The Brexit scorecard: 10 years on
Brexit. Remember that? Fun, wasn’t it? The entire nation bickering, arguing and having a go at each other about things like flags.
Brexit. Remember that? Fun, wasn’t it? The entire nation bickering, arguing and having a go at each other about things like flags.
It feels like only yesterday that every other conversation in Britain somehow ended with someone storming off muttering something about Article 50. Then again, it somehow also feels about 200 years ago. There’s been plenty in the news to keep us occupied since the 2016 vote, after all.
Anyway, a decade on from the controversial referendum, a new poll suggests that some 55% of Britons would now vote to rejoin the EU. And only 32% of the 10,000 people quizzed said they’d stay out.
Whether that’s because we’ve changed our minds or because we’re British and therefore constitutionally incapable of not complaining about something is open to debate.
So was it a bad idea? Rather than arguing all over again about whether Brexit was a triumph or a catastrophe, we thought we’d mark its homework and decide once and for all if it was a good idea or not.
We’ve picked 10 of the biggest issues Brexit was supposed to tackle and marked its performance in each one out of 10…
Let’s kick off with one of the easiest promises to mark. Cheaper food never materialised. While Brexit wasn’t the only reason your weekly shop has got so expensive you’ve started eating the packaging to try and get value for money, economists generally agree that new trade barriers have added a number of costs for importers and retailers.
Covid, war and inflation all played their part, of course, but this is one promise that can’t really claim a pass.Score: 2/10
Britain just about swerved the immediate post-referendum recession that plenty of folk predicted in 2016. But most major forecasters believe the economy is smaller than it would otherwise have been.
Separating Brexit from Covid, the energy crisis and global inflation is impossible, which is why this ends up somewhere in the middle rather than at either extreme.
That said, Bloomberg Economics estimates that Brexit costs the country anywhere up to £200bn a year. To put that into some sort of financial context, that’s enough to buy nearly 200 billion £1 scratchcards each and every year.Score: 4 /10
The promise we were made was that Britain would thrive as an independent trading nation if it gave the EU the old Spanish archer.