A decade on, Brexit's legacy is universal disappointment
Submitted by John Rees on Tue, 06/23/2026 - 15:33
Leaving the EU was never about addressing the real causes of discontent in Britain. It was about masking them
A placard is held during the National Rejoin March IV marking ten years on Brexit in London on 20 June, 2026 (Reuters) On Ten years on from one of the most toxic political debates in recent British history, it might - just might - be possible to take a longer, more considered view.
The first step is any such assessment must be to understand why the Brexit debate was so conflicted. Here, the key fact is that Brexit disrupted all the usually homogeneous political blocs.
The British establishment was divided in a way that is historically rare. The mainstream members of Britain’s capitalist class were in favour of remaining in the European Union - and in general, the larger the corporation, the more pro-EU.
But the normally reliable political representative of capital, the Tory party, was badly split and thus incapable of acting in a coherent manner to pursue the pro-EU line. Indeed, it was precisely these divisions within the Tory party under David Cameron’s leadership that produced the promise of a Brexit referendum as a method of, he hoped, externalising and resolving Tory splits.
But divisions on the right were not confined to the Tories. While the Tory party has always functioned as an electoral bloc whose policy is predominantly shaped by captains of industry and high representatives of the state and wider establishment, it nevertheless relies on the votes of a majority of the middle class and a minority of the conservative working class.
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The UK Independence Party (UKIP), formerly led by Nigel Farage, peeled away a significant number of middle-class voters and some working-class voters on the basis of nationalist nostalgia, xenophobia and outright racism.
In the political centre, the leadership of the Labour Party and most trade unions, plus a section of the left, were the most enthusiastic Remainers, putting them in opposition to a considerable proportion of their natural working-class supporters.
On the far left, there was a minority left-Brexit, or Lexit, position that rejected the EU on democratic grounds, arguing that leaving would free the UK from some of the restrictions on economic management that membership requires. With the fractures in mainstream political alignments polarising the debate, this more nuanced position was largely marginalised.
Populist fantasy
Thus, the debate emerged between two camps: Leave and Remain, both of which were internally disputatious and, partly as a consequence, driven to focus with increasing ferocity on their opponents.
On the day of the referendum, more than 33 million people voted, and Leave won by a margin of more than 1.2 million votes.
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It was a result that was always likely to disappoint badly and quickly. Breaking up a long-term trading bloc could have been beneficial - but only if a serious plan was developed to drive long-term investment and create a stable economy committed to state-led investment, well-paid jobs and extensive public services.
But Tory Brexit, and even more so the further extremes of a UKIP Brexit, was the very opposite of this. In these versions, the magic of the free market would be unleashed from regulation, new trade deals would replace EU commerce, and public services would be further emaciated.
Any new referendum debate would be as toxic as the original. No serious social or political force has changed their mind
Unsurprisingly, this populist right fantasy has come off worse in the collision with reality. And while the economic damage has been nowhere near the level predicted by some Remainers, the economy has shrunk.
The problem with claiming this as a vindication of the Remain argument is that the EU has not done much better. Indeed, its powerhouse economy, Germany, has been experiencing a crisis of its own.
And the wider picture of the EU as a haven of liberal capitalism in an increasingly unregulated and conflict-ridden world order has been shattered over the last decade. Rearmament-obsessed and increasingly repressive regimes are now the mainstream in Europe, and even worse are the far-right populist regimes.
The truth of the Brexit decade is thus that both the EU and Britain have experienced stuttering low growth, increasing repression, the rise of the far right, and a trend towards rearmament.
Indeed, the divisions in the political establishment are in part being healed by this reunion over the common European militarisation programme, which partially overrides the earlier model of European unity embodied in the EU.
Shadow show
The result is almost universal disappointment. Remainers are of course frustrated by their exclusion from the EU, but the EU itself is definitively not the “city on a hill” that liberals once assumed it was. While much was made of the EU as a bastion of free movement, over the last decade, border restrictions and heavier policing have become the norm across the region.
On the other hand, right-wing Leavers can make almost no claim that Tory Brexit has given them a thriving neoliberal paradise. Lexit supporters remain marginal to the debate, and the current realities are too far from any prospect that they would welcome for weariness not to have set in among them as well.
The one certain consequence of Brexit is that it polarised politics and accelerated the rise of Farage, albeit through Reform UK, his later incarnation.
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Of course, the far right is a presence in many EU countries as well, and in some of them to a greater degree than in the UK - but in the latter, the Brexit polarisation enabled the far right to carve out a larger constituency.
What is also certain is that - although a majority in polls now say that they would like to rejoin the EU, and the present Labour government is trying to rebuild EU links, especially through rearmament cooperation - any new referendum debate would be as toxic as the original.
No serious social or political force has changed their mind, and the framing would be wholly on the right’s terms - a right now much more prone to street violence and actual fascist organisation than it was a decade ago.
All of this is ultimately a shadow show. The long decline of the UK, its political polarisation and the widespread disenchantment with the political system, are not about Brexit - even if their effects are misrepresented in the Brexit debate.
What it is really about is whether the failed policies of neoliberalism can be abandoned in favour of programmes to nationalise failing services; create well-paid, stable jobs; reboot the construction of public housing; properly fund education and health; and tax the rich.
Brexit was never about dealing with the causes of discontent, but about masking them. Ten years on, the universal disenchantment is a political monument to that fact.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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