Some of the early economic analysis may be right, but the best is naive.

For example, the extremism in the media wasn’t a “mistake” — it was a structural consequence of the Internet.

As to the EU being greatest human project ever… err… it hasn’t had time to demonstrate that, yet. The economic gains attributed to it are mostly due to other factors. After all, the US has prospered, and we aren’t part of a supra-national union. It isn’t the EU that is investing in British towns — it is the global economy, and that would happen without the customs untion.

Beyond that, the EU’s regulatory monster is going to extinguish the economy of its states in any case. Also, the EU’s attempt to force every nation into the culture favored by the big power, Germany, and a few of the lesser ones, is not going so well. The rise of euroskeptic parties is not because extremism has taken over, but because people are seeing the erosion of their sovereignty, and of their national cultures, all from the dictats of an increasingly undemocratic EU government, with its inherent anti-democratic structure.

Finally, Brexit is not all that likely to crash the British economy. That will only happen if the eurocrats refuse to negotiate reasonable trade agreements, which they very likely may do out of spite, as Brexit is a major threat to their power, not to mention their ideology.