From dirty water to wildlife protections, the environmental cost of Brexit only gets higher

Keir Starmer’s Labour government has cut environmental protections further and faster than the Tories ever did. Illustration: Guardian Design

Brexit has been terrible for environmental legislation in this country, since we left the EU in 2021. While the EU has strengthened its environmental protections, the UK has drifted away from those regulations, in some cases our politicians deciding to rip up EU environmental laws entirely.

I have been spending the past couple of years tracking this divergence, alongside some excellent analysts from the Institute for European Environmental Policy. And as we reported this week, it’s looked pretty bleak, with laws on important areas from air pollution to water quality weakened.