Making Brexit work, two years on 

TWO years after the post-Brexit UK-EU free trade agreement, a key shift is underway in British politics with the centre of debate increasingly turning away from “Brexit versus Remain”, towards how best to make Brexit work in practice.

This change has largely been driven by the growing political momentum of the UK Labour Party under its leader Keir Starmer who is reshaping the debate over Brexit. Following the success of the Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum, plus also Boris Johnson’s election win in December 2019, Starmer has ruled out any government he leads after the next general election seeking to rejoin the European Union.

A key, pragmatic reason for taking this stance is that the United Kingdom is in such turmoil, with no clear post-Brexit settlement emerging under the Conservatives, that all of the energies of a Starmer government would need to be focused on this issue. The UK economy is forecast to face the worst turndown in 2023 of any significant advanced economy, with a wider sense of political drift in recent years under successive governments of David Cameron, Theresa May, Johnson, Liz Truss and now Rishi Sunak.