It may lack the momentousness of 9/11 or the tragically untimely death of Diana, Princess of Wales or even the dignified passing of her mother-in-law, but for many of us etched firmly in our memories are details of exactly where we were ten years ago on the morning of 24 June 2016. For it is precisely a decade that has now passed since the referendum vote that led to the UK leaving the European Union.
Predictably enough – for at the time I was still an MP and Chairman of the Conservative Party’s International Office – I found myself spending the early part of that night at an official counting centre in my central London constituency. Accompanied by the affable and charismatic Austrian Foreign Minister, Sebastian Kurz, who was on his way to his nation’s Chancellorship at the improbably precocious age of 31 before departing the political stage only a couple of years after me, we tried to make sense of the early returns from my own strongly pro-Remain district. When we subsequently met in Ministerial councils in Brussels, Kurz forgave me for lulling him into a false sense of security with my early snap judgement that although it was going to be a close-run thing, Remain was on course to win the vote. I fear that I had given too little allowance for the fact that culture, outlook and attitudes of London and Londoners had (and have) become ever more untypical of those of the nation as a whole.
My own position on the Brexit referendum was always a little nuanced. My late mother was German and she had been a refugee twice, spending the first fifteen years of her life under Nazi and then Communist rule. As such I appreciated why so many EU citizens, especially those from Warsaw Pact and the Iberian nations, tolerated un-democratic aspects of the European Union when compared to the absence of freedom that had beset their lives under totalitarian regimes during the Cold War. From the outset I also entertained grave doubts about the capacity of the UK’s political class and our self-regarding civil service to negotiate an optimal EU exit. I fear these concerns have been amply justified.
Nevertheless, I had long supported putting the issue to the people and despite being committed to Remain, I was one of the 81 Conservative MPs who in 2011 defied a three-line whip on the issue. So once the vote had been taken, I publicly recognised that there was no way back; rather than seek to frustrate the outcome or campaign for a second referendum, the UK’s focus should have been on making the most of future opportunities that having responsibility for our own fate ought to have brought post-Brexit.
Over the past decade the UK’s political leadership has lacked confidence with lamentably insufficient attention being paid to innovation and productivity. Heavy handed regulatory intervention and protracted consultation processes in many aspects of technology, from cryptocurrency to fintech and AI, has been the most glaring missed opportunity; almost laughably we have signed up to the EU’s GDPR regime rather than creating our own distinctive policy in this century’s critical arena, the management of data.
Time enough has now passed, if opinion polls are to be believed, for an intensifying sense of buyers’ remorse. Indeed, after a series of false dawns – from an overwhelming desire to ‘get Brexit done (at virtually any cost)’ in response to an initial three years of political stalemate – since that famous day in 2016, the issue has never quite left our political conversation. Until recently it has been the proverbial elephant in the room – political leaders have dared not speak openly to the voters about it, lest they are accused of wishing to open up an issue that was supposed to have been settled.
Any admission from the Conservative leadership that recovery from economic stagnation requires some form of engaged, working relationship with the EU risks accusations that it is betraying a Brexit deal of which the Party has to take ownership. Even in government Labour has until recently walked a tightrope between pacifying its unrepentant Remain graduate activist base and avoiding any action that dissuades traditional working-class supporters who returned to the fold at the last general election, having voted Leave in 2016 and then backing Boris Johnson’s Tories in 2019. These are the voters who have been firmly in Reform UK’s sights. Yet even the relatively recent uptick in government activity when it comes to pan-European co-operation has to date been little more than a proxy for what was until this week an undercover impending leadership election within the Labour Party as it struggles to govern. But by failing to spell out any of the trade-offs that rejoining parts of the EU would entail, the suspicion is that the government is simply using the issue as a means of reminding voters that this now apparently unpopular decision was most fervently supported by the Reform UK insurgents.
Even the Liberal Democrats remember all too well the outcome of the 2019 election when having positioned themselves as the Party of Rejoining the EU in order to appeal exclusively (or so they hoped) to the 48% who had voted Remain, they ended up losing ground from an already very low base. Today’s attempts to differentiate themselves by proposing a return to the customs union would necessitate jettisoning the hard-fought trade deals negotiated since formal departure from EU.
