Written by Dr Tim Oliver, Director of the Institute for Diplomacy and International Affairs

To mark ten years since Britain’s referendum on EU membership, IDIA hosted “Brexit Revisited,” an online panel reflecting on what Brexit has meant for the UK, the EU and the wider world.

The discussion brought together five colleagues from across Loughborough University: Dr Tim Oliver (Chair), Dr Borja Garcia Garcia, Professor Graham Hitchen, Professor Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, and Professor Gerhard Schnyder.

Each panellist began by recalling where they were on the night of the referendum, from a university open day in the East Midlands to a conference in Berkeley and a graduation ceremony attended by Boris Johnson.

Dr Borja Garcia Garcia spoke about Brexit’s effects on communities that felt left behind by globalisation. But he also pointed to Brexit’s negative effects on these communities and that the effect was less as a car crash and more a slow puncture whose effects are still being felt.

Prof. Graham Hitchen reflected on how the discussion was being held on the tenth anniversary of the murder of Jo Cox MP and how that tragedy fit a broader failure of deliberative democracy in the UK. He also pointed to the effect Brexit has had on the UK’s creative industries, with a large fall in earnings for touring musicians as one tangible cultural cost.

Prof. Caroline Kennedy-Pipe focused on Ireland, defence and security, arguing that Brexit pushed Britain into closer alignment with the USA at a moment when European cooperation, sharpened by the war in Ukraine, has become more important.

Prof. Gerhard Schnyder compared the UK with Switzerland, where a recent referendum on capping the population had partly turned on warnings not to “do a Brexit,” and set out how the UK’s post-Brexit immigration system has produced higher, not lower, levels of migration.

Dr Tim Oliver argued that the irony of Brexit is that the UK, often the member state that won the most from EU membership, was the one to leave because the people who appreciated least how successful the UK was as a member state were the British. But Brexit has revealed to Britain and the world how European the UK is.

Despite growing support for a closer UK-EU relationship, panellists agreed that any path back towards membership of the EU is complicated by domestic polarisation, a difficult negotiating position, and the political risk facing any British party leader who puts rejoining into a party manifesto.

Questions from the audience covered regulatory divergence, the influence of populist parties on UK-EU policy, and whether Brexit has strengthened or weakened the EU’s unity. The panel closed by looking ahead to where UK-EU relations will be in 2036. Views ranged from cautious pessimism about the strength of populism worldwide to a more hopeful sense that a new framework, perhaps including Ukraine and even Canada, could eventually create the potential for change to the current model of UK-EU relations.