Seven years on, Brexit puzzle grows

FRIDAY (Jun 23) marks the seventh anniversary of the UK’s EU exit referendum, yet the nation is widely perceived still not to be “making Brexit work”.

This is not just the view of what Brexiteers disparagingly call “Remainiacs” (those who wanted to stay in the EU in 2016), but also a growing number of Brexiteers themselves. Take the example of perhaps the Leave campaign’s leading light, Nigel Farage, who sensationally declared last month that “Brexit has failed… we’ve not delivered”.

The argument of Farage, and a growing number of other Leavers in the UK, is that Conservative prime ministers since 2016 – namely Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak – have failed to take advantage of what he perceives as the significant freedoms of Brexit. Notably, this includes the opportunity to diverge economically from the EU, in areas such as taxation, to seek to drive competitive advantage for the UK.