Ten years after the UK voted to leave the European Union, Brexit remains deeply divisive, with supporters and critics still at odds over its political and economic legacy. As part of RFI’s series marking the 10th anniversary of the referendum, we spoke to politics and international relations professor John Barry, one of its staunchest opponents.
John Barry, professor of Green Political Economy at Queen’s University Belfast, argues that Brexit has damaged Britain economically while also reflecting a broader political turn towards populism and anti-immigration rhetoric. He assesses what he sees as the cost of leaving the EU, the promises made by Brexiteers and the long-term consequences for the UK’s place in the world.
RFI: It's 10 years since the referendum of 2016. What do you think Brexit has done to the UK, politically, economically and socially?
John Barry: It’s been a disaster. Just to take the economics, the Office of Budget Responsibility, not a politically affiliated agency, has calculated that the British economy has reduced by between 6 percent and 8 percent [from what] it would have been if Britain hadn't left the European Union. That works out that the average British citizen has lost over £3,000 a year as a result of leaving the European Union.
[Brexit] was a political decision motivated [by] anti-immigration and often quasi-racist rhetoric. It was a straightforward trade-off between economic reduction [and] control over our borders. That has worked out, but it's had a major negative impact on the economy, employment, investment and so on.
RFI: What is the main reason you think Brexit was a mistake in the first place?
JB: There has been no benefits of Brexit. And that's because it wasn't made on the basis of estimating the economic impact. The disaster was that the debate was purely fuelled around populist slogans [like] “take back control".
Unfortunately, the Remain campaign didn't have a simple slogan. And it's often very hard to defend the status quo. Because the reality is that it was really English nationalism, and particularly people hurting because of globalisation and the lack of jobs in what was once called the “Red Wall" – these Northern English working class areas where a lot of academics, like me, were surprised at the Leave vote.
It was a knee-jerk, angry reaction, where people literally didn't care about economic impact, because they weren't interested in the economic issues, they just wanted to take out their anger against what they saw as globalising elites: very much the populist, right-wing populist message. And that won. But this meant that the very people who voted for Brexit are probably the ones who are hurting the most.
It's been a disaster.
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REMARKS by John Barry, Queens University Belfast
Jan van der MadeRFI: Hardcore Brexiteers say that Brexit failed not because of the idea, but because of the way it was implemented. Would you agree with that?
JB: Under the Conservative government post-Brexit, they had these crazy ideas that somehow Britain could become like an empire again and reassert its global presence.
Britain is a third-rate power. The Conservatives post-Brexit were suffering from a condition that I have called post-imperial stress disorder, or PISD. The decisions that they made only exacerbated the economic downsides of Brexit.
It was only when Labour got back into power, that a more sensible implementation of Brexit, in terms of a closer alignment between Britain and Europe in terms of security, in terms of trade and so on, that actually still left Britain with the benefits of Brexit, which is control over its borders. So it's outside the EU for that sense. Actually, the economic impact was lessened because Keir Starmer negotiated much closer relationships with the European Union.
RFI: What pre-Brexit promise appears to have been the most misleading?
JB: The idea that Britain would save the £350 million a week that was going to the European Union – [with] pictures of Boris Johnson, who was a very prominent Brexiteer, standing in front of a bus.
It was empirically incorrect. That's populism. You make up a figure and say 'we're spending this on immigration, border control, the European Union, the National Health Service, we could spend that money on hospital beds and nurses'. And that's very attractive for people who don't look past the record.
RFI: Supporters of Brexit say it restored sovereignty because the UK is no longer bound by EU law. What do you think of this argument?
JB: From their ideological position, that is absolutely correct. [But] the price of that return to 'sovereignty' has been economic disaster. It is this almost nostalgia for empire that [posits that] somehow Britain was constrained, was chained by its membership of the European Union and is now free of those constraints and has become a buccaneering, trade-making innovator on the global stage again. I think these people actually believe this nonsense in a way.
The reality was that all that happened is that the migration from the EU, which Britain claimed it couldn't control, has now stopped – but [that] has had a massive [negative] impact, particularly in terms of Eastern European workers in retail and farming and in the health service.
RFI: Supporters also say that since Brexit was implemented trade has increased. How does that claim hold up against real-world evidence?
JB: There is no credible economic analysis of Brexit that says it's been a success. I'm willing to accept the Brexit argument if we say the Brexit proposition was that we are going to take an economic hit, but we're going to have this political benefit in terms of racism, taking back control and so on: [then] it's worked wonderfully. But please don't tell me that it's been an economic success, because there's absolutely no evidence to support that.
