10 Years of Brexit: did leaving the EU break UK politics?

[0:00] Ten years ago, there was a big red bus. [0:02] No, not that one. This one. [0:04] It tore Britain with a huge promise painted on its side. [0:07] Vote Leave, my friends. [0:09] £350 million a week for the National Health Service [0:12] if the country left the European Union. [0:14] It was all part of the official Vote Leave campaign. [0:17] They had a website too. [0:18] It laid out exactly what they thought Brexit would deliver. [0:21] Control of immigration and our borders, [0:23] free trade with the world, [0:24] and a sense of sovereignty returned to the British people. [0:27] And then, on the 23rd of June 2016, by the slimmest of margins, [0:32] the UK voted to leave. [0:34] So we're going back to the beginning. [0:39] Back to that website and back to those promises. [0:41] To find out, ten years on, whether we got what they pledged. [0:45] We travelled across the country, [0:47] meeting people living on the front line of the Brexit fallout. [0:50] It's been a disaster, an absolute disaster. [0:52] Just a waste of ten years. [0:54] And as the nation grapples with the demise of six Prime Ministers [0:58] since that historic vote... [0:59] Thank you very much. [1:00] We put everything we found to one of the main architects [1:03] of the Vote Leave campaign. [1:05] Can we call this? [1:06] Because here's the thing. [1:08] Some promises were kept, others were broken. [1:11] But this is also about a referendum that led to consequences [1:14] nobody could have met. [1:15] So on that website, the first big promise, [1:26] the one that ended up on the side of that bus, [1:28] was we will be able to save £350 million a week [1:32] and we can spend that on things like the NHS. [1:35] Now, our own fact-check team at the time found that that figure was misleading. [1:39] Much of the money actually came straight back to the UK [1:42] in rebates and funding for farmers, universities and poorer regions. [1:46] Meaning the real figure was closer to £110 million a week. [1:50] Less than a third of what was on the bus. [1:52] So did hospitals like this one in Birmingham actually see any of that extra money? [1:56] Well, in the eight years after Brexit, [1:58] healthcare spending in England, [1:59] so that's money towards the NHS [2:01] but excluding the extra top-ups to battle Covid, [2:03] actually rose by nearly £700 million a week. [2:07] And the former Prime Minister Theresa May called that a Brexit dividend. [2:11] But here's the first problem with that claim. [2:15] Brexit itself cost the UK money. [2:17] It shrank the economy, reduced investment [2:19] and came with a roughly £30.5 billion bill just to leave the EU. [2:24] And here's the second problem. [2:26] Can you really argue that the NHS would not have achieved the funding it did [2:29] if it hadn't been for Brexit? [2:31] So what does the NHS look like ten years on? [2:34] Nice to meet you. [2:35] Dr Leila McKay, the former Director of Policy at the NHS Alliance, [2:39] says that Brexit has impacted the health system in three ways. [2:43] One has been in terms of workforce, two medicines [2:47] and the third thing is the overall financial envelope. [2:50] Okay, so let's address those but I want to go in reverse order [2:52] because we were looking at that infamous £350 million number. [2:57] Did the NHS get much more money after Brexit? [2:59] The £350 million going to the NHS every week was a bit of a myth [3:05] and while in cash terms it does look like money has gone up for the NHS. [3:09] In reality, that is barely enough to cover the bare minimum of what is needed [3:14] and that is not really linked to Brexit. [3:17] That is a whole other set of decision making. [3:19] The second issue you talked about was medicines. [3:21] How has Brexit impacted that? [3:22] There are more shortages of medicines now. [3:25] Being outside of that EU supply chain, the analysts tell me, has had this impact. [3:30] There's more customs forms to be filled in, there's lots of bureaucracy. [3:34] There's all these things that add to the cost of the overall medicines. [3:38] And then the final issue you mentioned regarding Brexit was of course the workforce. [3:43] So what we saw after Brexit was a huge steep plummet in the number of EU healthcare staff [3:50] who were coming into the NHS. [3:52] And you can see this in the data very clearly. [3:55] After Brexit, EU nurses and midwives declined and non-EU staff rose massively. [4:01] Tens of thousands of those workers came from countries with serious shortages of staff in their own healthcare systems. [4:07] That has made it an ethical challenge as the NHS has to navigate how to appropriately enable those staff to come over [4:16] while at the same time not disadvantaging their own countries. [4:19] This train has six coaches. [4:24] So Brexit didn't collapse the NHS. [4:26] But it certainly didn't fix it either. [4:28] But what really struck me there was how migrants from outside of the EU have now become key to keeping the NHS going over the past decade. [4:35] And that takes me back to the Vote Leave website. [4:38] The next promise on the website says that if we vote to leave the EU we'll be in