A few hours after the result of the Brexit referendum was announced, the then UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, appeared on ITV’s “Good Morning Britain”, said Laëtitia Langlois on The Conversation. To general astonishment, he said that a key pledge of the campaign – to divert the £350m that Britain was sending to the EU each week to the NHS instead – would “probably not be delivered”. Call it the start of a decade of national “Bregret”.
Many voters would dispute that summary, said Philip Aldrick and Dan Hanson on Bloomberg, though polls show a majority of Britons are now in favour of rejoining the EU. Economists, meanwhile, are still squabbling about how much Brexit has cost. Bloomberg’s latest estimate, of between 2% and 4% of gross domestic product, is conservative compared with some calculations of 6% to 8%. Cambridge University’s pro-Brexit economist Graham Gudgin puts the damage at 1%. Whatever the figure, the experience of UK businesses has been largely negative, rendering the promise of greater sovereignty a farce.
‘More red tape than ever’
Brexit hasn’t proved the “abject catastrophe” that some thought it would be at the time, said Jeremy Warner in The Daily Telegraph. You can point to some continuing success stories – the City of London is one – and there is “evident relief in the tech sector that the UK is not part of the oppressive regulatory regime the EU is establishing for AI”.
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What’s more, there are plenty of other, unrelated reasons for Britain’s current malaise. But Brexit has meant “more red tape than ever” and – worse – has “acted like an energy-annihilating black hole”, inducing “a paralysing effect” on the economy.
‘Big bang’ reversal unrealistic
Some Brexiteer economists reckon that “over the years, the positives will build”, which they may, said Richard Partington in The Guardian. Some also argue that “Brexit was botched”, which is clearly true. But it’s also redolent of the “real communism has never been tried” response to the dystopia of Soviet Russia: it ignores the basic reality.
Meanwhile, the world has moved in a “Brexit-hostile direction”, said Martin Wolf in the FT. In 2016, the idea of “global Britain” was not quite as absurd as it is today, “with globalisation in retreat, the US unreliable, Russia at war in Europe and China even more autocratic and mercantilist”.
That said, a “big bang” reversal of Brexit is unrealistic. As Heraclitus said “you cannot step into the same river twice” – and another referendum would be “highly divisive and re-embittering”. The answer is to emulate Switzerland’s patchwork of treaties that cover the most important parts of the relationship. The UK must get close to its European partners again, “bit by careful bit”.
