Brexit at 10: What Did Leaving the EU Actually Mean for the United Kingdom?
A decade has passed since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union on 23 June 2016. What began as a bitterly contested referendum has evolved into one of the most consequential political decisions in modern British history. Now, ten years on, journalists, economists, and ordinary citizens are asking the same urgent questions: Was it worth it? Who benefited? And what did Brexit reveal — and perhaps unleash — about the country that chose it?
Three of the Guardian's most prominent columnists — Aditya Chakrabortty, Polly Toynbee, and Simon Jenkins — recently sat down to reflect on those questions in a wide-ranging and candid debate. Their conversation cuts through the noise to examine Brexit not merely as a policy outcome, but as a cultural and social rupture that reshaped British identity, political discourse, and the nation's place in the world.
Three Memories, Three Perspectives
For Aditya Chakrabortty, the Brexit period is defined by three distinct emotional and social experiences. First came the anger — raw, widespread, and deeply felt in communities long neglected by both Westminster and the media. Then came the confusion, as politicians scrambled to make sense of a result they had not prepared for. And finally, in the aftermath, came something darker: what Chakrabortty describes as a "quick curdling into a really base form of racism."
Reporting from south Wales and the north-east of England before the vote — two of the most strongly Leave-voting regions in the country — Chakrabortty witnessed a profound disconnect. In those communities, people were expressing visceral frustration: about deindustrialisation, about being ignored, about a political class that seemed to speak a different language. But when he returned to London, the conversation had shifted entirely to statistics, projections, and economic modeling. Two conversations were happening in parallel, and neither side seemed to be listening to the other.
This disconnect, many would argue, is the defining story of Brexit — not just the vote itself, but the failure of communication, empathy, and political imagination that made it possible.
Did Brexit Make Britain More Racist?
One of the most charged questions in the columnists' debate is whether Brexit emboldened racist attitudes or simply gave existing prejudices a more visible platform. The surge in hate crime recorded in the weeks following the referendum result was not imagined — it was documented. Minority communities across the UK reported an atmosphere that had shifted, a sense that certain forms of hostility had become newly permissible.
Chakrabortty's recollection of racism "curdling" in the post-referendum atmosphere speaks to something many observers noted at the time: that the Leave campaign's focus on immigration — most infamously symbolised by Nigel Farage's "Breaking Point" poster — had legitimised a strand of nativist sentiment that mainstream politics had previously kept at arm's length. Whether Brexit caused this or merely reflected pre-existing attitudes remains one of the most contested aspects of the whole debate.
Polly Toynbee, a consistent and vocal critic of Brexit since before the vote, brings her own perspective shaped by years of writing about inequality and social justice. Her position, according to the debate, is one of vindication — a word she uses without apology. The economic and social costs she warned of have, in her view, materialised. The communities that voted most strongly for Leave have not seen the promised renaissance. The NHS has not received its famous £350 million a week. And the complexity of unpicking four decades of legal and economic integration has consumed political energy that might have been directed at genuine reform.
Simon Jenkins and the Case for Philosophical Detachment
Simon Jenkins represents a more contrarian voice in the conversation. A long-standing critic of what he sees as EU bureaucratic overreach, Jenkins has approached Brexit with a degree of equanimity that infuriates his pro-Remain colleagues. His argument has always been less about economics and more about sovereignty — the principle that a democratic nation should govern itself, even imperfectly, rather than pool that authority in a supranational body.
That philosophical position has not shifted, even as the practical difficulties of Brexit have mounted. Jenkins's willingness to say "I feel entirely vindicated" speaks to a particular strand of British political thinking that values self-determination above economic optimization — a position that is deeply unfashionable in metropolitan media circles but resonates strongly in other parts of the country.
How Is the EU Doing Without the UK?
The debate also turns an important lens on the European Union itself. Brexit was not only a story about Britain — it was a stress test for the EU's model of ever-closer integration. In the immediate aftermath, there were genuine fears that other member states might follow the UK's example. That contagion did not happen. If anything, Brexit appears to have strengthened pro-EU sentiment within the bloc, reminding citizens of member states what the alternative actually looks like in practice.
The EU has faced its own formidable challenges over the past decade — the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, energy crises, and internal tensions over migration and democratic backsliding in some member states. But it has navigated these largely without fracturing, and the UK's chaotic post-Brexit years have served, perhaps unintentionally, as a cautionary tale that reinforced rather than undermined European solidarity.
Ten Years On: What Has Brexit Actually Decided?
Perhaps the most honest conclusion the three columnists arrive at is that Brexit has not settled anything. The underlying tensions it exposed — between regions and the capital, between different visions of national identity, between economic pragmatism and democratic principle — remain as live as ever. Britain has left the EU, but the debate about what Britain is, and who it is for, continues.
The communities that voted Leave in 2016 were expressing something real and legitimate: a sense of abandonment, of being left behind by globalisation, of watching their towns decline while London flourished. Brexit was their answer to that grievance. Whether it was the right answer — whether it has, or ever could, address the structural economic problems those communities face — is where the three columnists most sharply diverge.
A Debate That Reflects a Nation Still Divided
What makes the Guardian debate between Chakrabortty, Toynbee, and Jenkins so valuable is precisely that it does not offer false resolution. These are three intelligent, informed people who have followed this story closely for a decade, and they still disagree — not just about Brexit's outcomes, but about the values and priorities that should shape how we judge those outcomes.
Ten years on, Brexit remains unfinished business — not as a legal or constitutional question, but as a social and political one. The vote happened. Britain left. But the reckoning is still underway, and these three voices remind us that understanding it honestly requires sitting with complexity, acknowledging multiple truths, and resisting the temptation to declare victory too soon.