As January marks five years on from Britain leaving the EU, Alicja Hagopian and Kate Devlin explore its impact

Summary

Five years after Brexit, its promises of sovereignty, economic gains, and reduced migration remain unfulfilled. While Brexit offers regulatory flexibility, its overall impacts are largely negative.

The UK economy has suffered a £100bn annual output loss, with GDP 4% smaller than it would have been without Brexit.

Trade barriers have reduced exports, particularly to the EU, with small businesses and sectors like agriculture and fishing hit hardest.

Migration has surged to record levels, but net EU migration has turned negative.

Public dissatisfaction is high, with 59% believing Brexit has gone poorly.

  • @[email protected]English
    5•2 days ago

    I know a couple of people who said they didn’t know what to vote for so voted for the default, which they thought was to leave.

    Some other old person said he doesn’t like immigrants (or specifically people of a certain skin colour) and wants back gold top milk (which apparently the EU took away…).

    Somebody else saying they don’t want Brussels telling us what to do and we need our fishing rights back. Also immigration.

    My future, my son’s future, all now shaped in a more restrictive way because of people’s views like this.

    Ironically for the old racist man we now have less white Europeans immigrants as before and more from Africa and India regions, at least in the area I live. I love it how it’s backfired on him.

    • @OccamsTeapotEnglish
      3•2 days ago

      Ironically for the old racist man we now have less white Europeans immigrants as before and more from Africa and India regions, at least in the area I live. I love it how it’s backfired on him.

      Yes! I really tried to explain this to people. One guy I saw on the news said he was voting Brexit to “get the Muslims out,” apparently completely unaware of how batshit insane it is to leave the European Union to reduce the number of non European people in Britain.

      My future, my son’s future, all now shaped in a more restrictive way because of people’s views like this.

      Yeah it fucking sucks. I left before the official Brexit date, in a year or two I will hopefully have an EU citizenship again. Most of my friends couldn’t have really done that so easily