Brexit Ten Years On: Britain Took Back Control. But Where Did It Take Britain?

By R Beladi, ISN Editor

There was a time when Britain was at the centre of the European project without ever quite feeling that it belonged to it. London was Europe’s financial powerhouse, British companies were doing business across the continent and British retailers were buying, selling and expanding across borders with very little thought about customs declarations or new paperwork. Britain had its disagreements with France and Germany, sometimes serious ones, but it was still sitting at the table.

That world has gone.

Brexit changed Britain’s relationship with Europe more fundamentally than many people realised when they voted in 2016. The promise was straightforward enough: take back control, regain the ability to make Britain’s own laws, control immigration and negotiate trade agreements with the rest of the world without having to go through the European Union.

Britain achieved much of that. It is now a sovereign country outside the EU, making its own immigration policy and negotiating its own trade agreements.

But ten years on, there is a much more interesting question to ask.

What did Britain actually gain from leaving?

It is a question that cannot be answered simply by saying Brexit was a success or a failure. Both arguments are too easy. Britain did not collapse after leaving the EU, but neither did the country suddenly enter a new era of prosperity. It gained political freedom, but freedom came with an economic price. It gained control over immigration, but immigration did not disappear. It gained the ability to make its own trade deals, while Europe remained by far its most important nearby market.

That is where the Brexit story becomes interesting.

The country got what it voted for

Nobody can seriously argue that Britain did not regain control from Brussels. It did.

The UK is outside the EU Single Market and Customs Union. British governments can set their own immigration rules, negotiate trade agreements and decide whether to follow or diverge from European regulations.

For people who voted Leave because they wanted decisions made in Westminster rather than Brussels, that is a significant achievement.

But sovereignty is one thing. Using it successfully is another.

A country can have complete control over its policies and still make choices that are economically difficult. A government can have the freedom to reduce immigration and still discover that hospitals, farms, hotels, restaurants and care homes need workers. It can have the freedom to diverge from European regulations and then discover that British companies exporting to Europe still have to meet European standards.

This is the part of Brexit that was much less visible during the referendum campaign.

Leaving the EU did not mean leaving the European economy.

Europe is still Britain’s biggest customer

Britain can now talk about becoming a global trading nation again, and there is nothing wrong with that ambition. The UK has developed new trade relationships outside Europe and joined the CPTPP. It has negotiated independently with countries such as Australia and India.

But there is a rather large geographical fact that cannot be negotiated away.

Europe is still next door.

In 2025, the European Union accounted for around 41% of Britain’s exports and 50% of its imports. British companies continue to sell enormous quantities of goods and services into European markets.

That tells us something important about Brexit.

Britain did not replace Europe with the rest of the world.

It added new markets while remaining heavily dependent on its old one.

That is perfectly normal. Germany trades with China. France trades with America. Spain trades with Britain. Countries do not have to choose one part of the world and ignore the others.

The problem for Britain is that its European trade relationship became more complicated at exactly the same time as it was trying to build new international relationships.

A large British manufacturer can absorb the additional customs procedures. A global retailer can employ specialists to handle the paperwork. But for a small food producer, an agricultural business or a specialist manufacturer, the extra administration can make selling into Europe less attractive.

The border may not look dramatic from London.

For a small business trying to get a lorry across the Channel, it can be very real.

The irony of less bureaucracy

One of the most attractive arguments for Brexit was that Britain would be able to cut through European bureaucracy.

There was a logic to it.

If British politicians could make their own rules, why not make those rules simpler?

The difficulty is that Britain does not operate in a vacuum.

A British company making a product for the British market can follow British rules. But if that same company wants to sell the product in France or Germany, it still has to satisfy European requirements.

This has created an unusual situation. Britain can now create its own regulatory system, but businesses operating internationally may have to understand two systems rather than one.

That does not mean Britain has gained nothing from regulatory independence. There are areas where the country can move faster and take a different approach from the EU.

But it does raise a question that was not always asked during the Brexit campaign: how useful is regulatory freedom if your customers are on the other side of the Channel and still follow European rules?