charge of our own borders. [4:45] That we can decide for ourselves who can come in and have a fairer skills based immigration system. [4:51] Which brings me here. [4:52] Now the picture on the website was actually of Eastbourne. [4:55] They used it as a symbol of the front line of our border. [4:58] I'm a couple of miles along the coast in a place that's far more important when it comes to the issue of immigration. [5:03] Dover. [5:04] This is the port that defines this issue. [5:09] It's where so many of us come and go heading to Europe. [5:12] Where scores of lorries cross every day. [5:15] And where in the years after Brexit thousands of people have arrived on small boats. [5:20] So what's happened to immigration numbers since Brexit? [5:22] Let's look at the figures. [5:23] At the time of the Brexit vote, net migration, that's the number of people coming minus those leaving, stood at 321,000. [5:30] That number had doubled in just four years. [5:32] And that was one of the reasons why immigration was such a major talking point during the referendum campaign. [5:38] Within a year of that vote, so even before we'd left the European Union, net migration fell to 200,000. [5:43] A drop of 38%. [5:45] That's because many Europeans were leaving and fewer wanted to come. [5:48] But while EU migration was falling, immigration from the rest of the world began to rise. [5:53] And it massively shot up after a new points-based immigration system was introduced by Boris Johnson after Brexit. [5:59] By March 2023, so two years after we officially left the European Union, net migration had risen to 944,000. [6:07] A new record high and nearly three times the number it was at the time of the Brexit vote. [6:13] In response, the Conservative government tightened the rules, Labour's kept them in place and net migration has now fallen to 171,000. [6:21] So what to make of it all? [6:24] Hi Kieran. [6:25] I asked Madeleine Sumption, an expert from the University of Oxford. [6:29] So did Brexit give us control of immigration? [6:31] It did. Effectively what happened was the government took back control of immigration policy but then didn't exercise it. [6:37] We did see a really big decline in EU migration to the UK. [6:40] What was not anticipated was that then the number of people coming from outside the EU dramatically increased. [6:47] But there is another bit of the immigration system that's much harder to control and that is most obviously asylum. [6:53] Has Brexit made it harder for us to deal with those issues of asylum claims, small boats? [6:57] There are people in Northern France who say that the reason that they're coming to the UK is that they've been refused asylum in an EU country. [7:04] And they know that they can get another asylum decision if they come to the UK. [7:08] So we know that that exists as a phenomenon. [7:11] It's not clear how different things would be if we were still part of the European Union. [7:16] Do you think the debate itself about immigration has changed? [7:20] The small boats phenomenon has been incredibly divisive. [7:23] And when people are arriving on small boats this is much more visible than the way that people used to arrive unauthorised in the past. [7:29] So that I think has really dominated the debate. [7:32] Here in Dover you feel that. [7:35] Despite net migration falling to the lowest number in years, a recent poll shows half the country still believes immigration is going up. [7:43] Where's that proof to me? Because the boats are coming in all the time. [7:46] So are they going back? Where are they going? [7:49] Why aren't we told anything? [7:52] Because at the moment I think the Brits feel unsafe. [7:55] I don't mind the ones that are coming in if they're genuine. [7:58] But when you've got others that are sort of taking the country for a ride, you know what I mean? No. [8:03] You live here and voted remain then? [8:05] Yes. [8:06] But obviously a lot of people here would have voted leave. [8:08] Yes, that's because they're crazy about the asylum seekers. [8:11] They don't like them but we need them. We need their people, you know. [8:14] So that doesn't go down well, does it really, in Dover? [8:17] So the verdict on immigration is complicated because while we have more control over our border, I get a sense that people think that things haven't changed the way they thought they would. [8:28] That either Brexit has failed them or the politicians have. [8:31] So that's the issue of immigration and control of our border. Let's go back to the website and look at their next promise. [8:40] The Vote Leave camp said that leaving the EU would enable us to trade with the whole world and make deals with countries everywhere. [8:48] And that more trade would equal more jobs. And Britain has signed some of those deals. [8:53] We now have free trade agreements with Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Our deal with India is set to come into force shortly. [9:01] And we've struck a partial agreement with the US, although negotiations are still ongoing. [9:06] So it seems like the UK is open for business and trading across the world. [9:10] But if you talk to the people actually moving the goods, it's a totally