BLIGHTY BLUE IN THE FACE AS BREXIT BEGETS BREGRET

A decade after voting to leave the European Union, most Britons see the decision as a failure. It is a sobering masterclass on the perils of using civilisational grouse to populist end

- SHASHI THAROOR

A decade has passed since the seismic morning of June 24, 2016, when the British electorate woke up to realise they had voted to sever their 43-year relationship with the European Union.

Ten years on, the dust of that historic referendum has settled, leaving behind a stark landscape. What was promised as a triumphant reclamation of national sovereignty has instead evolved into a cautionary tale of economic friction and institutional exhaustion. A comprehensive look at Britain’s post-Brexit decade reveals a nation grappling with self-inflicted wounds, a public reassessing its choices, and a continent that has fundamentally moved on.

To evaluate whether Brexit has done more harm than good is to look at a deeply asymmetric ledger of suffering and benefit. Economically, the verdict is overwhelmingly negative. Independent consensus indicates that the British economy is notably smaller than it would have been had it remained within the single market, hobbled by trade barriers, acute labour shortages and a persistent chilling effect on foreign investment.

The primary sufferers have been the everyday British public: small-business owners buried under mountains of bureaucratic red tape, farmers stripped of agricultural subsidies and consumers bearing the brunt of inflation exacerbated by currency depreciation and import friction.

Conversely, the beneficiaries form a remarkably narrow cohort. A small class of hedge fund managers and financial speculators successfully shorted the pound or profited from volatility. A few large conglomerates managed to absorb the regulatory compliance costs that crushed their smaller competitors. For the vast majority of the population, however, the promised upside of exiting the bloc never materialised.