UK's attitude toward Brexit changing

Ten years after Britons voted to leave the European Union, a broad consensus has emerged that Brexit has weakened the United Kingdom's economy and international influence, even as the prospect of reversing it remains politically remote.

The reevaluation of the nation's decision to leave the bloc has set up the tantalizing prospect of the UK eventually rejoining the EU, a possibility that gained a foothold when Andy Burnham took over as the UK's new prime minister on July 20.

Burnham, a believer in the importance of the UK being part of the bloc, has ruled out an immediate rerunning of the 2016 referendum that precipitated the country's exit. But it seems highly likely he will take the country closer to the bloc than it has been at any time in the past decade.

And the relations between Brussels and London took a step forward this week when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen messaged Burnham to say she looked forward to working with him for the "prosperity of people on both sides of the (English) Channel".

She added in a post on X: "Congratulations, dear Andy Burnham … I look forward to working with you to strengthen the EU-UK partnership."

Antonio Costa, president of the European Council, added: "I look forward to continuing to further deepen our cooperation for the benefit of our citizens and businesses. The United Kingdom and the European Union are stronger together."

While few people expect the UK and the EU to remarry in the short-term after such an acrimonious divorce, experts say many of the warnings raised by the Remain campaign back in 2016 have largely materialized, while several key promises made by anti-EU Brexit supporters — including stronger economic growth and tighter control over immigration — have failed to deliver in the way that was expected.

"There is now a broad consensus that Brexit has inflicted serious economic damage, though not as catastrophic as the more alarmist Remainers predicted," said Vince Cable, who served as the UK's business secretary from 2010 to 2015.

Cable attributed the losses primarily to weaker goods exports caused by new regulatory barriers, lower levels of business investment, and reduced exports of financial and professional services to the EU.

Colin Ellis, head of economic research at Moody's Analytics, echoed Cable's assessment, saying the UK economy is "around 6 percent permanently smaller" as a result of leaving the bloc, and that it would not fully recover, even if the country were to rejoin.

"The fundamental lesson here is that it is a bad idea to deliberately create barriers and frictions between yourself and your biggest trading partners," Ellis said.

At the same time, analysts stressed that Brexit has not produced either the economic collapse predicted by opponents or the sweeping benefits promised by supporters.

Iain Begg, a professorial research fellow at the European Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science, said: "Brexit has been neither the 'liberation' that Leave supporters thought they were voting for, nor the disaster that some on the Remain side claimed it would be. There is, nevertheless, a broad consensus that it has been damaging for the UK economy and that few of the promised benefits have been realized."

Mike Hawes, chief executive officer of the UK's Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, said Brexit has brought additional costs, complexity, and regulatory difficulties, on top of customs checks.

Despite slowed economic growth for the UK and increased complexity for traders, some gains have emerged from greater regulatory autonomy, including in biotech and data-driven industries, experts noted.

"If there has been a benefit, we think about what the UK has done in terms of trade deals. It's been able to sign trade deals relatively quickly," said Hawes.

Cable echoed that point, saying some trade agreements have been signed, including the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

However, Cable said the failure to secure a comprehensive trade agreement with the United States has been one of the biggest disappointments for Brexit supporters, with disagreements over food standards and technological sovereignty.

Changing face of immigration

Immigration has also remained a politically contentious issue. In the past decade, while migration to the UK from Europe has declined, net migration from other regions has increased sharply.

"The most striking consequence was the total failure to rein in immigration after Brexit," Ellis said, arguing that the failure has reinforced perceptions among some voters that key promises of the Leave campaign were not fulfilled.

Ellis described the current state of politics in the UK as more ideological and fractious than before, making it harder than it previously was to address challenges, ranging from geopolitical uncertainty to growing fiscal pressures.

Before and immediately after the 2016 referendum, most forecasts suggested Brexit would reduce overall immigration. The Home Office, for example, estimated that the post-Brexit system would reduce work-related migration by around 40,000 people per year.

What happened instead was more complex. Following the introduction of a new UK immigration system in January 2021, net migration rose sharply, reaching record levels in 2023, when net migration peaked at a historical high of 944,000.

Data from the UK's Office for National Statistics suggest that total net migration fell after 2023, and it was 171,000 in 2025.

Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics and public policy at King's College London, said that leaving the EU changed the composition of migration flows dramatically, but did not materially alter the balance between labor demand, demographic pressures, and political constraints.

"Governments need targets," he said in his article The Impact of Brexit on Immigration to the UK. "But the emotional center of the debate has moved. The increasingly explicit concern is not just how many people come, but who comes, who leaves, and who counts as part of the nation."

He added: "This is also why falling net migration has not depoliticized immigration … Public concern is being driven less by statistics than by a broader sense of disorder, asylum politics, visible demographic change and distrust of government."

According to the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, the sharp rise in net migration after Brexit was driven by an increase in non-EU citizens coming to the UK, following policy liberalizations made by the Conservative Party government of the day.

Indian nationals were, by far, the largest nationality coming to the UK, accounting for 17 percent of overall immigration, said the institute.

Parallel future ahead

Public opinion has also shifted since 2016 and a majority of Britons now regard Brexit as a mistake, although support for formally rejoining the EU has yet to translate into a major political movement.

According to a report by the think tank UK in a Changing Europe, there has been a clear and consistent majority of voters in favor of rejoining the EU since 2022. On average, across polling this year, 60 percent are in favor of rejoining while 40 percent would choose to stay out, it said.

Compared with previous governments, former UK prime minister Keir Starmer pursued a more pragmatic approach toward Brussels, while ruling out a return to the single market, which left limited room for substantial economic gains.

"The tone has changed since the hostility when Boris Johnson was prime minister, and a closer relationship, though falling short of membership, is being developed," said Begg.

The most realistic areas for deeper cooperation include around food standards, youth mobility, security and defense, said to Cable. But the EU increasingly views British efforts as "cherry-picking", rather than a comprehensive reset, he added.

"There is a broad acceptance that this approach is too piecemeal, too slow, and too modest," he said.

Ellis said recent agreements on sanitary standards and defense cooperation were helpful but unlikely to generate significant benefits. Greater integration in services trade could produce larger gains, he added, although such reforms remain politically difficult.

"Given the challenges the EU itself still faces in establishing a genuinely single market for services among its member states, this prospect (of integration with UK in services trade) is highly unlikely," Ellis added. "With British politics so fractious — there is a significant likelihood of a hung parliament after the next election — the EU is likely to be cautious in agreeing to any new relationship with the UK."

Looking further ahead, Begg argued that historians are likely to regard Brexit as "a strategic blunder by the UK, motivated by short-term political tactics aimed at curbing populists".

Csaba Moldicz, head of the Center for International Economy at Mathias Corvinus Collegium, Budapest, said Brexit altered the legal and institutional framework in which UK businesses operated, and that a new strategy was needed.

"The UK did not exploit the newly acquired freedom to pursue an independent trade policy, nor was it able to take full advantage of the growth of Asia's emerging economies, particularly China. I believe that this represents a strategic miscalculation," Moldicz said.

For now, despite growing recognition of its economic costs, Brexit appears set to remain a settled — if contested — feature of the UK's political landscape.

Some options, such as applying to rejoin the EU by opening accession negotiations, or applying to join its single market and customs union, are on the table for UK politicians, experts said, but there is no guarantee the EU would accept a UK request.

Otherwise, the UK could "just muddle along and accept that Brexit is a mistake, but irreversible, and try to maximize the new areas of regulatory freedom", Cable added.

Contact the writers at xingyi@chinadaily.com.cn.

Wang Mingjie contributed to the story.