Recanting on the other element of the economic departure, namely re-entry into the single market, also comes at such a politically unacceptable price – of free movement of people (as well as goods) – that few have dared to propose it. So one decade on beware those who gloss over this integral price to ‘rejoining Europe’ economically. Lest we forget some of the fiercest rows in the immediate aftermath of the referendum were accusations that our negotiating strategy was to cherry-pick those EU arrangements we wished to access – yet today’s breathless talk of the UK signing up to youth mobility and specific industry collaboration proposal taking us down the self-same path.
Meanwhile any lingering thought that there might be some goodwill to be called upon in future collaboration with the EU was firmly dispelled at the end of last year by the adamant refusal of the French to allow the UK to participate in the EU’s E150bn Security Action for Europe (Safe) fund on the same terms as other EU states despite our willingness to make a substantial financial contribution
The Scottish Nationalists know in their hearts that an unaltered Brexit decision is a crucial part of their case for independence. Sixty-two percent of Scots voted Remain so the fact that they were bounced into Brexit by the votes of the English (and Welsh) plays to a sense of grievance that is a mainstay of the SNP’s appeal. This will only be enhanced by a sense that the adaptation of the Northern Ireland protocol has given that part of the UK its own very ‘special position’ within the EU customs union and single market set-up.
Slowly, however, over these years it has dawned on the British public that the form of Brexit we have finally ended up with has sacrificed our economic welfare at the altar of sovereignty and the notional freedoms to strike trade deals. In the meantime, our borders seem even more elusive to effective control than ever they were when we were members of the EU.
Always much overplayed during our half-century membership of what began as a common market and developed into the EU was the persistent irritation expressed by UK businesses, large and small, at the imposition of ever more ‘European regulation’. In truth most of this blizzard of new rules of compliance came about as a direct consequence of the creation of a single market and customs union (of which the UK was both a leading advocate and beneficiary) by definition requiring regulatory alignment. In a world of globalisation this harmonisation worked in UK exporters’ interests as it allowed British goods to flow unimpeded across the single market.
The consequences of leaving the customs union and single market have been inevitable. Any business exporting to the EU (and naturally this has been especially onerous for small enterprises lacking the administrative capacity to deal with the increased regulatory burden) has experienced a marked increase in the level of paperwork and bureaucracy. Accordingly small, relatively insignificant derogation from EU rules makes little sense. Better either to maintain total equivalence (and accept that outside the EU we have become a rule-taking supplicant) or seek the benefits, and take the potential risks to reputation, that arise from root and branch deregulation. Replacing EU standards with British ones imposes an obligation on companies trading across Europe to comply with two parallel sets of rules.
This reflects one of the unspoken truths about Brexit – namely, the inherent imbalance in power between the UK and the neighbouring 27-nation bloc, still making up a single market of around 450 million people.
It was – perhaps still is – fashionable to dismiss the EU as being an institution in inexorable decline. Indeed, to many the central premise of Brexit was that Europe was falling apart and that our exit would either precipitate its final collapse or enable us to escape whilst we still had the chance. This has also turned out (to date, at least) to be wishful thinking, although any wistful hope on the part of the EU Commission that it would be able to move along quickly with its agenda for European conformity and unity once those recalcitrant Brits were out of the picture has also been thwarted the emergence of right-wing nationalist parties having a role in many EU governments. It is worth reflecting that as an institution the EU has become far more hostile since our departure to UK red-lines in areas such as defence and collective borrowing; this would be the reality we would face if we ever began negotiations with a view to re-joining.
Another post-Brexit myth was the assertion that the very act of our leaving would signal the end of hostilities with the EU. A quick glance at the Swiss experience should have dispelled that myth. As we have seen over small boat migration, the Northern Ireland protocol and Euro-denominated City trading and so much else, ‘leaving’ the EU has simply meant starting a whole new set of disputes and arguments with our closest economic neighbours.
The British public was assured that the real prize of Brexit would be our ability to hammer out trade deals on our own terms with economic powers further afield, especially in Asia and the Pacific. A far-reaching trade agreement with India has been a genuine success here – so too the skeleton deal with the US, which may have helped mitigate the worst of the tariff threat, although this is clearly work in progress. In the main, however, we have only really been able to cut and paste trade agreements that had already been recently finalised when we were at the EU table with countries such as Japan, South Korea and Vietnam.