different story. [9:15] Hi Lorenzo. Good to see you. Thanks for having us. [9:19] Lorenzo runs a haulage company that has 220 trucks on the road every week. [9:23] He and his team are busy with stacks of new paperwork that didn't exist five years ago. [9:28] And among the photos on the wall, Lorenzo and the architects of Brexit. [9:32] He gave £25,000 to reform UK last year and believes Nigel Farage is the only politician left who can actually make Brexit work. [9:40] Lorenzo voted to leave, but what he's got has been, well... [9:45] It's been a disaster. An absolute disaster. [9:47] We used to always make, in tax and revenue and everything else, about £4 million a year. [9:51] Well, now it's gone the other way around. We've been making losses for two years in a row. [9:55] Before Brexit, his trucks could crisscross Europe making as many deliveries as they could fill. [10:00] Now there are restrictions on movement. [10:03] And Lorenzo says a lot of his drivers have gone back home to work in Europe. [10:07] So do you regret your voting anyway? [10:09] Yeah. [10:11] You do? [10:12] Yeah. [10:14] So I think it's obviously because when you see you build a company up and you work 32 or 34 years of hard work [10:21] and to see everything fading away for some stupid politicians, they didn't do their job properly, [10:27] that really, you know, that hurts. It really does. [10:30] What we're going through, it's an absolute nightmare. It's an absolute nightmare. [10:34] But the impact of leaving the EU isn't only being felt in this one depot. [10:39] The UK's budget watchdog estimates that Brexit has left exports and imports around 15% lower and that long-term productivity has also been hit. [10:49] Another set of researchers estimate that by 2025 Brexit had reduced GDP, reduced investment and reduced employment. [10:58] Both studies account for shocks like Covid and the war in Ukraine. So they're measuring the effect of Brexit itself. [11:04] Hi, Anand. [11:05] Thanks for doing this. [11:06] I'm speaking with a man who leads a think tank looking at our post-Brexit relationship with the EU, Professor Anand Menon. [11:13] The impact on Brexit has been to reduce our trading levels. The UK economy is now smaller than it would have been had we not left the European Union. [11:23] Does Brexit often get used as a scapegoat when it comes to where we are? [11:26] There's a tendency, I think, particularly on the remain side, to date our economic ills to 2016. And that is simply untrue. [11:35] The British economy was ailing before 2016. Our economy basically hasn't grown at a significant rate since the financial crash of 2008. [11:44] Median wages have been stagnant since then. So Brexit is one of the economic problems we face. It is far from the only one. [11:50] The pledge given from Vote Leave was that once we're out of the EU, we can forge our own trade deals. Have we seen the benefit of that? [11:57] What those trade deals were never going to do was compensate economically for the impact of being outside the single market and the customs union. [12:05] And the government's own estimates show that the economic impact of those trade deals is very minor compared to what is seen as the economic impact of leaving the EU. [12:14] That impact is being felt by businesses and small traders across the country. [12:23] At this harbour on the Menai Strait in North Wales, there used to be four operational mussel boats. Now, there's just one left. [12:32] So this is where your boat used to be? [12:34] This is where our boat used to be. Yeah, the big gaping hull. [12:37] This is the largest mussel production area in the UK. Tidal and nutrient rich. [12:42] We had a great business model before. We were, you know, we were highly efficient producers and then, yeah, politics changed it all. [12:49] When the UK was inside the single market, suppliers like James could send tons of mussels straight to processors in Europe. [12:56] The moment the UK left, grade B waters, which is what the Menai Strait usually has, were no longer acceptable under EU import rules. [13:06] Honestly, I'm just exhausted by it. Exhausted? Yeah, I'm exhausted. And, you know, I had the consequences of everything that happened. [13:14] Happened then that they keep me awake most nights. Absolutely. You know, good friends have passed away in that time since. [13:22] That makes me kind of upset because they worked towards something and then they saw it destroyed. [13:27] I mean, but what's the point in anger, you know? But I mean, it's just, yeah, I just think it's been a waste of time. Just a waste of 10 years. [13:36] But not everyone holds Brexit responsible. [13:39] This is Kieran. This is Kim Mould. [13:41] Hi, Kevin. Nice to meet you. Kieran, nice to meet you. Hi. [13:43] Hi. Nice to meet you. [13:44] So James was just telling me about his experience with Brexit, that it's been a complete disaster. Would you agree with him? [13:49] No. No? It's not the main reason. [13:51] It's not the main reason? No. There are other factors. Climate change being one of them. [13:55] Brexit's an inconvenience when we try to export, but we haven't got the product because we can't produce, because we can't get the