Ten years on from the Brexit referendum. Economically, the outcome of leaving the single European market and Customs Union are clear; the UK's GDP per capita is between 6% and 8% smaller than it would have been had the UK remained in. Brexit has negatively impacted trade and investment; Britain exports less, employs fewer people, than its economy would have done otherwise.
Brexit didn't lead to a social and economic collapse; it's more like a slow puncture than a high-speed blow out. Correct me if I'm wrong. but nothing is better in Britain today than it was before. [However, Brexiteers like to point out that since the end of 2019, the UK economy has grown by 6.0% compared to Germany's pathetic 0.8% growth. But then France grew by 6.6%, and Poland by 15.5%.]
Britain's polluted rivers and beaches are an excellent example; without EU regulatory safeguards, the national legislator (Westminster) was free to bow to pressure from the interests (the water companies, their CEOs and shareholders) and hey presto – 'costly red-tape' is removed. Bathing among bobbing turds is the result.
Another example. Migration from EU member states fell to a trickle after Brexit, but it was replaced by the 'Boris wave' with non-EU workers turning up legally in record numbers (long-term net inbound migration in the 12 months to March 2023 was an all-time high of 944,000, the bulk of those being health- and care workers).
If you voted for Brexit without a clear plan for how leaving the EU would make you richer and more powerful, then you were gamed by those who did.
The stereotypical privately educated, swashbuckling Brexiteer would say: "I believe in free enterprise! Global trade unrestricted by Brussels! National sovereignty! Cut red tape for growth!" Yet in practice, this tended to mean: "I want maximum freedom to move capital, buy cheap inputs, outsource production, hire cheaper labour, avoid regulation, lower consumer standards and weaken labour-market protections." Meanwhile, the disadvantaged local worker experienced the consequences: insecure employment with zero-hours contracts, lower bargaining power, loss of status, degraded high streets and a sense that 'our people' were no longer valued.
However, framed in the context of Brexit, the boss could present himself not as the agent of the changes negatively affecting the English white working class, but as a fellow victim: "Brussels made British business uncompetitive! EU regulation tied our hands! Free movement put pressure on services and wages! The political elite in London ignored you! Vote Leave and we will take back control!"
This was politically brilliant, turning the old class conflict into something external. So, instead of boss vs worker, it became local people vs Brussels, the UK vs the EU; common sense vs experts.
I would frame the Brexit referendum as a battle between two elites; the old and the new. The old – typically privately educated, full of ruling-class confidence, still imbued with the old national myths, the need for sovereignty, and disdainful of bureaucratic constraint, especially if it flows from abroad. "From Harrow School/To rise and rule." The private-school-aristocratic tradition says: lead, improvise, command the room, trust instinct and treat bureaucracy as something for clerks.
The new elite is quite different. From humbler backgrounds, humanities graduates from white-tile universities, grammar-school educated, believing in meritocracy, ethically guided and trusting expertise.
Brexiteers, be they the old elite or the put-upon working classes, see this new elite as the problem. Woke theoreticians, who've never done a day's real work (plumbing, bricklaying, toolmaking, nursing, bus-driving) in their lives. Citizens of anywhere rather than citizens of somewhere.
There were two contradictory visions of the sunny uplands that would result from Brexit: a Singapore-on-Thames where freewheeling capitalism was to regain control; free to strike deals all over the world, bringing in cheaper labour from the former British colonies to supplant EU citizens; the other vision an autarkic Brexit with closed borders, tariff walls and a return to the certainties of the 1950s. The white working class longed for the latter. They were unwittingly fooled into voting for the former.
If you ask a Brexiteer why leaving the EU has been a failure, they will answer "it's because we've not had a proper Brexit." Probe further and they'll either tell you that a proper Brexit would have been total economic liberalisation, deregulation and full openness to trade with the Rest of the World, or else a proper Brexit that would have slammed shut the borders on just about everyone who's not British (or at least a native-speaker of English). Two entirely contradictory visions that mutually exclude one another. The nearest the UK got to the freewheeling capitalism vision was the 49-day-long premiership of Liz Truss. It turned out that the bond markets did not share that vision, preferring steady long-term returns to the kinds of risks taken by hedge-fund managers.
EU membership, like Gaza, is one of those political issues that touches not the day-to-day lives of British voters. Call-in radio shows on LBC showed time and time again that the average Brexit voter, fired up by the notion that "no one in Brussels is going to tell them how to lead their lives" was unable to name a single EU that impacted their lives. Sovereignty is an emotion.
Supreme lack of interest in EU matters converted into erroneous tropes ("unelected bureaucrats" – a bit like "unelected bus conductors") and going to the polls ten years ago not so much as to regain sovereignty (whatever that means) but to give a kicking to the incumbent prime minister David Cameron and his Tory government.
Britain is repenting. Rejoining the EU will be harder and take much longer than leaving it. No one born this century voted for Brexit, yet it's hurting them most. I hope for a swift return.
This time last year:
Janowiec and Mięćmierz
This time two years ago:
Big Walk to Zalesie Górne
This time six years ago:
My return to central Warsaw after lockdown
Last summer before S7 works begin
This time nine years ago
Nostalgia, ideology, aesthetics, emotions
This time 11 years ago:
Civilisation and barbarism – how the former deals with the latter
This time 12 years ago:
Ahead of the opening of Jeziorki's Biedronka
This time 13 years ago:
New views of Jeziorki
This time 14 years ago:
Motorway finally links (the outskirts of) Łódź and (the outskirts of) Warsaw
This time 17 years ago:
Kraków Air Museum
This time 18 years ago:
Quintessential Jeziorki
This time 19 years ago:
Little boxes, Mysiadło
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