The Big Bang Made London. Brexit Could Undo It

If you know anything about financial history, you know about the Big Bang deregulation of London’s financial markets. On Oct. 27, 1986, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher blew apart the inert blob that was the stagnant postwar U.K. economy and its ailing banking system. That explosion helped make London synonymous with international finance, ignited a cultural and economic transformation in the U.K., and even helped bring down Soviet communism.

Now, two years after Britons voted to exit the European Union, it’s worth reflecting on not just how the Big Bang was detonated but also on the principles it represented. This wasn’t an immutable act of nature so much as a reversible act of financial engineering, and Brexit has become an agent of its undoing. The financial revolution Thatcher kicked off was a powerful expression of faith in the power of globalization to improve lives—a faith that’s been shaken in the era of Brexit and Donald Trump.