It’s hard to think of an issue in modern British history on which the UK was more divided than the question of whether to leave or remain in the European Union. Almost overnight, the country was evenly split between “Brexiteers” and “Remainers”, a line that cut through families, friendships, political parties and the workplace.
The result of the referendum on June 23, 2016, was almost right down the middle: 51.89% of voters in favour of “Leave” and 48.11% wanting to “Remain”. Nearly eight years on from that momentous decision, much of the passion and enmity has dissipated but the hangover has not gone away.
What has clearly changed is the level of support for Brexit. Buyer’s remorse kicked in very soon after and for the past 18 months, polls have shown a consistent picture of solid regret, with around 55% of the population believing it was a mistake to leave the EU, and only 33% continuing to think it was the right decision (12% are unsure).
There are a number of factors that account for this collapse in support but almost all of them concern the conspicuous gap between what was promised and what has materialised. The Leave campaign’s most vote-winning arguments were that Brexit would enable the UK to “regain” control of its borders and there would be pronounced economic benefits resulting from trade freedom and no longer having to contribute to the EU budget.
In both cases, the outcome bears no relationship to the pledge. In the first instance, Britain’s borders have never appeared more porous or out of control. Brexit was sold as a means of stemming the flow of cheap foreign labour and raising wages to create a highly paid, high-productivity economy.
But neither the government nor private industry was willing to raise wages sufficiently for workers in the NHS or the care and hospitality industries. So, instead of drawing on the European labour force, employers turned their attention to the non-European workforce in Africa and Asia. As a consequence, net immigration last year reached an all-time record of 745,000 (it was 336,000 the year before Brexit) and there simply isn’t the space, housing or infrastructure to absorb nearly the combined populations of Christchurch, Wellington City and Hamilton every year.
On top of this, the annual number of migrants crossing the English Channel from France in small boats jumped from single figures in 2016 to 45,000 in 2022. Such is the desperation of Rishi Sunak’s government to stem this flow he has staked his political credibility on a highly controversial plan to relocate asylum seekers in Rwanda.
Economic cost
As for prosperity, the British economy is marooned in the doldrums, and is once more teetering on the edge of recession. In truth, the country has never really recovered from the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, particularly in comparison with its European neighbours. Brexit compounded the issue – financial services made up a disproportionately large slice of the British economy, and, as a report from the London School of Economics concluded last year, Brexit has contributed “to a steady loss of financial business, activity and jobs”.
The problem is that the compensatory growth in tech and business, freed from European Union red tape, has not happened. The favourable global trade deals that Leave campaigner Boris Johnson promised would be waiting for the UK are also conspicuous by their absence. Nearly all the trade agreements that have been signed are effectively rollovers that were little more than a reiteration of the terms in place when the UK was part of the EU.
One of the few exceptions is the deal the UK signed with New Zealand, which accounts for less than 0.2% of UK trade. The trade agreement with the US that Brexiteers said would be Britain’s prize for leaving the EU remains an idea rooted in the distant future.
Bundle all this together with Covid, the war in Ukraine and an ongoing cost-of-living crisis and it’s no surprise economists are producing wintry forecasts for growth.
According to a study last year commissioned by the Nuffield Foundation, middle-income British households are now 9% poorer than their French counterparts and the poorest fifth of households are more than 20% poorer than their French and German equivalents.
Only the wealthy in the UK – the top 10% of households – are maintaining their position in relation to their European equivalents. Moreover, Britain’s economic inequality is contributing to damaging social tensions, with crime being one of the few growth industries – 4% up in the year ended June 2023 on the previous year.
Perhaps the hardest-hit sector of all is small business. Exporters have lost the world’s largest tariff-free market next door – it’s estimated that one in eight small exporters have stopped selling to the EU. Equally, importers are saddled with endless form-filling and added costs, plus delays and disruption.
Food shortages
And it’s not just small businesses. Even larger retailers such as supermarkets have been struggling to maintain supply lines. Although it would be inaccurate to suggest that supermarkets have degenerated into some kind of Soviet-era study in scarcity, there are often shortages and emptier shelves.
Last year, a number of supermarkets imposed limits for shoppers on several fresh produce lines, including tomatoes and cucumbers. The cause was attributed to poor harvests in Europe and north Africa but other European countries did not appear to have the same difficulties with supply. An additional problem is that British farmers were not prepared for raised labour costs after Brexit and so cut back on crops.
Farmers – like fishermen – voted strongly for Brexit, and yet have experienced a tough time ever since with the loss of EU subsidies, EU workers and ease of access to the EU market. Manual workers, another pro-Brexit demographic, have also not taken up residence in the land of milk and honey.
Northern discontent
One of the most staunch Brexit-voting areas in the country was Teeside in the northeast, an area of widespread social deprivation and industrial decline. Last November, during a parliamentary debate, the Labour MP for Stockton North, Alex Cunningham, raised a question about why so many of his young constituents were living below the poverty line.
The then newly appointed Home Secretary, James Cleverly, was heard to reply, “Because it’s a shithole.” (He later claimed, unconvincingly, that he was referring to the Labour MP himself).
