and if necessary defended against new industries and foreign competition. Hence the EU has punitive tariffs on food imports from outside the EU, to protect French farmers.

Whole industries like fracking and GM foods – in which Britain was well-placed to take a global lead 25 years ago – have been snuffed out by the EU’s precautionary principle, which treats anything new with deep suspicion.

The EU is now on course to do the same with Artificial Intelligence.

The difference is that Britain could now, if it wanted to, free itself from the high tax, high-regulation European social democratic model, and come closer to emulating the US whose economy has consistently grown at around twice the European rate all this century.

So why don’t we?

It was always inevitable that while the disadvantages of Brexit, such as greater friction in cross-border trade, would arrive immediately, the potential advantages would only emerge over a much longer timeframe – and then only if we had a government that was prepared to make bold decisions such as freeing businesses from the over-reach of the state.

The previous government did make tentative steps to seize some advantages from Brexit by doing a trade deal with Australia, and by joining the Trans Pacific Partnership trade bloc. Now that a lot of trade is in services, geography is no bar to Britain being in an alliance with the rest of the world.

Yet in some respects we are going backwards, imposing even more draconian regulations than is the EU. Take the Zero Emission Vehicle mandate, which demands that 28% of cars sold by each manufacturer in Britain this year is pure electric, and which is partly credited with the forthcoming closure of Vauxhall’s plant at Luton.

Were we still in the EU, our carmakers would be subject to looser targets. We now have a Labour government which is determined to crush businesses with equality rules and pro-trade union legislation.

If we want to grow the economy – and we will suffer long-term erosion in living standards if we do not – we are going to have to try something very different.

Before the referendum the Leave campaign floated the intriguing possibility that Britain could become “Singapore on Thames” – following the example of a small nation which has managed to climb from being a Third World country to being one of the richest countries in the world, per capita, all within the space of two generations – and with excellent public services to boot.

How did Singapore do it? By fighting corruption so that it became the natural destination for any western country wanting a foothold in South and East Asia.

By adopting low taxes, though without becoming a tax haven – corporation tax is 17%, compared with 25% in Britain. And by allowing its industries continually to work their way up the value chain, regularly closing factories so that labour could be redeployed in more profitable work.

Or there is the example of the US which, through light-touch regulation, especially in employment, has led the tech revolution.

Of the world’s hundred largest companies, just 17 are now European, the largest of which – Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk – comes in at 15th.

No country is perfect, and there are reasons why I wouldn’t want to live in either Singapore or the US. But when it comes to economic growth, stagnant Europe is the last place anyone should be looking for inspiration.

Now we are no longer bound by EU rules we should be looking to the rest of the world far more eagerly than we have been doing so far. At present we are simply becoming yet another brand of European social democracy. If that is the limit of our ambition Brexit will not have been worth the trouble.

• Far From Eutopia: How Europe is Failing and Britain Could Do Better, by Ross Clark (Abacus Books, £22), is out now. Visit expressbookshop.com or call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on online orders over £25