Ten years after the United Kingdom’s historic decision to leave the European Union, the long-term political and economic structural changes of Brexit continue to unfold. While the departure successfully restored regulatory and legislative sovereignty to the UK, it has also introduced permanent trade frictions, labor market supply constraints, and ongoing diplomatic adjustments. Analysts and policymakers continue to assess the net impact of the decision on economic growth, productivity, and the UK’s evolving international trade relations.
Trade data indicates that the introduction of customs checks and regulatory barriers has contributed to a reduction in total trade volume between the UK and the European Union.
The end of the free movement of people has led to structural labor shortages in key sectors, including agriculture, hospitality, and healthcare, prompting businesses to adjust recruitment strategies.
The UK has achieved independent regulatory control over areas such as agricultural subsidies, digital services, and trade agreements with non-EU nations, though businesses navigating dual standards face increased compliance costs.
The implementation of the Windsor Framework has stabilized political relations and trade arrangements regarding Northern Ireland, resolving several long-standing post-Brexit border disputes.
Public sentiment has shifted over the decade, with polls showing increased dissatisfaction with the economic outcomes of the departure, though political consensus remains focused on optimizing the current relationship rather than pursuing reunification.
The Financial Times is a British daily business newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs.
The Financial Times is a British daily broadsheet and digital newspaper globally recognized for its authoritative coverage of business, economics, and international political affairs. Currently owned by the Japanese holding company Nikkei, the FT is easily identified in print by its distinctive salmon-pink paper. It targets an audience of global business leaders, policymakers, and financial professionals, relying heavily on a successful premium digital subscription model.
21 COMMENTS
Greetings from Ireland 🇮🇪. If you had just listened to us Once! Nora was shouting from her highest hill that the customs union was going to be a bureaucratic nightmare. However the great British people were just too smart to listen to one of their biggest trading partners. It’s a total sh1t show as we all knew it would be. Stop following that fool farage the pied piper. Get yourselves back into the EU somehow and watch your economy grow by 5%
As a millennial couple with 2 kids we spend $150k on income tax, $100k a year on our mortgage on a very modest family home (but in a major city and I cycle to work there in 20min), $40k a year on childcare (2 young children), $25k on all insurances (life, health, income protection, home, car, bicycle), $10k a year on mandatory professional expenses. Honestly I obviously can’t say we’re poor but the costs are far in excess of what our parents experienced or the generation above in similar professions (both in different fields but senior and on very good salaries). Middle class professional is just huge stress and hard now, though we understand that has always been the case for working class families.
What I found bizarre about this analysis was the claim made by one of the commentators that increased defense spending is what the bond markets would prefer to see from the UK. This seems entirely implausible, particularly given that Europe, after the United States, already possesses one of the largest defense industrial bases in the world. The more logical area for the UK to direct borrowing toward is energy, bringing down the cost of energy appears to be the single most strategically important task for any European country at this moment. The recent Iran-related energy disruptions have made clear that energy price shocks are the primary economic concern that bond markets would actually be focused on with respect to the UK, not defense expenditure.
Liberal fools!! Brexit could have been Good if wasn't betrayed!! EU is a Thyrany and Betrayal to Europeans as it was to Brits!! Our elites are Corrupt and Usuless
So 10 years ago leave campaigners promised a land (or empire?) flowing with milk and honey and free of any dependency. And today the achievements can be summarized with "it isn't as bad as remainers prophesied" and "but the EU took a hit too"? Fantàstic "deal".
As an Aussie Labor voter Malcolm still highly respected by me and he was a good PM for that short period. Just the party messed it up. ScoMo was a disaster and I really wish Malcolm could have stayed on longer to actually have more of an impact. I think he’s right one One Nation – PHs speech recently will have picked up her base well but she alienated the over 50% of us who were either born overseas or our parents were. I think Farage has more of a chance than her, particularly in our preferential voting system.
Europe is actually building all the alternatives, France and Germany have moved to European AI and cloud services, Vero and digital Euro for financials, SAFE for defence, European link project transport and on and on.. The really annoyed thing is that we are out of all these programs
Brexit made all the other EU countries see firsthand how disastrous leaving the block will be. If they allow the UK back in easily the EU will lose the argument, as you can quickly pivot back if you want after an exit – that storm of uncertainty will drown the EU.
Sir Ed Davey recently presented the result of the most accurate (so far) analysis of the economic effect of Brexit. This shows that there is a loss of over 90 billion pounds per annum of income to the UK government compared to what would have been the situation had Brexit not happened. Neither the ruling Labour Party nor the main opposition Conservative Party (who sine qua non formulated and drove Brexit during their years in power) disputed his figures.