I went to Stockton to speak to locals about their town and the government’s attitude towards it. A surprisingly large number of people essentially agreed with Cleverly’s verdict, but even more expressed their disappointment with Brexit. The town had voted 62% for Leave and 38% for Remain in the EU referendum.
“Don’t talk to me about Brexit,” was a typical response from locals I spoke to. “I voted for it and it’s done nothing for us,” said one.
Like spurned lovers, the people of Stockton and the northeast had hoped that once the UK cut its ties with Europe, the government, and London in general, would be forced to turn its gaze towards the country’s forgotten hinterland – places like Stockton. The government had said as much, promising a policy of “levelling up”, in which the neglected north would be the focus of major developments and extra funding.
Levelling up has since become something of a non-phrase, seldom mentioned other than to the sound of mocking jeers. The symbolic last straw came when Sunak announced that a much-trumpeted plan to extend a high-speed rail system to Manchester was to be cancelled.
As the north hasn’t gained from Brexit, and the power of the south’s financial services has diminished, “levelling down” might be a more appropriate term for the economic restructuring post-Brexit. Nor is it just a regional failing. There are scarcely any business sectors – agriculture, industry, fishing – that have reaped discernible rewards from Britain’s new, if rather notional, independence.
Party fallout
Yet arguably, the institution most damaged by Brexit is the one that worked hardest to bring it about ‒ the Conservative Party. The rancorous divisions that opened up over Europe have torn that party apart, empowering a populist right wing that is obsessed with immigration and asylum seekers to the exclusion of all other political considerations, including the continued relevance of their party.
The irony, of course, is that both legal and illegal immigration has been turbo-charged by the UK’s departure from the EU. For reasons that no one has ever satisfactorily explained, Brexiteers believed that France would work harder to prevent unwanted migrants from leaving its shores for the UK, once the UK was no longer in a binding union with France.
Strangely, the opposite has happened. It’s an example of the blind arrogance that has dogged the Brexit project from its inception. I can recall Boris Johnson telling me over dinner one night that because the UK was a net importer from the EU, the EU needed us more than we needed it, and therefore it would bend to our demands. He believed that the UK would be able to maintain frictionless access to the EU market without having to grant freedom of movement of people. The EU stuck to its guns, and UK industry ended up with its nose pressed against the glass while British travellers have to queue with the rest of the world at European borders. Britons with homes in Europe can stay there for only 90 days in every 180-day period, although this restriction has recently eased in France.
Johnson, the third of five Conservative leaders since that fateful day in 2016, now argues that the UK has been let down by its business leaders. The problems that were predicted and have duly come to be are not of his doing.
Although Johnson is widely viewed to have tipped the balance in favour of Brexit with his charismatic campaigning that promised everything and delivered so little, the most longstanding and, in his own way, influential Brexiteer was Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party, which morphed into the Brexit Party and latterly is called Reform UK. Farage is now a presenter on GB News, a hard-right news cable channel, and has recently returned from a long stay in the Australian jungle as a contestant in I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. He ate camel udder and finished third. Last year, after statistics showed the negative economic impact of leaving the EU, he announced that “Brexit has failed”, blaming British politicians for being “as useless as the commissioners in Brussels”.
Renegotiation looms
He is unrepentant about his own role as a relentless cheerleader for UK “independence”. One reason the word comes with quotation marks is that in today’s globalised world, independence is a relative concept. The UK, for instance, is a member of the European Court of Human Rights. Much of its law is tied up within international and European law, which is why the Conservative government’s plan to remove asylum seekers to Rwanda is unlikely to succeed.
The fantasy of Brexit was that the UK would be able to leave, draw up the footbridge and deal with the outside world entirely on its chosen terms. It didn’t survive a moment’s contact with reality. Most sensible politicians realise the UK will have to renegotiate its relationship with the EU if it is not to remain excluded from competitive access to its markets.
But sensibleness is not a quality that is much in fashion these days, and so this political inevitability is a taboo subject. The government doesn’t mention it and nor does the Labour opposition. It’s the continental-sized elephant in the room that everyone is too scared of recognising for fear that it will trigger a whole new phase of division and recrimination.
Yet if Labour comes to power in the next election (it has polled around 20% ahead for many months), it will have to bring attention to the European elephant. That will be the beginning of a long and difficult process that, perhaps in a decade or so, will probably lead to the UK reapplying for EU membership.
If a week is a long time in politics, a decade is an eternity. Populism will continue to shake the centrist foundations of British political life and the destabilising influence of Russia is also not going to abate. Throw in the economic and environmental tensions of decarbonisation and the future is anything but predictable.
But some facts will be difficult to change. The UK is a small, overcrowded island, dependent on trade and its service industries. It sits 35km from the world’s largest trading bloc, and 6820km from the United States ‒ that nation with which it dreams it has a “special relationship”.
But the incurable disruptor, Donald Trump, aside, most mainstream American politicians wanted the UK to remain in the EU. The world has shown that it’s not rushing to make Britain great again.
We matter much more within the EU, and for better or worse, the British really do want to matter.
