A DECADE ago, British voters went to the polls with a singular image fresh in their minds: a ubiquitous red bus, the hallmark of the Brexit campaign, imploring residents of the once sprawling empire to “take back control” by severing ties to Europe.
By a slim margin on June 23, 2016, Britons voted to leave the European Union.
The people, politicians and businesses of the United Kingdom have been reckoning with the consequences of that decision ever since.
Trade, travel, work, study, taxes, borders, the price of groceries, national pride – almost no part of life escaped untouched by the Brexit referendum in the 10 years since the votes were cast.
On June 22, the forces of Brexit claimed their latest political victim, when Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his resignation, becoming the sixth British leader since the referendum whose tenure was cut short.
While Starmer made unforced errors, he was also felled by a series of challenges established long before he arrived in office.
The economy is sluggish, a condition economists attribute to the effects of severing ties with Europe, along with the enduring consequences of the 2008 global financial crisis, which drove up government debt, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Opportunities to work and live abroad are more limited. Travel is frustrating.
Trade with Europe has continued but at a lower level, with British exports to the bloc down about 12%, according to the Centre for European Reform, a research group.
Immigration from outside the European Union went up for a time, after the then- Conservative government tried to fill worker shortages in healthcare and home care, and foreign students were welcomed by cash-poor British universities.
But after the rise caused voter anger, the government introduced new restrictions on migration, and it has since fallen sharply.
Perhaps no part of British society was changed more by Brexit than its political landscape, which has fractured into a chaotic tug-of-war in which no party seems able to satisfy the demands of an angry and disillusioned public for long.
“It is political instability that has best characterised the past decade,” Jill Rutter, a senior fellow at Britain’s Institute for Government, wrote in Brexit at 10, a report published in May.
The revolving door at Downing Street began when David Cameron, who called the referendum, resigned after the result.
Each prime minister that followed has struggled with the consequences of Brexit: dimmed economic prospects, no special benefits from the so-called special relationship with the United States, and that it has failed to restore any kind of British supremacy around the world.
“For all the competence questions about Keir Starmer, the challenges that he has faced as a prime minister come back to the economy not having grown since 2019,” said Ruth Curtice, CEO of the Resolution Foundation, a research institute.
The years of political turmoil since have had real-world consequences for a country desperate for long-term solutions to its problems.
The turnover of prime ministers “prevents big ambitious reforms from being executed”, said Rob Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester. “It’s like if you were trying to write a novel and every six months, your PC would wipe the hard drive and you had to just scramble together all the notes you had and try to do it again.”
Andy Burnham, the popular former mayor of Greater Manchester who looks almost certain to succeed Starmer, will be the next in line to confront the country’s post-Brexit challenges.
A member of Starmer’s Labour Party, he is seen by many as ideologically similar, but more charismatic and better able to tell a compelling story to voters.
Whether that will be enough to overcome the Brexit ruptures and the political instability is unclear.
Recent polling shows that more people would vote to rejoin the European Union than would want to stay separate if another referendum were held. That includes a significant shift among people who voted to leave 10 years ago.
Luke Tryl, UK director for More in Common, a British research group, said recent surveys of public opinion on Brexit showed that many people had changed their minds.
“A clear majority think that Brexit has been a failure, and even Leave voters are split on whether Brexit has been a success or a failure,” he said. “They don’t think that the UK can defend itself. They also have lost faith in the US as an ally of the UK.”
That, in turn, is making people more open – if still cautious – about what it would mean to rejoin the European Union, he said.
In the More in Common study, 48% of Britons said they would vote to “rejoin” Europe, while only 28% said they would vote to stay outside.
That might eventually propel the country’s political leaders towards a new vote.
In an interview with ITV News, Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, called Brexit the “biggest act of economic self-harm” perpetrated by any country.
“What we should do is recognise that at some stage, we’re going to join the European Union again,” he said. “Why delay the inevitable and suffer in the meantime, economically, socially and culturally?”
However, Anand Menon, a professor at King’s College London and director of UK in a Changing Europe, is sceptical that there is any political appetite for an immediate push to rejoin the European Union, despite the downsides of Britain’s withdrawal.
“If you’re the prime minister and someone came up to you and said, ‘Prime minister, I’ve got a really good idea, which is you should reopen a toxic debate, go through five, six years of really painful negotiation and domestic angst in order that we can reap significant economic benefits for your successor,’” Menon said, “I’m just not aware of a politician who would say ‘That sounds like a great idea.’” — ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
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