The same Remoaners who wailed and gnashed their teeth in the lead up to the Brexit referendum have been even more insufferable since they lost. For all their sour-grapes bellyaching, though, were they right?
In a word: no.
Not even close, in fact. ‘Half a million job losses’, for instance: in the five years from Brexit to Covid, the employment rate reached its highest level since 1971. Even after the hammer-blow of Covid madness, employment in Britain hasn’t fallen below pre-Brexit levels.
As for the even more hysterical claims, such as European Council president Donald Tusk’s warning of the collapse of “Western political civilization in its entirety” and David Cameron’s shrieking about WWIII, it’s clear that the biggest threat to both is not Brexit, but the EU itself.
But what about the dire warnings of economic collapse? The Remoaners are adamant that Brexit has crippled trade, stifled free markets and doomed us to economic irrelevance. Leaving aside what looked like suspiciously punishing ‘deals’ ‘negotiated’ by a succession of post-Brexit British PMs, the economic story is very different to the Remoaners’ lying narrative.
Even Keir Starmer’s Labour government, despite its overt desire to ‘snuggle up’ to Brussels and foster momentum for rejoining, is quietly reaping the rewards of our independence. From slashing tariffs to forging agile trade deals, Labour inherits a freer, more dynamic, economy.
A new book, 75 Brexit Benefits: Tangible Benefits from the UK Having Left the European Union (written pseudonymously as ‘Gully Foyle’, from Alfred Bester’s SF classic, The Stars My Destination), examines seven benefit categories. Its sections three and five (‘Brexit Means Better Trade’ and ‘Brexit Means a Better Economy’) debunks the Remoaners’ Jeremiad grumbling.
Drawing on official data, WTO insights and real-world examples, Foyle argues Brexit has unshackled the UK from the EU’s sclerotic customs union and single market, far from the ‘free market’ Redwood debunks in his foreword as a myth. Instead, it was a protectionist fortress, laden with tariffs and barriers that favored continental giants like France and Germany while often burdening UK consumers and exporters.
One obvious example is trade deals. Like changing the rules of soccer, trade negotiations in the EU take years on years, as 27 different cooks all stubbornly jam their fingers in the pie. Since Brexit, the UK has struck a rapid-fire succession of trade deals, from the Australia and New Zealand FTAs to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
[These] demonstrated independence and opened doors to the Indo-Pacific’s booming markets, where growth outpaces Europe’s stagnation. These weren’t just symbolic; they slashed tariffs on UK exports, from whisky to machinery, boosting competitiveness. Foyle notes the EU’s stalled talks with Australia contrast sharply with Britain’s nimble approach, yielding lower costs and higher profits for UK firms.
Ironically, given the EU’s hysterical finger-wagging at Donald Trump, unshackling Britain from one of the most tariff-protected markets in the world has had enormous benefits.
Tariff reforms emerge as a free-market triumph. Benefit 26 (‘How Low Can You Go?’) details the UK Global Tariff, which axed ‘nuisance tariffs’ below 2.5 per cent on over 2,000 products – stone, machinery, leather – simplifying trade and reducing consumer prices. This unilateral liberalisation, impossible under EU rules, embodies Redwood’s point: out of the single market, we’ve dismantled barriers that once embedded inefficiency. Benefit 40 (‘A Stay of (Tariff) Execution’) spotlights targeted suspensions on 120+ items like flowers and chemicals, responding directly to business needs via the Department for Business and Trade. Such flexibility fosters innovation, as seen in digital trade advancements (Benefit 36) – where the UK’s world-first fully digitised shipment with Singapore cuts paperwork costs by billions.
And so it goes. Given the, ahem, ‘quality’ of its leadership, the UK has hardly embraced the dynamism of, say, Milei’s Argentina. But, even against the best efforts of its political class to queer the pitch in a fit of pique, Brexit has been the net benefit to Britain that the people in their wisdom voted for.
