After Brexit tomorrow night, Northern will have economic opportunities due to our unique situation — so let’s seize them

This funereal event was attended by all the usual local remain groupies in dire need validation from on high that the people had got it wrong.

According to Barnier there was nothing but harm coming our way and it was his job to help reduce it.

As usual Barnier made the EU out to be a great economic beacon, this was supported by a slide that made it out as an enduring superpower that would command the top of the world league tables all the way out to 2050.

The hubris is admirable, the more pessimistic predictions don’t even believe the EU will last that long.

However this purported enduring truth must be taken with a sizeable grain of salt as such predictions rarely come true.

Thirty years ago people were projecting that Japan would rival the United States in economic power and cultural influence but the unforeseen perennial stagflation that afflicted the island nation has meant they have fallen way short of that mark.

The EU’s past and present economic performance suggests the 2050 projection is writing cheques that the putative superpower will find difficult to cash.

In terms of economic performance the UK has always been the outlier in the EU, according to the IMF between 1999 and 2017 the UK’s economy grew by 44% whereas the Eurozone grew 26%.

The headline figure for the Eurozone also hides some of the more dire performance of its members with Italy, the zone’s third largest economy, only growing by 6.9% in that period.

Were the single market and all the other Brussels derived paraphernalia the economic silver bullet that high priests such as Barnier purport it to be, then we would expect very different results.

What we have on the continent today is a sclerotic, over regulated morass with a dysfunctional monetary policy that only makes things worse.

Much of the EU is overly reliant on exports in late cycle industries, such as the European car industry that has now fallen rather far behind its rivals in the race for EVs after betting the house on diesel and gaming the regulatory system to that end.

The general policy approaches from Brussels have also contributed to this economic underachievement, their risk averse Luddite policies around data have caused much of the tech revolution of the past twenty years to pass the continent by and the precautionary principle in agriculture has meant it has missed out on many biotech developments.

Hidden amongst Barnier’s false economic evangelism was a more telling point about Northern Ireland, that everything the prime minister has been saying up to this point was correct.

He confirmed that goods will continue to travel freely from Northern Ireland to Great Britain and that in the other direction there would be controls on only food and manufactured goods heading to or likely to head to the Republic of Ireland (RoI).

This slight enhancement of our current arrangements falls well short of the allegations of a ‘Border in the Irish Sea’ as proliferated by the DUP so much so that top EU officials are now distancing themselves from this characterisation.

The admission that the NI protocol merely amounts to a customs transit arrangement for the RoI (a wholly unremarkable and common arrangement internationally) is very telling.

Since the signing of the Withdrawal Agreement the EU has tried to make out as if they returned to their original objective of the NI only backstop and have since obfuscated when discussing the pertinent details.

The fact that Barnier, as well as the Taoiseach earlier in the day, are acknowledging this is a rather late attempt at saving face as it will become quite clear that they did not get all the cake they wanted in the end.

At the end of the day the EU isn’t an economic panacea and neither is Brexit.

Leaving allows us, to use the famous slogan, take back control so our future is what we make of it.

Our success or failure going forward is completely down to us and there are no more excuses as to who or what may be holding us back.

Northern Ireland has huge opportunity from our unique situation, so on the 1st February let’s grasp it.

• Aaron Rankin is chair of the South Belfast Conservative Association and was Conservative candidate for East Antrim in the 2019 general election