Brexit was one of the defining political events of the early twenty-first century. Ten years ago, the world was shaken by the images of Prime Minister David Cameron announcing his resignation after losing the Brexit referendum. The vote transformed Britain’s relationship with Europe and offered a powerful lesson about the unpredictability of referendums in the age of social media and fake news.
The day before the referendum, a few European TV channels asked me to predict the outcome. Like many observers, I expected a narrow victory for those who wanted Britain to remain in the European Union. Living in an affluent, cosmopolitan neighbourhood in London, I underestimated how a large part of the country felt. Most reputable opinion polls pointed in the same direction, yet the electorate delivered the opposite verdict, exposing how disconnected political commentators were from the average voter.
A few days after the referendum, I found myself sitting next to one of the leading intellectual architects of Brexit: Jacob Rees-Mogg, at a lunch following his address to members of the Diplomatic Service in London. We had both studied history at Oxford and briefly recalled our encounters at the Oxford Union, where several future leaders of the Brexit movement had first begun articulating Eurosceptic ideas. Rees-Mogg was convinced that Britain stood on the threshold of a new golden age. Once liberated from Brussels and all its financial burdens, he argued, the United Kingdom would recover the freedom to shape its own future and finance its public services. His confidence reflected the optimism of many leading Brexiteers who believed that sovereignty, once recovered, would become the foundation of renewed national prosperity.
Brexit offered the United Kingdom the possibility of pursuing a radically different economic model from that of the European Union. Many of its leading advocates envisaged a more globally oriented Britain: a country with lighter regulation, lower taxation, freer trade, and greater competitiveness—a kind of European Singapore. Such a strategy might well have generated higher long-term growth, attracted substantial international investment, and even allowed the UK to restore some of the global economic dynamism that had characterised Britain in its golden era.
Nevertheless, what the most ambitious Brexiteers envisioned required political choices for which there was no democratic mandate. A low-tax, highly competitive economy would almost certainly have required a significant reduction in the size of the state and a fundamental reform of Britain’s post-war welfare settlement. The referendum had been won on the question of sovereignty, “taking back control,” not on a programme of economic liberalisation. Recovering sovereignty proved far easier than implementing it out of the European Union. The unprecedented succession of six prime ministers since 2016 illustrates how difficult governments have found the task of reconciling the country to the post-Brexit reality.
The question of whether Brexit was beneficial or not for the United Kingdom continues to divide the British public. Within the Labour Party, some prominent members argue in favour of reapplying for membership of the EU in the near future. But no British government should lightly contemplate reversing the result of what was probably the most internationally commented referendum in modern history. Rejoining the EU would carry significant costs of its own for two reasons: first, because it continues to be a deeply divisive issue that would lead to further polarisation and confrontation between the British people. Secondly, because this attempt might not succeed. In the same way that Brexiteers underestimated the legal and technical difficulties of withdrawing from the EU, the Remainers are naively assuming that the UK could easily resume its full membership status. But the EU is a slow-moving bureaucratic entity, already dealing with a waiting list of nine applicants. Taking into account the turbulent relationship between the UK and the EU in the past, it’s only realistic to recognize the possibility of a veto by one or more member states, which would be catastrophic for Britain’s reputation.
As there are arguments to satisfy both Brexiteers and Remainers, it is not worth opening this debate again. More useful is to ask what liberty and sovereignty have meant in Europe, and how far this cause has been strengthened as a result of Brexit.
The concept of liberty, and its broader social implications, was the other key issue that explains why a majority of British people supported Brexit.
European integration was a process that from its origins in the postwar years, aimed at strengthening both the liberty and the sovereignty of Europeans. National sovereignty is inevitably sacrificed when a country accepts rules from supranational institutions and recognises the superiority of EU law above its own national law; at the same time, its sovereignty, which can be synonymous with wealth and power, effectively expands when it joins one of the world’s major powers.
As regards liberty, the completion of the Single Market in 1992, with its four freedoms—the free movement of goods, services, capital and people among members of the EU—was one of the boldest liberalising initiatives in modern European history. It dismantled barriers to trade, increased competition and created unprecedented opportunities for entrepreneurs and businesses moving without obstacles across the continent. It is often forgotten that Margaret Thatcher was among its strongest supporters, as she fervently believed that this concept of economic integration was in the interest of the British people. Liberty in the EU was also synonymous with democracy. Countries in southern and eastern Europe became members with the aim of protecting their democratic regimes from previous dictatorial experiences.
Yet from the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 onwards, many Europeans began to feel that the balance had shifted. The European Union increasingly came to be seen less as a guarantor of economic freedom than as a source of regulation, bureaucratic expansion and centralised decision-making. Whether entirely justified or not, this perception steadily undermined the legitimacy of the European project among many of its citizens, particularly in Britain.
Immigration became the clearest expression of these wider concerns. From the 1990s, free movement of European people was at the heart of the EU project. But large-scale immigration into Europe transformed the demographic landscape of many member states, and as growing numbers of immigrants acquired the nationality of EU member states, they also obtained the right to circulate freely across the European Union. The UK was particularly affected by this phenomenon from 2008. Many of those who had acquired the nationality of another EU member state relocated to Britain, as it was one of the few countries capable of offering job opportunities under the global financial crisis. As it is happening in most of Europe at present, the British reacted against an unmanageable immigration flow and multiculturalism that challenged their identity and undermined their sovereignty, and this was one of the main causes of Brexit.
The concept of liberty, and its broader social implications, was the other key issue that explains why a majority of British people supported Brexit. Britain’s political tradition has long placed exceptional value on limited government, parliamentary sovereignty, entrepreneurial freedom, and individual privacy. It is worth remembering that for much of modern history Britain was unique among European nations for not having a national identity card.
In her famous Bruges speech of 1988, Margaret Thatcher warned: “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.” This marked the beginning of the estrangement between Britain and the European Union. Today, however, criticisms of excessive regulation and administrative centralisation are no longer confined to British Eurosceptics. Across Europe, entrepreneurs, farmers, small businesses, and taxpayers in general increasingly question whether the European Union has struck the right balance between necessary regulation and economic dynamism.
As usually happens when individual liberty is curtailed, the economy becomes increasingly stagnant. At the start of this century, the economy of the European Union was broadly comparable in size to that of the United States. Since then, America has pulled decisively ahead, driven by higher productivity, technological innovation and entrepreneurial growth. Europe remains prosperous, but its slower economic performance has intensified questions about the sustainability of its welfare state and whether its regulatory model encourages the innovation and competitiveness needed in an increasingly demanding global economy. These are no longer exclusively British concerns. They have become European ones.
During the Brexit campaign, commentators frequently speculated about how Churchill or Thatcher would have voted. Perhaps today’s more revealing question would be: What would the founding fathers of European integration in the post-war era make of today’s European Union? What would Jean Monnet, a businessman who regarded economic growth as the foundation of political strength, think of a Europe that is criticised for regulatory excess? What would Robert Schuman or Konrad Adenauer, whose vision of Europe rested firmly upon its Christian and Western civilisational heritage, make of a Union increasingly uncertain about its own cultural identity?
Brexit did not trigger the wave of departures from the European Union that many Eurosceptics predicted. Yet ten years later it may still perform an important service for Europe. It should encourage Europeans to reflect on the kind of Union they wish to build: one that preserves the liberty of its citizens, respects the sovereignty of its nations, strengthens Europe’s collective influence in the world and enjoys democratic accountability to its people.