Germany had a single market before it had a country
A plan has been put to the government that would take Britain back into the European single market, and it comes with the promise these plans always come with: the trade, without the politics.
Crossbencher · 10 August 2026
A plan has been put to the government that would take Britain back into the European single market, and it comes with the promise these plans always come with: the trade, without the politics. That bargain has been tried on purpose, once, by people who meant every word of it. It's worth knowing what it turned into.
Two hundred years ago the German lands were a patchwork of separate states, each with its own tolls at its own borders. A wagon crossing them was stopped and taxed and stopped again, and the price rose at every barrier. So in the eighteen-thirties a group of those states pulled the tolls down between them and agreed a single tariff wall against the outside world. By 1835 the customs union covered most of the states of the German Confederation. It was the first time in history that independent states built a full economic union without building a political union alongside it. The kings kept their crowns, their armies and their laws. All they pooled was trade.
Members only
Every writer, every column
The last 30 days of the argument are free for everyone, always. The archive beyond that is a Member thing - it is part of what keeps the whole record free.
One email a day: today’s quiz, the Bench question, the argument and what broke - every figure with its source. Free, and it saves your streak. Stop it any time from one link at the bottom of it.