India, May 31 -- Britain's post-Brexit transformation hinges on freer trade, flexible regulation, and calibrated immigration reforms over decades.

The economic gains for Brexit were envisaged to come from three directions and to accrue over the long term. First, there would be free trade with the rest of the world in place of high EU protection of agriculture and manufacturing. Second, there would be replacement of tightly prescriptive EU regulation in the tradition of Napoleonic law by pragmatic UK regulation in the tradition of the common law. Third, there would be control of immigration to ensure that those coming- from anywhere in the world- had the skills necessary to bring a net economic contribution to the UK, in place of an autom...