It's not surprising that a decade since the UK's vote on leaving the European Union that the pro-EU media is crowing. RNZ has republished a CNN piece called "Ten years on, Britain counts the cost of Brexit" as if there is some grand consensus in the UK that it was a mistake. Given that the leading party in opinion polls is Reform (which is essentially a reconstituted Brexit Party/UKIP) that would seem like the same foolish arrogance that saw the bureaucratic/media/academic establishment, and most politicians (although some Conservatives and a handful of Labour politicians promoted Leave) be gobsmacked when the UK voted "Leave".
They couldn't believe that a majority of voters disagreed with them, and now of course they think most people regret it. No doubt leaving has imposed costs on businesses that trade with the EU, and no doubt both major parties in Government have barely touched the sides in setting Britain free but Michael Gove, whose career highlight, as far as I am concerned, was as Secretary of State for Education under David Cameron (when he pioneered free schools and enabled high rating state schools to become independent Academy schools), has written persuasively in the Spectator that it HAS been worth it:
The reality has been different: Britain is growing at least as fast as our major European partners (the countries growing fastest in recent years have been those which imposed the most savage austerity in the early 2010s). We took the lead among European nations in the fight against Russia when it invaded Ukraine. The City is flourishing: Britain remains the world’s largest net exporter of financial services, according to TheCityUK, an industry-led body representing UK-based financial and related professional services. Net exports were £84 billion last year, 12 per cent higher (in real terms) than in 2015. And however many masters there are in the universe, they still seem to be flocking to London. There were 162,000 people working in finance and insurance in the City of London in 2015, pre-Brexit, and 223,000 in 2024.
Could that growth have been more impressive? Of course. Is there still a long regulatory tail of EU legislation holding us back? Absolutely. But the choice to go further, faster is there – and can be exercised in a manner impossible while still in the EU.
Gove has identified policies both good and not so good, that leaving the EU has enabled.
• Cut tariffs on over 100 foodstuffs to counter inflation (EU Membership put the UK's entire trade policy in the hands of Brussels)
• Preferential trade agreements with the US and India (and Australia and New Zealand)
• Being outside the EU Digital Markets Act enabling the UK to outstrip investment in AI and technology compared to EU Member States
• Enabling gene-editing of crops (the EU effectively prohibits genetic engineering outside the lab)
• Turing student exchange scheme (globally focused) replacing the EU’s Erasmus (focused only on the EU)
• Liberalisation of agricultural subsidies and reduction of production restrictions (compared to the sclerotic Common Agricultural Policy)
• Increasing the UK share of the fisheries sector and reforming the sector (which was previously fully open to EU fishing fleets, many of which were subsidised).
• Potential of withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (which has been used to insist on illegal migrants being granted refugee status in the UK, even if they have committed violent offences because of fear they would be mistreated if deported).
• Measures to protect the remaining British steel industry including tariffs (up to 50%), subsidies and state ownership.
• VAT imposed on private school fees.
He noted on immigration, Brexit didn’t deliver what people assumed:
Taking back control of our borders was accompanied with the implementation of a points-based immigration system which enabled the inflow of many more workers, students and, crucially, dependents than the country ever envisaged or wanted. The higher-education, health and care sectors were already addicted to importing foreigners before Brexit – boosting vice-chancellors’ balance sheets and keeping labour costs low.
What Gove doesn’t say is that the UK political appetite to shut-down access to its welfare state including the NHS and social housing has been low. For that is a big part of the issue people have with immigration – people turning up to get something for nothing. If that tap were turned off, as is the case in plenty of EU Member States (some of which have language and national insurance contribution requirements to access healthcare, education and welfare), it would likely have a significant impact on demand.
For Gove the most important success is that it is now UK politicians fully accountable for UK laws. No more can they blame Brussels for requiring this or banning that, or taxing this or subsidising that. Sovereignty in law making is no longer subservient to a higher level of government. As always that's a mixed bag, in some cases it was good for the EU to stop British protectionist politicians, but more often than not the EU was an expression of the stultifying "dirigisme" political economics embodied by France, which prefers protecting sunset industries and jobs, over allowing new ones. I recall when France fined Google Maps for the audacity of offering a free map service, undermining the business of French map makers. The idea that the public benefited from Google Maps more than it lost is alien to the political culture of France, and that is also central to too much EU thinking on economics.
Gove concludes:
Brexit was a vote for a faster feedback loop between politicians and the people, the ability to yank the chain harder when ministers do not live up to their promises. That chain was yanked with great, cleansing, propulsive force in 2024 and I felt the spray. But that vote was not a repudiation of Brexit, it was its vindication. The failure I charted above to control migration, and indeed to go further, faster in re-building and re-balancing our economy, saw the Tories punished. Now it is proving Labour’s turn. The message from ten years ago – the demand that politicians change our society – has not diminished in force or fervour. That there is unfinished business is clear. But it is clearer still that Brexit alone makes that change possible.
Those who voted Leave knew it. They braved condescension and endured years of frustration to have it delivered. They must not be let down.
I’d conclude that this is the problem. The opportunity to set the UK free from hoards of regulatory instruments imposed from Brussels has barely been touched. The fundamental problems around immigration haven’t been confronted – such as the attractions of the welfare state and the inability to deport violent criminals because it would deprive them “of a family life”. Of course prospects for any useful reform under the current Labour Government are remote, but the chances of another referendum on EU membership soon are as well.
Either a future UK Government tries to take advantage of this opportunity fully, or it may as well rejoin and decline in concert with the rest of the western European EU Member States.
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