Two days before the Brexit referendum, the news analysis website\u00a0Reaction\u00a0published a now-infamous article by the Brexiteer Daniel Hannan headlined \u201cWhat Britain looks like after Brexit\u201d. In it, he shared his vision of how leaving the EU would have completely transformed Britain by June 24, 2025 (which turns out to be next Tuesday). As you will see from the following annotated extracts, his predictions proved just a touch optimistic.<\/p>\n
HANNAN:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s 24 June, 2025, and Britain is marking its annual Independence Day celebration. As the fireworks stream through the summer sky, still not quite dark, we wonder why it took us so long to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n REALITY:<\/strong>\u00a0There are no Independence Day celebrations, because most people recognise Brexit has been a disaster. YouGov\u2019s latest polls (fieldwork June 16-18, 2025) show 56% say Brexit was a mistake (31% against) and that 56% would support rejoining (34% against).<\/p>\n HANNAN:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cThe years that followed the 2016 referendum didn\u2019t just reinvigorate our economy, our democracy and our liberty. They improved relations with our neighbours.\u201d<\/p>\n REALITY:<\/strong>\u00a0The Office for Budget Responsibility says Britain has lost 4% of GDP because of Brexit, or up to \u00a3100bn per year. The UK\u2019s economy has underperformed relative to countries in the euro since 2016: GDP per capita growth of 3.9% compared with 10.5%. Our democracy has been invigorated by having six different prime ministers since the referendum, none of whom could make Brexit work. Relations with our neighbours are improving only now a Labour government has ignored the advice of Daniel Hannan and others and started talking to Europeans rather than shouting at them.<\/p>\n HANNAN:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cThe United Kingdom is now the region\u2019s foremost knowledge-based economy\u2026 New industries\u2026 have sprung up around the country. Older industries, too, have revived.\u201d<\/p>\n REALITY:<\/strong>\u00a0The Global Knowledge Index of knowledge-based economies ranks Britain only seventh in Europe. Brexit meant leaving the Horizon Europe research programme, meaning less funding for UK research and lower rankings for UK universities. Meanwhile, manufacturing output remains stuck below pre-2016 levels.<\/p>\n HANNAN:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cThe last thing most EU leaders wanted, once the shock had worn off, was a protracted argument with the United Kingdom\u2026 Terms were agreed easily enough. Britain\u2026 kept its tariff-free arrangements in place.\u201d<\/p>\n REALITY:<\/strong>\u00a0Painful negotiations took more than three years before Boris Johnson emerged with a useless deal that gave the EU almost all it wanted. British businesses trading with Europe were wrapped up in red tape. Many small- and medium-sized exporters and importers stopped altogether.<\/p>\n HANNAN:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cOpting out of the EU\u2019s data protection rules has turned Hoxton into the software capital of the world\u2026 Bans on vitamin supplements and herbal remedies had closed down many health shops. London\u2019s art market had been brutalised by EU rules on VAT and retrospective taxation. All these sectors have revived.\u201d<\/p>\n REALITY:<\/strong>\u00a0Hoxton may lead the world in the number of residents per capita who dress like they are in a Wes Anderson film, but it is not the planet\u2019s software capital by a long way. Vape shops and \u201cweird Turkish barbers\u201d (copyright Robert Jenrick) are still more common on the high street than health and art stores.<\/p>\n HANNAN:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cFinancial services are booming\u2026 After Britain left, the EU\u2019s regulations became even more heavy-handed, driving more exiles from Paris, Frankfurt and Milan.\u201d<\/p>\n REALITY:<\/strong>\u00a0Since Brexit, over 7,000 financial jobs and \u00a31.3 trillion in assets have moved to the EU.<\/p>\n HANNAN:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cOur fuel bills have tumbled, boosting productivity, increasing household incomes and stimulating the entire economy.\u201d<\/p>\n REALITY:<\/strong>\u00a0UK fuel bills are higher than in most of Europe, partly because Britain is no longer part of the EU\u2019s Internal Energy Market, which helped with cross-border trading and price stability. \u00a0<\/p>\n HANNAN:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cOur universities are flourishing, taking the world\u2019s brightest students and, where appropriate, charging accordingly\u2026 The number of student visas granted each year is decided by MPs who, now that they no longer need to worry about unlimited EU migration, can afford to take a long-term view. A points-based immigration system invites the world\u2019s top talent.\u201d<\/p>\n REALITY:<\/strong>\u00a0Declining numbers of EU students post-Brexit, coupled with tighter rules on student visas, have left our universities in crisis. Post-Brexit immigration rules have not worked; not only did net migration hit record highs in 2023 and 2024 but there are labour shortages in key sectors from agriculture to healthcare.<\/p>\n HANNAN:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cSeveral other European countries have opted to copy Britain\u2019s deal with the EU\u2026 some followed us out of the EU (Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands). The United Kingdom now leads a 22-state bloc that forms a free trade area with the EU.\u201d<\/p>\n REALITY:<\/strong>\u00a0Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands are still in the EU and no other nation has been stupid enough to copy our dreadful deal. There is no 22-state bloc that Britain leads.<\/p>\n HANNAN:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cThe EU\u2026 now have a common police force and army, a pan-European income tax and a harmonised system of social security. These developments have prompted referendums in three other EU states on whether to copy Britain.\u201d<\/p>\n REALITY:<\/strong>\u00a0No it doesn\u2019t. No it hasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n HANNAN:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cPerhaps the greatest benefit, though, is not easy to quantify. Britain has recovered its self-belief\u2026 We knew that our song had not yet been sung.\u201d<\/p>\n REALITY:<\/strong>\u00a0And the song turned out to be \u201cWe\u2019re on a road to nowhere\u201d. Still, not everyone in Britain has lost out because of Brexit. In February 2021, partly as a reward for churning out ludicrous guff like this, the 49-year-old Daniel Hannan was given a peerage. On current rules, that means he is able to claim \u00a3375 per day, plus travel expenses and subsidised restaurant facilities, every time he turns up to the House of Lords until he is 80.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two days before the Brexit referendum, the news analysis website\u00a0Reaction\u00a0published a now-infamous article by the Brexiteer Daniel Hannan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,527,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-198452","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-conservative-party","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-great-britain","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114712790190398482","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}