Meanwhile the agricultural aspects of the hastily cobbled together and signed-off UK-Australian trade deal were disowned not only by the UK farming lobby but by the hardline Eurosceptic former Secretary of State for the Environment – needless to say, only after he had left office. It is welcome that we have secured Dialogue Partner status with ASEAN and the CPTPP, but this is more a post-Brexit diplomatic and geopolitical triumph than any significant boost to either trade or growth.
But how does this all play out? Is a UK return to the EU on the cards?
In truth even if the problems outlined above were manageable, such an outcome is highly unlikely. It is constitutionally inconceivable that the UK could rejoin without another referendum; whatever else opinion polls may say, there is no appetite amongst the voters to re-live the collective trauma of the Brexit-era not least given the unpredictable outcomes of any plebiscite. As EU members over the years we had painstakingly negotiated a bespoke deal tailored to our interests. The UK’s substantial budgetary rebate, amply reflecting our relatively small and industrialised agricultural sector, was entrenched along with opt outs on the single currency, the Schengen common visa arrangements and elements of social legislation. Undoubtedly the starting point of any attempt to rejoin the EU would be sacrificing these special arrangements – in short, the UK public would be offered a considerably worse deal than the terms on which we left.
Rather more important – would the EU really want us back? As members we were never fully committed or engaged (having stepped aside from the continental co-operation that led to the Treaty of Rome in 1957, we only joined sixteen years later in the second wave of membership). Thereafter we increasingly became semi-detached. Unless and until there is cross-party agreement in the UK in favour of rejoining the EU, it is highly unlikely that it would even commence discussions. The rise and rise of Reform UK suggest that such an outbreak of political calm on this issue – or much else for that matter – is further away than ever.
Lest we forget the UK was also comprehensively out-manoeuvred in the exit negotiations. As we now know those Conservative politicians who promoted Vote Leave had no plan or strategy from the outset as to what Britain really wanted from those tortuous discussions. By contrast the EU played a blinder – its negotiators were determined above all that Brexit should not serve as a precedent. Any other EU nation contemplating withdrawal had to be left in no doubt that walking away from the club would leave it worse off. So it has proved for the UK – all the more ironic since we were always rather skilled at negotiating our own best interests when we were members (as that list of historic opt-outs amply attests).
One other great paradox of recent years has come to light more recently with the Windsor Framework that made the hastily and poorly negotiated Northern Ireland protocol more fit for purpose. Suddenly it is apparent that the EU Commission had much more discretion to accept our wishes than we had been led to believe after Article 50 was invoked. Their insistence that the rigmarole of getting permission from all 27 Member states was a roadblock to progress turned out to have been simply a ploy – when it suited them, the EU was able to use plenty of discretion to act quickly and decisively. In the early years after the Brexit vote the EU had shown little inclination to make life easier for a UK government especially whilst it pursued a campaign of public hostility in the media. Later, however, at a time when the UK’s NATO support over Ukraine was at the forefront of continental priorities, decisive and rapid progress was made. After such a humiliating defeat last time round mercifully few of senior UK civil servants and diplomats have any appetite to get back the negotiating table with their EU counterparts any time soon.
There is one final matter to have in mind. The world has changed since 2016. Unfortunately for us we embarked upon a journey in the direction of striking our own trade deals at the very moment when protectionism was once more rearing its head and globalisation went into reverse. The UK’s key post-WW2 geopolitical stratagem was to avoid making a choice between Europe and the United States of America. We would be unwise to assume that after the departure of President Trump we might easily resume that path – indeed we have already firmly aligned ourselves with US regulation in an attempt to attract highest quality US investment in innovative technology. This is likely to put us on a direct collision course with the EU during the next few decades in the key employment-creating industries of the future.
Written on 24 June 2026 by The Rt Hon Mark Field, former Member of Parliament (MP) for Cities of London and Westminster and Consultant at Buchler Phillips, an independent boutique firm with an impeccable Mayfair London heritage, specialising in corporate recovery, turnaround, restructuring and insolvency.