He June 23, 2016more than 17 million people voted in favor of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union in a referendum that polarized British society like never before and whose result shocked an entire continent. But the image that the Brexiteers had of the future of their country when they put the ballot in the ballot box is far from what has ended up happening: A decade later After that vote, the United Kingdom is going through a moment of economic stagnationits weight on the international stage has been reduced and protests against immigration are greater than ever.
Experts agree that the Brexit has meant a hard blow for the British economy. The main studies suggest that the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would be between 2% and 6% higher than today if the divorce with Brussels had not occurred. The UK has since closed free trade agreements with countries like India or Australia, but these have not managed to cushion the impact of the departure of the community club, even despite the signing of the Trade and Cooperation Treaty (TCA, in its acronym in English).
Uncontrolled immigration
Another of the great promises of Brexit was to recover the border control. But the truth is that the arrival of immigrants to the country, both legally and through irregular means, has reached record levels in recent years. The relaxation of visa requirements, promoted by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson – one of the great defenders of Brexit – facilitated the arrival of non-european immigrants to the country, while irregular arrivals through the English Channel continued to grow until reaching their peak in 2022.
“The end of free movement was supposed to be an experiment aimed at drastically reduce immigration”explains the director of the Immigration Observatory at the University of Oxford, Madeleine Sumptionin a recent article. “Employers would be forced to look for alternatives, especially in low-wage sectors such as retail, logistics and hospitality, which had relied on workers from the EU. But in practice, they would simply they turned to workers from outside the EUmost of whom were not work visa holders and could do any job.
Support for Farage
The failed immigration policy and the difficulties in accelerating economic growth have caused an increase in public outrage and a rejection of the two major parties. Something that, paradoxically, has benefited one of the great promoters of Brexit, the populist Nigel Farage. “Farage has achieved avoid being blamed for Brexit failures claiming that there was nothing wrong with it, but that the problem lies solely in the way in which Boris Johnson and the current Government have carried it out,” explains the economist Jonathan Portesprofessor at King’s College London and collaborator of the think tank ‘UK in a Changing Europe’.
The inability to stop the rise of Farage’s party has been one of the reasons for the resignation of Prime Minister Keir Starmer this Monday. Reform UK continues to lead the polls with a comfortable lead, despite the support for reentry the European Union does not stop growing: a recent study, prepared by YouGov, suggests that a 55% of the British would be a favorin front of a 34% that is positioned against. The growing support for a return to the community club, however, is not explained so much by a change of opinion among Brexiteers, but rather by the modifications in the configuration of the electorate in the last decade, marked by the entry of young voters, mostly in favor of a return to the EU, and the death of older people, most of them supporters of Brexit.
Approach to Europe
The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have pushed the Labor Government to seek greater cooperation with Europe in energy and defense matters, while the return to the White House of Donald Trump and his protectionist policies has forced him to do the same in trade matters. Starmer hoped to close new deals in a bilateral summit with Brussels this summer – including the elimination of sanitary and phytosanitary controls on agricultural products to reduce the bureaucratic burden at borders and the signing of a new youth mobility agreement – but his resignation has left the signing these pacts in the air.
For now, the rapprochement with Europe has advanced slower than expected. Some parties, such as the Liberal Democratic Party or the Greens, have pressured the Government to go further and propose a return to the single market and the customs union, or even a community club re-entry. Something that representatives of the Labor Party have also supported. But experts see it as unlikely that something like this will happen before the end of the legislature, scheduled for 2029, since Labor did not include this proposal in its electoral program and the successor of the current prime minister will not count with the mandate of the voters to carry it out.
“It is understandable that European countries are not willing to engage in serious talks with the United Kingdom until the British electorate has expressed that this is what they want,” explains Portes. “And with Nigel Farage leading in the polls, why would the EU waste its time when everything could turn upside down in the next general election?”
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