It was quite predictable that the tenth anniversary would be the perfect opportunity to review Brexit, and I’ve lost count of the number of articles appearing on various aspects of the decision, none of them complementary. It is also notable that not one of the Vote Leave protagonists felt able to publish a valedictory piece. It was left to the idiot BoJo, writing in the Daily Mail, to claim that any politician advocating rejoining would be out of their tiny mind. He is an irrelevance, destined to wander around the edges of political society defending his own reckless stupidity until he finally expires.
There are many extremely able and wise commentators on the folly of Brexit. The one that I really admire is Sir Ivan Rogers, former UKREP to the EU before Theresa May fired him in 2017, presumably for telling her the truth. His speeches during the negotiations were widely read and have proven time and again to be almost perfect predictors of what came to pass. The Guardian has interviewed him for the anniversary of the 2016 referendum, and he is as scathing as ever.
Sir Ivan says Labour came to power with no big idea for relations with EU and what they have done so far doesn’t remotely measure up to the challenge. He points to Starmer’s red lines – no single market or customs union – which he says are “massively constraining what you could ever deliver with your key trading and investment partners.”
His comments come as the Rejoin march took place in London yesterday, backed up by numerous polls all showing the majority would now like to put Brexit behind us and rejoin the EU. Former Labour leader, Neil Kinnock told the crowd that Brexit has been has been an “unmitigated, unprecedented, continuing disaster”.
Starmer telling the country not to 'look backwards' at Brexit while thousands are literally outside his window in Parliament Square demanding a return to Europe is peak political avoidance. Hard to move forward when your policy is just managing a broken status quo. 🫠🇪🇺 #Brexit #RejoinEU— fife4europe #FBPE #RejoinEU (@fife4europe.bsky.social) 20 June 2026 at 18:27
Michel Barnier, in an interview, again with The Guardian, has rather spiked the guns of Brexiters by saying that if we did reapply, “staying out of euro and Schengen area would be ‘perfectly possible’.” Those two obstacles were seen by the stay-out mob as trump cards. Not any more. Barnier must know the thinking inside the EU, and they are not the deep impediments some believe.
Martin Sandbu in the FT is clear: Britain’s return to the EU is only a matter of time. There are no alternatives the people would favour. Increasingly, they know it. This has been obvious for some time, but seeing it in the FT is still very heartening - and telling.
In 2016, after the referendum Mr Sandbu forecast that:
“The UK will no longer have a seat at the table where Europe’s policies are made, but it will continue to be at the mercy of those choices as much as before . . . I predict that within a decade, the powerlessness of this position will become painfully obvious; and that within two, the UK may be set on a course back into the EU.”
And here we are.
The Centre for European Reform (CER) has a comprehensive report by John Springford and Anton Spisak on The cost of Brexit, ten years on. Their study confirms what we already know, erecting trade barriers significantly reduces trade.
The Independent quotes the CER report, that Brexit has "cut trade in almost every sector of the UK economy.” It reveals that joining the customs union would have only a limited impact on increasing trade.
The same paper draws reader’s attention to another academic report showing that Brexit helped “send UK plummeting down list of world’s strongest economies.” UK’s place in World Competitiveness Rankings has dropped since Brexit to 24th place. Brexit was supposed to free us from the dead hand of Brussels and make us more competitive!
Data on UK companies used by the Bank of England to determine interest rates, forms the basis of a yet another new report that confirms the UK economy is smaller by 6% than it otherwise would be, due to Brexit. This is reported by the BBC.
The number is about par for the course. The OBR said 4% by 2035, others claim up to 8% already. The BoE figures simply reinforces the message. Bear in mind that every one per cent is £28-£30 billion in GDP, with foregone tax revenues roughly 40% of that.
A televised report by Channel 4’s economics editor Helia Ebrahimi, says the UK economy is in need of a boost, ten years after the referendum. See it HERE.
What better way to boost the economy than rejoining the EU?
The FT, in what seems like a sarcastic attempt at balance, has an article by Peter Foster on the 'winners' of Brexit, and there are some. The list includes the 10,000 additional customers agents trained by The Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade, Dutch and EU logistics providers, migrant workers from outside the EU and Northern Ireland, which has outperformed other parts of the UK since Brexit, mainly because it’s still effectively part of the EU.
Needless to say, overall, Brexit is a massive, overwhelming net loss to the UK. The same paper also looks at how Brexit continues to divide us ten years on.
The Institute for Government (IFG) has a new report out: Brexit at 10: How has leaving the EU changed UK government? They say:
"For the conventional, free-market economist, leaving the EU was a straightforward act of anti-economics folly, one that overvalued ‘more control’ over an important timeless truth: that it is always better to be in a larger market than a smaller one. Whatever the political arguments, the economic case was, and is, unarguable.
"Ten years on, that timeless truth abides. The UK’s growth rate has been poor, living standards have sputtered and productivity faltered. Careful economic studies give a chunk of the blame to Brexit. Despite a savage post-referendum drop in the pound, goods trade has lagged."
Food exports to the EU are 23% down on what they were before Brexit, according to EUToday.
The Federal Trust and The Constitution Society have published a report looking at changes in regulations since Brexit. They argue that "in practice the EU and the United Kingdom are drawing closer together as a result of ongoing dependence on the EU market, capacity constraints and a lack of direction-setting in government and Whitehall. Brexit and Regulation reveals shifting political attitudes and their impact on UK/EU regulatory arrangements."
On the LSE Blogs, Thomas Sampson an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the London School of Economics argues that Brexit has been an economic failure.
Jonty Bloom in The New World looks at a history of Brexit in 256 disasters, while his colleague Luke McGee says the Brexit experiment has failed.
The man who in the early hours of 24 June ten years ago gave us the news that Britain was out of the EU, David Dimbleby, has an article in The Independent:
"All in all, it was not an edifying campaign. Nor, in my view, a sensible way of deciding policy. This was the most important decision Britain faced in a generation. It could and should have been fought out in parliament and through general elections. To put to the country a yes or no question on such a fundamental issue for short term political gain, as Cameron did, was a dereliction of political responsibility. His whistling that little tune as he turned back into Number 10 after announcing his resignation summed up, for me, the apparent frivolity with which he had embarked on the enterprise.
"As for the benefits of leaving, ten years have passed – and we are still waiting."
Finally, the historian Robert Saunders has written a paper about a topic which is often overlooked when Brexit is being discussed. That is the impact the referendum had on democracy itself. The decision wasn’t a simple veto, it was a vague instruction, one which seriously damaged the institutions of democracy in this country. It's well worth a read.
Makerfield
I think we can all be grateful that Andy Burnham won the Makerfield byelection comfortably, beating the Reform UK candidate by over 9,000 votes and 20%. I assume this is bad news for Starmer, who will be forced out shortly by the former mayor of Manchester.
However, I do think Burnham is overselling what he can do. If 'reindustrialising the north' - one of the specific aims set out in his victory speech - was easy, it would have been done years ago.
If he succeeds in taking Thames Water or National Grid into public ownership in the next two years, he will have done well. That might just set us on the path of 'taking back control' from the foreign venture capitalists who appear to be sucking us dry.
Let's hope he has an impact.