seed. [14:03] Climate change is having an impact, that's for sure. But Brexit really is the showstopper. Yeah. [14:11] Kim, unlike the others, voted to leave. [14:14] Do you have any regrets about voting Brexit or not? [14:17] Not at all. [14:18] And why is that? [14:19] Because he's rich. [14:20] We'll deal with it. We'll find a way of dealing with it, one way or another. [14:25] We would certainly have the wall pulled over our eyes, big style, by dark players. There's no doubt about that. [14:35] But it was a silly thing to do in the first place, have a referendum, that's for sure. [14:41] But you've got to abide by the results, because that's democracy. [14:44] So that's the NHS, immigration, the border and trade. Four promises, four verdicts. [14:58] And so now we come onto the last pledge, that Britain can make its own laws again, taking back control. [15:04] Now, unlike the other ones, this one's a bit harder to fact check, because you can't really interrogate a feeling, can you? [15:09] A sense of power, a sense of control. [15:11] Ultimately, the big promise was delivered. Britain left the EU and is no longer bound by European laws. [15:17] But after travelling across the country, there's clearly a paradox. For all the talk of taking back control, many people still feel powerless. [15:25] A lot of people in the UK are very frustrated with what's currently happening. [15:28] Do you trust the politicians? [15:29] Frustrated, yeah. Not really, if I'm honest with you. [15:32] The entire political class, the entire blob. We need a bum under the place, really. And one day, politically speaking, they'll get one. [15:42] With voters increasingly frustrated, our politics is more fracture than ever. In 2017, the two main parties secured more than 80% of the vote in the general election. [15:53] Polling now shows they are both only managing around 20% each, with Reform UK and the Greens on the rise. [15:59] The success of those parties, particularly in local elections, contributed to Sir Keir Starmer becoming the sixth prime minister to fall in the 10 years since that vote. [16:10] So why is our system so divided when Brexit was supposed to be about taking back control? [16:15] Nice, simple place for us to have an interview. [16:17] To answer that, I spoke to political scientist Maria Sobolewska. [16:20] We have seen so many prime ministers and we have this continual narrative that a person in charge will change our political future again. [16:29] But the truth is, British politics is in chaos. Changing the leader of the party will almost certainly not solve any of these issues. [16:37] We're 10 years on from Brexit. What's your assessment of where Britain is now? [16:41] I think it's definitely much more divided and much more chaotic in terms of the political allegiances that voters have. [16:47] Many people were hoping that bringing the question of Europe and membership in the EU to the table will settle things. [16:54] And this is absolutely, definitely not what happened. Quite the opposite has happened. [16:58] Maria argues that Brexit was never really about Europe. It was about an identity divide that has been building for decades. [17:04] One of the really amazing tricks of what the Leave side of the referendum has achieved is it was able to absolutely tap into those identities and actually say, [17:15] this referendum is not just about the EU, it is about who you are. Are you the kind of British traditionalist or are you this kind of cosmopolitan liberal that feels that diversity and migration are a good thing? [17:30] If these divisions were always there underneath the surface, was having the Brexit vote a good thing? [17:36] It certainly acted as a catalyst to have a debate about globalisation and cosmopolitanism, immigration identities, but actually they were never dealt with. [17:46] And I don't think the referendum was the right way to deal with those pressures. [17:51] One of the pressures, for example, was the attitude towards immigration. And this has never been addressed and it still isn't to this day. [17:57] A decade on, the debate over what Brexit is and was is still playing out. I went along to an event discussing the impact of the result. [18:10] Our trade expert, Anna Menon was there, but I wanted to speak to someone else. [18:14] So up on stage is Matthew Hill. He was the chief executive of the Vote Leave campaign, the mastermind behind Brexit and that website that I had been looking at. [18:22] But I think there's a wider point about political campaigning. [18:26] For Lord Elliot, the central promise of Brexit was always straightforward. And this is my chance to ask whether his campaign delivered. [18:33] The key point about Brexit was the fact that we left the EU, we took back control, as we said we would, and we got some great trade deals. [18:41] Now there's a lot more we could do with the Brexit powers, but overall I'm still very happy that we left. [18:46] We spoke to a man who runs a haulage company down in Dover. He says he's got so much red tape, it's been terrible for the business. [18:53] We spoke to a man who sold mussels up in Wales, he's got no business left. [18:57] What would you say to them who feel that those trade deals