The meaning of this is that there really is a black hole in state finances and not enough money to keep the status quo in terms of existing services going let alone to fund new and expanded services which are sorely needed and which the public demand.
UK Politicians do not talk about it since to do so will mean that the bond vigilantes will have a field day shorting the pound and all UK stocks and for most of them it means admitting that the whole Leave campaign was a tissue of lies.
This 90 billion is just loss of inward revenue that is happening now and takes no account of matters like the fact that foreign direct investment (FDI) in the UK has fallen off a cliff – and inward investment as well and that means that the loss will only grow year on year. No investor is going to build a large manufacturing plant and/or train up workers in the UK when that plant will lie outside the internal (single) market of the worlds top 3 single markets – the EU/EEA, the USA and China, and of the big three, the US and China are becoming more mercantilist by deliberate rejection of the GATT/WTO ideal of world trade being rules based and on a level playing field with all nations big and small following the same rules and with disputes settled by binding neutral arbitration. Instead they are consciously returning to the 19th century model of the imperial powers who built trade empires in which all members have to slavishly follow both the economic and the political dictates of the central power.
The huge irony is that its the EU and its ecosystem of high quality comprehensive FTA's and T&PA's with over 20 highly developed and developed economies and its several hundred bilateral sectoral trade deals with >160 nations, that is keeping the GATT/WTO ideal alive. The UK used to be at the table in the center of this and deliberately cut itself off and insisted on a new EU-UK trade deal (the TCA) that is a terrible deal full of friction and not at all like the other FTA's and TPA's that the EU has with Canada, S Korea, Mexico, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and others. Why did the UK (England really) do this? Because it was poisoned by 4 decades of lies about the EU and delusions about the UK still being a great power.
Back in 2020 as part of its biannual survey of the economies of the developed world, analysts from the Bank of America (BofA) stated that the future of the pound was to behave like "an emerging market currency" – ie volatile and with major investment banks and hedge funds shorting the pound and other UK based stocks – aka the UK becoming a favoured destination for the dreaded 'hot money". A few billion worth of complex financial instruments placed so as to pump a position and then in a matter of weeks yanked away after huge profit taking. Needless to say Andrew Bailey the Governor of the Bank of England (BOE) and a backer of Brexit, went nuts and slammed the BofA as 'alarmist'.
But in its 2022 and 2024 reports the BofA doubled down and noted that the U.K. exhibits the structural and fiscal vulnerabilities typically associated with developing economies rather than a stable G10 currency Key parallels drawn by Bank of America include: Dual Deficits: The U.K. runs a combined fiscal and current account deficit that BofA has compared to more liquid emerging market nations. Liquidity & Volatility: Sterling has suffered from liquidity black holes and volatility swings, moving independently of traditional interest rate anchors. Politicization of Policy: Heightened political interventionism, shifting U.K. debt dynamics, and unpredictable central bank policy (Bank of England) have eroded investor confidence. Inflation Linked Debt: The U.K. runs one of the highest shares of inflation-linked debt in the G10, making the pound particularly reactive to fiscal arithmetic and domestic shocks.
In 2026 the BofA reports that the UK is characterised by mild stagflationary shocks and externally driven energy spikes. The bank has downgraded all European and UK growth estimates while revising inflation forecasts upward, influenced heavily by global fragmentation and geopolitical strains.
Lastly and very unfortunately, the Brexit zombies have been resurrected in the UK – they accept that Brexit is a failure but then say that its "because Brexit was never properly applied" and so you have people like Nigel Farage saying that if elected as PM then he would make Brexit work. So right now there is a hue and cry in the right wing media (most UK print media and the main private television producer are owned by the same far right billionaires who own the MSM in the USA) to 'save our Brexit'.
Its analogous to the way doctrinaire Communists say that Communism did not fail and was not responsible for the fact that when applied it always has produced failed states ruled by an autocratic elite kept in power by a ruthless secret police – no they claim – Communism has never been properly implemented. In my opinion Brexit was taking a headlong plunge off a cliff and the bottom has not yet been reached.
This is political. Are there politicians with the cojones to face down the right wing press and read the riot act to the electorate? I don't believe Nigel Farrago is a big threat any longer. I believe he's now being increasingly seen as a busted flush. Is there anyone there who can stand up and explain to the British public how the media works and how they've been hoodwinked by chancers and self publicists (often situated in offshore tax havens) and that this Brexit nonsense is demonstrably not working). Public opinion can change.
