It may be hard to believe it, but we are coming up on NINE years since the Brexit referendum (and before you know it we will surely be inundated by retrospectives of the event on the tenth anniversary next year in 2026).
A lot has happened since the 23rd June 2016. We had years of political chaos in Westminster both before and after the date the United Kingdom officially left the European Union. We had a (fingers crossed, knock on wood, knock on wood again till your knuckles are bloody to be sure) once-in-a-lifetime worldwide pandemic that shut down huge swathes of the economy. We had Vladimir Putin launching his invasion of a sovereign neighbour whose main crimes in his eyes seems to be that it was both sovereign (when it should, according to his reading, be subordinate to Moscow) and a neighbour (when he clearly would much prefer if it was an integral part of the Russian Federation). And we have had Donald Trump, both in the restrained form of his first Presidential term where some of his appointees were willing to say ‘maybe this isn’t such a good idea’ and in the unrestrained from of his second term where a suggestion to blow up the global economy predicated on a remedial grasp of modern economics was cheered on.
History didn’t just stop for Brexit you see, and Brexit’s impact hasn’t defined the arc of global affairs over the past decade. Other, far more important events have occurred that have had an impact on our lives and the lives of people all across the planet whereas Brexit has been more particular to the lives of those of us who dwell here on these islands. Yet all those other events have impacted Brexit, and shaped how it has been perceived and judged.
The core questions of Brexit are these. Did it fulfill its promises? Did it allow the UK to ‘take back control?’ Was it worth it?
For a long time the answer was obfuscated. As data came out following the pandemic which showed the UK’s economy was lagging behind their peers on the continent, the Conservative government of the time was keen to attribute this discrepancy to both the aforementioned pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The impact of Brexit was always minimized. The rationale was transparently easy to understand of course, the Conservative party could not admit that the Brexit they now wholeheartedly championed (after Boris Johnson had purged any lingering influence of Tory remainers) had had any deleterious side effects even as the negative side effects were obvious to anyone who cared to look.
For years Brexiteers were taunted about trying to come up with a single Brexit dividend, which they spectacularly failed to do so beyond highlighting abstract gains in ‘sovereignty’. Only Donald Trump slapping a 10% tariff on the United Kingdom (in contrast to the 20% levied on the European Union) has seemingly came close to being the long-sought ‘Brexit dividend’…
“Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, was asked whether Brexit had “protected” the UK from higher costs.
Mr Jones said: “We’ve been treated differently to the European Union, that’s correct.”
When it was put to him that the UK was enjoying a “Brexit dividend”, he said: “It is, there’s one. I’ve struggled to find one in the past, but there is one.”
Though Foreign Secretary David Lammy later claimed that the lighter tariffs were ‘nothing to do with Brexit’, it didn’t stop Eurosceptics chalking this up as a win. Though I have to confess, I didn’t see ‘Vote for Brexit so that when the American President goes on a protectionist rampage he hits us less hard than the EU’ on the side of a bus in 2016.
I would suggest that true dividends and benefits should be systemic and longer-lasting than actions based on the capricious whims of a single individual (and given Trump paused the tariffs shortly afterwards, the dividends that Eurosceptics waited years for lasted a scant few days).
Overall, recent polling indicates that the British public now think Brexit was a mistake.
“Latest opinion polls consistently show that the public thinks Brexit was a mistake.
For this year’s fifth anniversary, YouGov asked: “In hindsight do you think Britain was right or wrong to leave the European Union?”
The result was “Wrong” 55% and “Right” 30%. A stunning three out of four of the 18 to 25-year-olds, who mostly did not have a chance to vote in the referendum, think leaving was a mistake.”
But while a majority now think Brexit was a mistake, there is a deep sense of resignation regarding the issue as well.
The conundrum is that while most people now think Brexit was a mistake, for those who supported and still support Brexit, it is probably one of THE most important factors they consider when they cast their vote. Those who think Brexit was a mistake, whilst a majority of the British population, seem less inclined to condition their vote on a party’s Brexit stance than those who supported it. The result is that attempting to rectify that mistake would re-open a divisive debate few people have much interest in revisiting at the moment (particularly when the conditions for rejoining the European Union will almost certainly not be as flexible as the bespoke deal Britain abandoned when it voted to leave) AND it would alienate voters Labour feels it needs to remain in power.
As a result, Labour has long since given up on championing either Remain or Rejoin, determined to appeal to pro-Brexit voters in the Red Wall they lost in 2019 (and regained to a degree in 2024) and to demonstrate to them that Labour could be trusted with Brexit. ‘Make Brexit Work’ is the motto and the plan, and work has been quietly underway to improve the deal with the European Union.
And this is where things get sticky.
The Labour government does not want to choose between the European Union and the United States.