For some businesses, the answer will be very useful.

For others, it may simply mean another set of forms.

Immigration was supposed to look very different

Then there is immigration.

Few issues had a bigger influence on the Brexit vote.

The argument was that Britain could not properly control immigration while it remained part of the European free-movement system. Leave the EU and Britain could decide who came into the country.

That happened.

But the outcome was not quite what many voters imagined.

European immigration fell considerably, but immigration from outside Europe increased. Britain’s immigration system became its own system, but the country continued to attract large numbers of workers, students and other migrants.

The latest ONS figures show that net migration has fallen sharply from the extraordinary levels seen in 2022 and 2023. But non-EU migration remains much higher than it was before Brexit, while EU migration has fallen dramatically.

So the big change has been not simply the number of people coming to Britain, but where they are coming from and under what rules.

That distinction matters.

Britain now controls immigration in a way it did not control it before Brexit.

But control does not automatically mean low immigration.

The British economy still needs workers. The NHS needs people. The care sector needs people. Restaurants, hotels and food businesses need people. Universities depend heavily on international students.

This is where the immigration debate becomes much harder than the referendum slogans suggested.

A government has to answer two questions at the same time: how much immigration does the public want, and how many workers does the economy need?

Those two numbers are not necessarily the same.

The supermarket tells a different story

Perhaps the best way to look at Brexit is to forget Westminster for a moment and walk into a supermarket.

The shopper does not think about the Windsor Framework or the CPTPP while standing in front of the cheese counter.

They look at the price.

They want to know whether their salary goes as far as it did last year. They want to know why some products have become more expensive. They want to know whether the family budget can stretch to the weekly shop.

This is where the Brexit argument eventually has to arrive.

Political independence is important, but consumers experience the economy through prices, wages and availability.

Britain has faced enormous economic shocks since the referendum, and it would be wrong to blame Brexit for all of them. Covid changed everything. Energy prices exploded. The war in Ukraine disrupted European food and energy markets. Inflation rose across the developed world. Interest rates increased.

Britain was not alone.

But Brexit is also part of Britain’s economic story. It changed the way companies trade with Europe, changed the labour market and changed the regulatory environment.

The important point is that there has been no obvious transformation in British household purchasing power that can be called a Brexit dividend.

People were promised a country with greater freedom and opportunity.

Many are still waiting to see that opportunity in their weekly shopping bill.

Britain has gained freedom to look elsewhere

This does not mean Brexit created no opportunities.

Britain has always had a global outlook. The country has historical commercial relationships across North America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Being outside the EU means Britain can negotiate directly with these markets.

The CPTPP is an example of that new freedom. The UK can also pursue agreements with countries such as India according to its own interests.

That is a genuine change.

But it is important not to exaggerate what it means.

A trade agreement with India does not replace trade with France. A new relationship with Australia does not replace Germany. Britain can expand its global trade without pretending Europe is no longer important.

The real opportunity is to do both.

The challenge is whether Britain can become more global without making its relationship with its nearest and largest trading partner unnecessarily difficult.

That is still the unfinished part of the Brexit story.

Where is the economic dividend?

This is perhaps the question that irritates both sides of the Brexit argument.

The country did not experience the economic collapse that some Remain campaigners predicted. Britain remains a major economy, London remains an international financial centre and British companies remain strong in areas such as financial services, technology, professional services and creative industries.

But neither has the country experienced the obvious economic transformation that some Leave campaigners promised.

The Office for Budget Responsibility continues to estimate a long-term economic cost from Brexit compared with remaining in the EU. There are disagreements about the size of that cost, and economists cannot simply separate Brexit from Covid, the energy crisis and everything else that happened after 2016.

But after ten years, it is reasonable for people to ask where the promised improvement is.

If Britain has greater freedom, is that freedom producing greater productivity?

If Britain can set its own rules, are British businesses becoming more competitive?

If Britain can negotiate its own trade agreements, are exports growing strongly enough to compensate for the additional friction with Europe?