Average Brit did not care about economic impact; so, stop talking from that perspective. They wanted to expel foreigners and be independent of E.U. rules.
Michel Barnier, the EU's top negotiator for Brexit, recently opined that the single currency and Schengen membership would be negotiable, not preconditions, if the UK wanted to rejoin the EU.
Greetings from Ireland 🇮🇪. If you had just listened to us Once! Nora was shouting from her highest hill that the customs union was going to be a bureaucratic nightmare. However the great British people were just too smart to listen to one of their biggest trading partners. It’s a total sh1t show as we all knew it would be. Stop following that fool farage the pied piper. Get yourselves back into the EU somehow and watch your economy grow by 5%
As a millennial couple with 2 kids we spend $150k on income tax, $100k a year on our mortgage on a very modest family home (but in a major city and I cycle to work there in 20min), $40k a year on childcare (2 young children), $25k on all insurances (life, health, income protection, home, car, bicycle), $10k a year on mandatory professional expenses. Honestly I obviously can’t say we’re poor but the costs are far in excess of what our parents experienced or the generation above in similar professions (both in different fields but senior and on very good salaries). Middle class professional is just huge stress and hard now, though we understand that has always been the case for working class families.
The EU economy is in the crapper too
The greatest benefit of Brexit has been the elimination of calls for leaving the EU within other European nations.
The UK will not exist in its current form much longer. Three out of the four countries comprising the so-called “union” each voted to leave the UK.
What I found bizarre about this analysis was the claim made by one of the commentators that increased defense spending is what the bond markets would prefer to see from the UK. This seems entirely implausible, particularly given that Europe, after the United States, already possesses one of the largest defense industrial bases in the world. The more logical area for the UK to direct borrowing toward is energy, bringing down the cost of energy appears to be the single most strategically important task for any European country at this moment. The recent Iran-related energy disruptions have made clear that energy price shocks are the primary economic concern that bond markets would actually be focused on with respect to the UK, not defense expenditure.
Suicide and attempted suicide are not criminal offences in the United Kingdom. So what's the problem?
Liberal fools!! Brexit could have been Good if wasn't betrayed!! EU is a Thyrany and Betrayal to Europeans as it was to Brits!! Our elites are Corrupt and Usuless
So 10 years ago leave campaigners promised a land (or empire?) flowing with milk and honey and free of any dependency. And today the achievements can be summarized with "it isn't as bad as remainers prophesied" and "but the EU took a hit too"?
Fantàstic "deal".
The UK had excellent terms when it joined the EU. Those will never ever be replicated should there be reconsideration about rejoining.
Brexit was about who governs you. In the hands of a dysfunctional UK establishment it never had a chance. Brexit was stillborn.
As an Aussie Labor voter Malcolm still highly respected by me and he was a good PM for that short period. Just the party messed it up. ScoMo was a disaster and I really wish Malcolm could have stayed on longer to actually have more of an impact. I think he’s right one One Nation – PHs speech recently will have picked up her base well but she alienated the over 50% of us who were either born overseas or our parents were. I think Farage has more of a chance than her, particularly in our preferential voting system.
NO !! No it cannot !! I just saved you 59 min of watching !!
Europe is actually building all the alternatives, France and Germany have moved to European AI and cloud services, Vero and digital Euro for financials, SAFE for defence, European link project transport and on and on.. The really annoyed thing is that we are out of all these programs
Brexit made all the other EU countries see firsthand how disastrous leaving the block will be. If they allow the UK back in easily the EU will lose the argument, as you can quickly pivot back if you want after an exit – that storm of uncertainty will drown the EU.
* 10:00
Sir Ed Davey recently presented the result of the most accurate (so far) analysis of the economic effect of Brexit. This shows that there is a loss of over 90 billion pounds per annum of income to the UK government compared to what would have been the situation had Brexit not happened.
Neither the ruling Labour Party nor the main opposition Conservative Party (who sine qua non formulated and drove Brexit during their years in power) disputed his figures.
The meaning of this is that there really is a black hole in state finances and not enough money to keep the status quo in terms of existing services going let alone to fund new and expanded services which are sorely needed and which the public demand.
UK Politicians do not talk about it since to do so will mean that the bond vigilantes will have a field day shorting the pound and all UK stocks and for most of them it means admitting that the whole Leave campaign was a tissue of lies.
