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 \u201ctake back control\u201d by severing ties to Europe.<\/p>\n
By a slim margin on June 23, 2016, Britons voted to leave<\/a> 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 \u2014 almost no part of life escaped untouched by the Brexit referendum in the 10 years since the votes were cast.<\/p>\n On Monday, the forces of Brexit claimed their latest political victim, when Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his resignation<\/a>, becoming the sixth British leader since the referendum whose tenure was cut short. While he made unforced errors, he was also felled by a series of challenges established long before he arrived in office.<\/p>\n The economy is sluggish, a condition economists attribute to the effects of severing ties<\/a> 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 percent, according to the Centre for European Reform, a research group.<\/p>\n Immigration from outside the European Union went way up for a time, after the then-Conservative government tried to fill worker shortages<\/a> in health care 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is political instability that has best characterized the past decade,\u201d Jill Rutter, a senior fellow at Britain\u2019s Institute for Government, wrote in \u201cBrexit at 10<\/a>,\u201d a report published on Tuesday. \u201cThere is a major uphill task facing any government in restoring faith in the capacity of the state to deliver.\u201d<\/p>\n 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, the fact that it bestowed 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.<\/p>\n \u201cFor 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,\u201d said Ruth Curtice, the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, a research institute. Speaking at a conference hosted by U.K. in a Changing Europe, another research group, on Tuesday, she said: \u201cThe extent to which that is driven by Brexit is also fundamental.\u201d<\/p>\n The years of political turmoil since have had real-world consequences for a country desperate for long term solutions to its problems.<\/p>\n The turnover of prime ministers \u201cprevents big ambitious reforms from being executed,\u201d said Rob Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester. \u201cIt\u2019s like if you were trying to write a novel and every six months your P.C. would wipe the hard drive and you had to just scramble together all the notes you had and try to do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cThe deep stuff just doesn\u2019t ever really get addressed, because no one\u2019s really in post long enough to get to that.\u201d<\/p>\n Andy Burnham, the popular former mayor of Greater Manchester who looks almost certain to succeed Mr. Starmer, will be the next in line to confront the country\u2019s post-Brexit challenges. A member of Mr. Starmer\u2019s Labour Party, he is seen by many as ideologically similar, but more charismatic and better able to tell a compelling story to voters.<\/p>\n Whether that will be enough to overcome the Brexit ruptures and the political instability is unclear.<\/p>\n Nigel Farage, the leader of the populist, right-wing Reform U.K. Party, was an architect of the campaign to leave the European Union. In a video posted on Tuesday, Mr. Farage blamed other political leaders for the failures of Brexit, implying that the only reason it did not work was that he was not in charge of implementing it.<\/p>\n \u201cMuch of our political establishment has never accepted the result, and even those that reluctantly did, namely the Conservative Party, refused to implement what voters demanded,\u201d he said. \u201cNamely lower levels of immigration and more freedom for our sole traders and small businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Farage, whose party leads national opinion polls with about 25 percent<\/a> of a fragmented electorate, voices no regret about Brexit, or his part in leading it. (Last month, he explained a $6.7 million<\/a> personal gift he received from a British crypto-billionaire based in Thailand by saying it was a reward for Brexit.)<\/p>\n The public he helped persuade is less certain.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Luke Tryl, the U.K. director for More in Common, a British research group, said that recent surveys of public opinion on Brexit showed that many people had changed their minds.<\/p>\n \u201cA 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,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don\u2019t think that the U.K. can defend itself. They also have lost faith in the U.S. as an ally of the U.K.\u201d<\/p>\n That in turn is making people more open \u2014 if still cautious \u2014 about what it would mean to rejoin the European Union, he said. In the More in Common study, 48 percent of Britons said they would vote to \u201crejoin\u201d Europe, while only 28 percent said they would vote to stay outside.<\/p>\n That might eventually propel the country\u2019s political leaders toward a new vote. In an interview with ITV News on Monday<\/a>, Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, called Brexit the \u201cbiggest act of economic self-harm\u201d perpetrated by any country.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we should do is recognize that at some stage we\u2019re going to join the European Union again,\u201d he said. \u201cWhy delay the inevitable and suffer in the meantime, economically, socially, and culturally?\u201d<\/p>\n But most politicians, even those who agree with Mr. Khan, are wary of risking the wrath of the portion of the British public who voted to Leave, and who still view a closer relationship with Europe as a final surrender of the nationalistic pride they already feel has been lost.<\/p>\n Politicians like Mr. Burnham, who supports improved relations with Europe, are nervous about Reform and its voters, as well as the response of a right-wing tabloid news media that campaigned for Brexit<\/a> and will pounce on any whisper of a rapprochement.<\/p>\n Anand Menon, a professor at King\u2019s College London and director of U.K. in a Changing Europe, said on Tuesday that he was very skeptical that there was any political appetite for an immediate push to rejoin the European Union, despite the downsides of Britain\u2019s withdrawal.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re the prime minister and someone came up to you and said, \u2018Prime minister, I\u2019ve 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,\u2019\u201d Mr. Menon said, \u201cI\u2019m just not aware of a politician who would say \u2018That sounds like a great idea.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n