A decade ago this week, the United Kingdom woke up to a result that few had fully prepared for. On the morning of 24 June 2016, the country learned it had voted, by a margin of 52 to 48 per cent, to leave the European Union. More than 17 million people had backed departure. The arguments, the bitterness and the political upheaval that followed have not gone away. Ten years on, Britain is still reckoning with what it decided.
Examining the state of Britain’s relationship with the continent a decade after that vote, found a country where old battles have not been fully resolved, where the economic costs are increasingly hard to dispute, and where the government is trying to rebuild ties with Brussels without being seen to reverse what voters decided.
The numbers tell a fairly consistent story. Independent economists now broadly agree that the British economy is somewhere between four and eight per cent smaller than it would have been had the country chosen to stay. Business investment has fallen by around 15 per cent relative to what might have been expected. Weaker trade, lower investment and reduced productivity have accumulated slowly and quietly, without a single dramatic moment that anyone could point to as the turning point.
The Office for Budget Responsibility, the government’s own independent watchdog, has for years assumed that leaving the EU will reduce the country’s long-run economic output by roughly four per cent. A smaller economy also means less tax coming in, which limits what any government can spend on public services.
On immigration, arguably the single issue that drove more Leave voters to the polls than any other, the picture is equally uncomfortable. Net migration to the United Kingdom did not fall after the country left the EU. It rose, reaching record levels in the years that followed. Those who voted Leave in the hope of bringing numbers down have largely been disappointed, though the reasons are complex and not entirely of anyone’s making.
Public opinion has moved sharply. Polling carried out in June 2026 by YouGov found that 57 per cent of people in Great Britain now believe the decision to leave was wrong, against just 30 per cent who still think it was right. A separate survey by Ipsos found that 52 per cent of people would now like to rejoin the EU, while 48 per cent believe Brexit has gone worse than they expected. Asked whether they would support holding another referendum, 48 per cent said yes. Among young people the gap is even wider: roughly two-thirds of those aged between 18 and 24 say they would vote to rejoin, compared with barely one in eight who would vote to stay out.
Yet no mainstream political party is offering that option. The Labour government that came to power in 2024 under Sir Keir Starmer has repeatedly and explicitly ruled out returning to the EU’s single market, rejoining the customs union, or restoring freedom of movement for EU citizens. Instead, Mr Starmer has pursued what he calls a “reset” of relations, a carefully chosen word that suggests something less than a reversal but more than the hostility that characterised the later years of Conservative rule.
Some of that reset has produced tangible results. At a summit in May 2025, Britain and the EU agreed a package of measures that included an arrangement on food standards designed to reduce border checks and cut costs for exporters, a new security and defence partnership, and a commitment to explore a scheme that would allow young Britons and Europeans to live and work in each other’s countries for limited periods. European fishing vessels were also granted continued access to British waters for a further twelve years, a concession that drew loud protests from some British fishermen who had hoped that leaving the EU would eventually bring more of those waters under exclusive national control.
The fishing row illustrated a broader truth about where Britain now finds itself. Almost every step closer to Brussels comes with a political cost at home. The Conservative opposition accused Mr Starmer of betraying the spirit of the original vote. Reform UK, the hard-right party led by Nigel Farage — one of the architects of the Leave campaign — has grown steadily in support, feeding on the sense among some voters that what was promised in 2016 has never properly been delivered.
For businesses, the frustrations are more practical. New paperwork, customs checks, rules of origin requirements and border delays have added costs and complications that simply did not exist before. Some companies, particularly smaller ones without the resources to manage complex cross-border red tape, have quietly given up on selling to European customers altogether. Touring musicians and creative artists, who once moved freely between Britain and the continent, have faced particular difficulties. Lorry drivers, agricultural workers and hospitality businesses have all navigated a labour market that changed dramatically when the automatic right for EU nationals to live and work in the UK came to an end.
The broader political landscape has been reshaped too. Five prime ministers served between the referendum result and the election of Mr Starmer. The Brexit negotiations consumed and ultimately destroyed two of those premierships. The arguments over what kind of Brexit to pursue, whether to have a hard break or a softer landing, tore apart both major parties and tested constitutional arrangements in ways that had not been foreseen.
Northern Ireland remains a particular and unresolved tension. The settlement eventually reached to manage the Irish border, keeping Northern Ireland aligned with some EU rules while the rest of the United Kingdom moved away, has never sat entirely comfortably with Unionist politicians, and the debate over its long-term implications has not reached a settled conclusion.
Whether the relationship between Britain and the EU eventually deepens further, stays roughly where it is, or deteriorates again will depend on politics on both sides of the Channel. For now, the country marks this anniversary not with celebration or with mourning, but with something closer to a collective, unresolved argument about whether a momentous decision, taken on a summer day ten years ago, was ever really the right one.