This 90 billion is just loss of inward revenue that is happening now and takes no account of matters like the fact that foreign direct investment (FDI) in the UK has fallen off a cliff – and inward investment as well and that means that the loss will only grow year on year.
No investor is going to build a large manufacturing plant and/or train up workers in the UK when that plant will lie outside the internal (single) market of the worlds top 3 single markets – the EU/EEA, the USA and China, and of the big three, the US and China are becoming more mercantilist by deliberate rejection of the GATT/WTO ideal of world trade being rules based and on a level playing field with all nations big and small following the same rules and with disputes settled by binding neutral arbitration. Instead they are consciously returning to the 19th century model of the imperial powers who built trade empires in which all members have to slavishly follow both the economic and the political dictates of the central power.
The huge irony is that its the EU and its ecosystem of high quality comprehensive FTA's and T&PA's with over 20 highly developed and developed economies and its several hundred bilateral sectoral trade deals with >160 nations, that is keeping the GATT/WTO ideal alive.
The UK used to be at the table in the center of this and deliberately cut itself off and insisted on a new EU-UK trade deal (the TCA) that is a terrible deal full of friction and not at all like the other FTA's and TPA's that the EU has with Canada, S Korea, Mexico, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and others.
Why did the UK (England really) do this?
Because it was poisoned by 4 decades of lies about the EU and delusions about the UK still being a great power.
Back in 2020 as part of its biannual survey of the economies of the developed world, analysts from the Bank of America (BofA) stated that the future of the pound was to behave like "an emerging market currency" – ie volatile and with major investment banks and hedge funds shorting the pound and other UK based stocks – aka the UK becoming a favoured destination for the dreaded 'hot money". A few billion worth of complex financial instruments placed so as to pump a position and then in a matter of weeks yanked away after huge profit taking.
Needless to say Andrew Bailey the Governor of the Bank of England (BOE) and a backer of Brexit, went nuts and slammed the BofA as 'alarmist'.
But in its 2022 and 2024 reports the BofA doubled down and noted that the U.K. exhibits the structural and fiscal vulnerabilities typically associated with developing economies rather than a stable G10 currency
Key parallels drawn by Bank of America include:
Dual Deficits: The U.K. runs a combined fiscal and current account deficit that BofA has compared to more liquid emerging market nations.
Liquidity & Volatility: Sterling has suffered from liquidity black holes and volatility swings, moving independently of traditional interest rate anchors.
Politicization of Policy: Heightened political interventionism, shifting U.K. debt dynamics, and unpredictable central bank policy (Bank of England) have eroded investor confidence.
Inflation Linked Debt: The U.K. runs one of the highest shares of inflation-linked debt in the G10, making the pound particularly reactive to fiscal arithmetic and domestic shocks.
In 2026 the BofA reports that the UK is characterised by mild stagflationary shocks and externally driven energy spikes. The bank has downgraded all European and UK growth estimates while revising inflation forecasts upward, influenced heavily by global fragmentation and geopolitical strains.
Lastly and very unfortunately, the Brexit zombies have been resurrected in the UK – they accept that Brexit is a failure but then say that its "because Brexit was never properly applied" and so you have people like Nigel Farage saying that if elected as PM then he would make Brexit work.
So right now there is a hue and cry in the right wing media (most UK print media and the main private television producer are owned by the same far right billionaires who own the MSM in the USA) to 'save our Brexit'.
Its analogous to the way doctrinaire Communists say that Communism did not fail and was not responsible for the fact that when applied it always has produced failed states ruled by an autocratic elite kept in power by a ruthless secret police – no they claim – Communism has never been properly implemented.
In my opinion Brexit was taking a headlong plunge off a cliff and the bottom has not yet been reached.
This is political. Are there politicians with the cojones to face down the right wing press and read the riot act to the electorate? I don't believe Nigel Farrago is a big threat any longer. I believe he's now being increasingly seen as a busted flush. Is there anyone there who can stand up and explain to the British public how the media works and how they've been hoodwinked by chancers and self publicists (often situated in offshore tax havens) and that this Brexit nonsense is demonstrably not working). Public opinion can change.
and of course. rachel reeves is the queen of economics so if she says its twice as high as everyone else says, then its the gospel.. muppet show….
Average Brit did not care about economic impact; so, stop talking from that perspective. They wanted to expel foreigners and be independent of E.U. rules.
Michel Barnier, the EU's top negotiator for Brexit, recently opined that the single currency and Schengen membership would be negotiable, not preconditions, if the UK wanted to rejoin the EU.