or the economy isn't in the shape they thought it might be? [19:03] If you look overall, the UK trade with the EU is higher than it was when we were in the EU. [19:08] And crucially, it's my favourite stat, if you look over the past 10 years, we've increased our trade the fastest of any country in the world, except Canada. [19:17] So you may find one or two case studies, like you say, but overall our trade is up. [19:22] Elliot is right, trade is up. [19:24] But remember that that report we looked at earlier from the government's budget watchdog estimates exports and imports are around 15% lower than what they could have been had we stayed in the EU. [19:35] Those are real, you know, individuals who have really felt the effects of Brexit. [19:40] And there'll also be companies who, before Brexit, weren't able to trade with other countries across the world who the EU didn't have trade deals with. [19:47] So you have to look at the things in the large. [19:50] Lord Elliot's argument is just that, to look at the bigger picture, that Brexit was mainly about taking back control. [19:57] So while many saw that referendum as a vote to reduce immigration, he disagrees. [20:02] What were they voting for? Were they voting for fewer immigrants or control of immigration or both? [20:06] That's a good question. [20:07] I mean, if you go back to the immediate polling after the referendum and ask people what they were voting for, actually the number one issue was the sovereignty point, the independence point, the taking back control point. [20:17] So with our numbers now down to 171,000, that's net migration, is that the right number we should be looking at? [20:23] I mean, this wasn't part of the Brexit referendum in terms of the level of migration. [20:30] But it became that, didn't it? [20:32] It was about a whole bunch of issues. [20:33] Yeah, they talked to different voters. [20:34] So for some it was all about, you know, taking back control and the sovereignty aspect of it and who makes laws in the UK. [20:40] For some it was about, you know, where the money was sent, you know, she was sent to the EU or spent in the UK. [20:45] Others it was about migration, can I finish, please. [20:48] Yes, of course. [20:49] For some it was about fishing, about agriculture, a whole bunch of issues of that. [20:52] Are you therefore concerned that some people feel that immigration has become the number one issue when it comes to Brexit? [20:58] I don't recognise that as an analysis. [21:02] And when it comes to the £350 million on the side of the bus, that was fact checked. [21:09] The figure was more like £100 million. [21:11] And you said in your book, the extra £350 million, which you alleged, was achieved in 2019 before we left the EU. [21:17] So that proves that that figure was not right, was it? [21:20] I mean, what I say in the book is the fact that by 2019, we were giving the NHS an extra £350 million a year. [21:27] But we hadn't left the EU, so we had that money anyway. [21:29] Well, on the side of the bus, we said we'd get more money, we were getting more money. [21:32] But we hadn't left the EU, so we had that money anyway to use. [21:36] It's political willpower, isn't it? It's not Brexit. [21:38] It's not Brexit. [21:42] I'm not quite sure where you go with this. [21:43] On the side of the bus, you're talking about the amount of money would give the EU... [21:46] If we left the EU, we'd have £350 million. [21:48] You're saying we had that money in 2019 before we'd left the EU? [21:52] Also in that time, of course, the UK's debt and deficit have both increased as well. [21:59] So again, you need to look at things in the round. [22:01] When you talk to people who voted Brexit, who might feel upset 10 years on that they didn't get what they wanted, [22:06] they don't necessarily blame their vote. [22:08] They blame the politicians who are in charge of it. [22:10] I wish that you or more of Vote Leave were in charge of that. [22:14] What I'm pleased about is the fact that Brexit has actually brought back control to the UK, [22:18] taken back control, but also restored accountability of politicians. [22:21] For me, that's a crucial point. [22:23] That now when a government's elected with a majority, [22:26] they alone are responsible for what happens during their time in office. [22:29] And I think that accountability is very strong to restoring trust in politics. [22:33] For Lord Elliot, the man behind Vote Leave, Brexit has delivered. [22:40] It brought back control and restored trust in politics. [22:43] Travelling around the country, that's not what I found. [22:45] Ultimately, his website was just a campaign and a hugely successful one at that. [22:49] But winning the argument is one thing. [22:51] Delivering on the promises is another. [22:54] We found the results of Brexit are mixed. [22:57] The NHS has adapted, but isn't in great shape. [22:59] We have greater controls over immigration, but it still dominates our politics. [23:03] And our economy is worse off for leaving the EU. [23:06] And so, ten years on, those broken promises have left the UK more disillusioned and divided than ever before. [23:13] For me, it seems like that is the real legacy of Brexit.