Before the EU there was nothing?

That is what the EU philes would have you believe. Its a bit like the first few verses of the Book of Genesis, darkness reigned and then the EU said, "Let there be Light" and lo there was light and the Sun shone especially from the Brussels bureaucrats bum holes.

I am also reminded of an old East coast  Scots saying,

"Musselburgh was a burgh when Edinburgh was nane

and Musselburgh will be a burgh when Edinburgh is gane,"

Thus it is with the EU and international trade.  The whole East coat of the UK has traded for thousands of years across the North Sea with the Baltic nations. Artefacts prove this happened before written records so beloved of the Church and Roman culture. Procedures evolved to facilitate this trade and settle disputes and Common law appeared and evolved. There was no ECJ which as far as I can see is a huge dripping roast for lawyers to feast on creating nothing but fat fees for lawyers and is a tax on  ordinary working people. English  Common law has brought great benefits to the world and will continue to do so when freed from the shackles of the ECJ. It grew out of Anglo Saxon moot meetings which any citizen could attend.

The mere phrase Anglo Saxon makes EU philes foam at the mouth like rabid dogs.

If you shift to the other hemisphere trade flourished across the South Sea Islands a thousand years before the EU driven by resources being available in some islands and not others. it was the same across the North Sea and down into the Med. The Phoenicians visited Cornwall to trade for the tin there even before Ross Poldark had met Demelza and run his tin mine not very well.

Right now 93% of World trade goes on underWTO rules without EU rules. This 93 % is expanding unlike the intra EU trade which despite many the claimed benefits the EU brings is shrinking fast and impovereshing its Southern peoples.

Germany does well economically out of the EU and the EU flatters French delusions of grandeur. That is enough to ensure Franc Prussian support for the "grande projet". Its a loser for the other 25/26 members or as Thatcher's old minister Nick Ridley put it, "a gigantic German racket"

Look at pre EU history to see what we can do free of the EU yoke. Trade was there before the EU and will be there long after the EU is gane, Thank God.