And if Britain controls immigration, is the system producing the workforce the country actually needs?

These are much more useful questions than asking whether somebody is a Brexiteer or a Remainer.

Brexit also changed the United Kingdom

There is another part of the story that should not be overlooked.

Brexit was a decision taken by the United Kingdom, but the four parts of the UK did not vote in the same way.

Scotland voted to remain in the EU.

That has given the Scottish independence argument another layer. The debate is no longer only about Scotland’s relationship with Westminster. It is also about Scotland’s relationship with Europe.

This does not make Scottish independence inevitable. But Brexit has certainly become part of the constitutional argument.

Northern Ireland presents an even more complicated picture.

The government wanted to leave the EU while avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland. The result was the Windsor Framework and a special set of arrangements governing aspects of Northern Ireland’s trade.

It is difficult to miss the irony.

A political movement built around taking back control eventually resulted in Northern Ireland having a different trading arrangement from the rest of the United Kingdom.

That is not necessarily an argument for or against Brexit.

It is simply one of the consequences of trying to reconcile Britain’s decision to leave the EU with the realities of geography and the Irish peace settlement.

The voters have moved on

Perhaps the biggest change since 2016 is that the public conversation itself has changed.

Recent polling suggests that more Britons now favour a closer relationship with the EU, and some polling has even shown support for rejoining the bloc.

But there is an important difference between wanting to rejoin and wanting a better relationship.

A British voter might want easier trade without wanting EU membership.

Another might want cooperation on defence and security but not free movement.

A young person might want to study or work in Europe more easily.

A British exporter might simply want the paperwork reduced.

These are all different positions.

The old Brexit argument was binary.

Leave or Remain.

The argument Britain faces now is much more practical.

How close should Britain be to Europe while remaining outside the European Union?

That may become the defining question of the next decade.

No prime minister can simply turn the clock back

Any future prime minister will have to live with the reality that Brexit happened.

There is no button in Downing Street that can take Britain back to 2015.

But there is plenty that a government can try to change.

Britain could seek better customs arrangements, closer regulatory cooperation, improved arrangements for young people and researchers and easier movement for certain categories of workers. It can cooperate more closely with European countries on defence, security and organised crime.

None of that necessarily means rejoining the EU.

It would simply recognise something that businesses have understood for years.

Britain and Europe still need each other.

Perhaps that is where the Brexit argument should now go.

Away from the old arguments about Brussels and sovereignty and towards the practical question of how two neighbours can make trade and cooperation work better.

So, what did Britain gain?

Britain gained something very real from Brexit.

It gained political independence from the European Union.

It can set its own immigration rules. It can negotiate its own trade agreements. It can decide when to follow European regulations and when to take another route.

Those are not imaginary benefits.

But they come with a cost.

Britain also accepted more friction with its largest trading partner. Many businesses have more paperwork. Immigration changed rather than simply disappearing. New trade deals have opened opportunities, but they have not replaced Europe.

And for ordinary households, there is still no simple evidence of a dramatic increase in purchasing power because Britain left the EU.

This is where the Brexit debate should become more mature.

It does not have to be a battle between people who think Brexit was wonderful and people who think it was disastrous.

Britain is where it is.

The country has left the European Union.

The sensible question now is what it does with that position.

Britain left the EU, not Europe

The Channel is still there.

British supermarkets still buy European food. British consumers still travel to Spain, France and Italy. British manufacturers still rely on European suppliers. European companies still invest in Britain. British companies still need European customers.

Europe remains Britain’s neighbour, its competitor and one of its most important markets.

Twenty years ago, Britain was one of the countries driving the European economy. Today it stands outside the EU, with considerably more freedom to decide its own direction.

That freedom could still become an advantage.

But freedom on its own does not put food on the supermarket shelf, lower the mortgage, increase wages or make a British factory more productive.

That is the next challenge for Britain.

Brexit answered the question of who should make the decisions.

The next decade will have to answer a much harder question:

What will Britain actually do with the freedom it fought to obtain?