“The prime minister has rejected any suggestion that the UK must choose between closer ties with the US or the European Union, when Donald Trump returns to the White House.
Sir Keir Starmer said his government would “never turn away” from its partnership with the US, and also promised to build stronger bonds with Europe.”
Yet what Labour wants, and what it may do, are two entirely different things. Brexit fundamentally was a promise about ‘taking back control’. Whilst that can be sold on an identitarian basis with an appeal to national pride and a reimagined past, it also means something in practice as well. Britain has control, but control proportional to its economic strength (which is a far cry indeed from its 19th century hegemonic heyday). Labour’s talks with the European Union are being undertaken at the same time as they are attempting to negotiate a trade deal with the Trump administration, both vastly bigger entities in terms of economic strength and with interests that maybe incompatible.
According to Bloomberg (and quoted in this City AM post) “UK officials have suggested to European Union (EU) counterparts that Britain could be willing to accept alignment with EU rules on fresh meat and dairy, and to accept oversight of the European Court of Justice (ECJ)”
This would be good news for Northern Ireland of course, as it would lead to considerable mitigation on the checks under the Windsor Framework that underpin the ‘Irish sea border’ which are anathema to local Unionists.
The mere suggestion of this change has riled Brexit backers with former minister and current Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel saying that
“Labour’s Brexit betrayal has begun.
“They spent every day in opposition blocking Brexit. Starmer and his government are sabotaging our Brexit freedoms and surrendering our sovereignty.”
She added: “They want to impose EU laws on us through the backdoor, make Britain a rule-taker and subject us to ECJ decisions.
“The Conservatives have set Labour five clear tests on Brexit. We will not let Labour surrender our freedoms. When Labour negotiates Britain always loses.”
At the same time however, US Vice-President JD Vance was opining only this week that a US-UK trade deal was close and that there was a ‘good chance’ it could be completed in the near future.
How do you square the circle of dynamically aligning with the European Union’s food standards to secure a better trading relationship with the EU whilst at the same time being able to lower those standards to allow the import of certain US agricultural products that will not meet those standards?
It’s a question posed by the Telegraph in this article and it quotes former Brexit negotiator Lord Frost
“Lord Frost, who led Brexit negotiations under Boris Johnson, said the deal would make negotiations with Mr Trump’s White House more difficult because “one of the things the Americans most want is access to our food and agriculture market”.
He said: “We would be selling away our ability to set our rules for no real benefit, and meanwhile, making it more difficult to do FTAs [Free trade agreements] with the countries that we don’t have them with – notably America. It just makes no sense to me. The world has changed, and they can’t adjust their policy. That’s fundamentally what the problem is.”
To govern is to choose, and whilst in a better world the UK government wouldn’t need to choose between the US and the EU, and whilst Labour’s reluctance to do so is understandable, the bald reality is that they may have to. Taking back control may in practice mean accepting that a comprehensive deal can only be done with one of the two mighty economic powers the UK is currently talking with.
If that is the case, the choice will be between a European Union that offers a law and rules based approach in contrast with the caprice of the current US administration, with whom the UK is far more closely intwined economically with roughly half of all UK exports going to the EU and with whom a deal could help unwind some of the issues Brexit caused Northern Ireland at the cost of aligning with the European Union’s rules in some spheres…and a US administration that seemingly has no overarching strategy on trade beyond the whims of President Trump, that has no real respect for rules and the law, who account for less than 20% of the UK’s exports and for whom a deal would allow Brexiteers to talk about the ‘control’ Brexit had afforded the UK when the reality would be the country’s complete capitulation to vastly superior American power. There is also the complicating factor that Trump has proven an unreliable negotiator. He effectively tore up the USMCA accord which he himself negotiated in his first term as a replacement for the NAFTA he railed against. In 2018 he said it was a triumph, in 2025 he was imposing punishing tariffs on both nations.
Given the circumstances, it seems clear that prioritising a deal with the European Union is more in Britain’s national interest than a deal with the US. As a friend of mine remarked about how to handle the US if Britain does have to choose and opts for the EU, “… negotiations should be low key and at a technical level for the time being, exploring areas of cooperation which fly below Trump’s radar. The world could be in a very different place in another nine years time.” Given how much of US policy is now reflective of the changing whims of a single poorly informed individual with an unshakable faith in himself, this would probably be the best approach.
Brexiteers won’t be happy, because for them the illusion of total sovereignty and control is more important than being truly in charge of their own destiny because in the real world, taking back control in practice for smaller nations has always been to gain the right to say ‘how high?’ to the bigger nations and blocs when they tell you to jump. And when they tell you to jump in different directions at the same time, which may be about to happen here, that is when having control may feel very lonely indeed…
I’m a firm believer in Irish unity and I live in the border regions of Tyrone.
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