Philip Gough on the fantasies and realities
It can be argued that the UK’s exit from the EU happened by accident. Feeling threatened by UKIP and the europhobic wing of the Tory party, David Cameron announced a referendum on our membership in 2015 assuming this would put the issue to bed for a generation. The unexpected result and the way it has played out has caused a huge disruption to the UK’s post-war geopolitical trajectory.
Vote Leave and its key players deliberately kept vague what Brexit could actually mean. In a classical case of populism, people were invited to believe it could bring whatever they wished for, irrespective of whether it was realistic or not. So on an individual level the average Brexit voter must inevitably feel disappointed – Brexit has not resulted in an extra £350m a week for the NHS; food prices have not come down; manufacturing has not been reinvigorated; a quantity of well-paid, secure jobs for “ordinary” workers did not suddenly materialise; and there is no tangible feeling of being freed from an oppressive (and imagined) tyranny.
At the top of the Vote Leave hierarchy, while encouraging the notion that individual dreams could come true, there were broader policies being promulgated. The ongoing problem for the Brexit project is that these “policies” were not consistent across, for instance, the official Vote Leave campaign and Nigel Farage’s alternative. There was also no requirement for them to be costed or tested for feasibility, and most of the campaign’s leaders knew they would not have to implement them if they won.
Much was made by Vote Leave of removing the UK from the EU Customs Union – allowing the UK to negotiate its own trade deals. However, the reality has been sobering. The Office for Budget Responsibility has estimated that new deals with New Zealand and Australia will add 0.08% to UK GDP over 10 years. The holy grail of a deal with the US is now so remote it can be discarded. Agreements with countries like Japan simply duplicate the ones we had through membership of the EU.
Veterinary checks and export health certificates – now the UK is outside the EU single market – mean extra costs and delays for UK food producers which export. Many have given up exporting.
Fishing was held in 2016 as an exemplar: after Brexit, the UK would regain control of its waters. But the leave campaign failed to see, or was happy not to reveal to our now extremely disappointed fishing communities and the wider public, that fishing is a complex and delicate structure – the UK could not impose an exclusion zone around its coast line and still expect to be able to fish in other countries’ waters, and indeed sell their fish in those countries.
Immigration was a cornerstone of the referendum debate in 2016. It was claimed an exit from the EU would drastically reduce the number of people coming to live in the UK. According to Vote Leave this would mean shorter NHS waiting lists and easier access to accommodation with affordable rents. However, net migration has more than doubled from about 330,000 in 2016 to more than 700,000 in 2023.
One of the most shocking aspects of Brexit has been the damage done to the education and arts sectors. Belatedly the UK is back in Horizon, the EU’s scientific research programme which as EU members we benefited from more than any other country. But damage continues to be done: musicians and actors no longer have the freedom to tour for long periods or take up longer posts in EU countries, and we have withdrawn from Erasmus which gave generations of young people support to study abroad. Young EU citizens are deterred from studying here by what are now much higher fees. Language studying at A level and in universities continues its steep decline.
Far from being “global”, Brexit has spitefully inflicted insularity on us.
The first weeks since their election landslide have shown that Keir Starmer and his government are serious about addressing the many serious flaws contained in the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement. At July’s European Political Community summit held in Blenheim Palace, Starmer could not have made it clearer to the other 46 members that the UK is back as a serious and engaged European partner, “We want to work with all of you to reset relationships, rediscover our common interest, and renew the bonds of trust and friendship.”
So what has “gone wrong” with Brexit? Many people living in economic jeopardy, enduring poorly performing public services damaged by austerity, were sold Brexit as a silver bullet. It could never satisfy the expectations placed on it by individual voters. Overseas money, the agendas of various press barons, a number of shadowy think-tanks, and manipulation of social media all helped bring a result which Brexit’s backers (unbeknown to most Brexit voters) hoped would lead to a deregulated, low-tax, small state “Singapore on Thames” indifferent to its voters’ needs. This “vision” has collided with the reality that, far from being a world power able to operate unilaterally, the UK can only maintain its status as a major European actor in a symbiotic relationship with its nearest neighbours in the EU. Nothing less will allow us to together constructively address the huge challenges facing our countries’ citizens and the world.