POLITICSJune 16, 2026

The future of British-EU relations

Steve Davies

Reading time: 9 min

Nearly 10 years after Brexit, the UK and EU are reassessing their economic and security cooperation.

On June 23, 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Now, almost 10 years later, the UK and EU have yet to finalize their relationship going forward. Yet with transatlantic relations currently fraught, a war in Europe’s east and globalization under pressure, impetus is growing for London and Brussels to find common ground.

The 2016 vote was the outcome (not the cause) of a realignment of British politics away from economic questions toward ones of national identity and sovereignty. That shift, which we can observe in most European countries, had accelerated sharply following the 2008 financial crisis. In the years following Brexit, this sentiment has deepened, although for the time being this reality remains concealed by the rigidity of the UK’s party system.

The result of the Brexit referendum also reflected a long-standing reality uncovered by many surveys and polls, namely that the British public was far less supportive of the European project and closer political integration than their counterparts elsewhere in the EU, with a sizable minority actively hostile. The majority of the British public – whether they voted Remain or Leave – saw EU membership in pragmatic terms, as a practical arrangement that should bring economic benefit. This group dismissed the political project as high-flown rhetoric. These attitudes persist today and will continue to shape relations between the EU and UK.

With transatlantic relations currently fraught, a war in Europe’s east and globalization under pressure, impetus is growing for London and Brussels to find common ground.

The vote in 2016 was against continued participation in the EU’s ever-closer union but was not overtly against the economic aspects of the UK’s EU membership, such as the Single Market regulatory regime or common trade policy. Given that, a reasonable expectation was that the UK would retain a close economic connection with the EU even if it was no longer part of the political project. The widely touted version of this was a so-called “Norway deal” in which the UK would continue to participate in the Single Market and remain within the customs union. This would not be acceptable to the 30 percent or so of UK voters who adhere to a robust ideal of national sovereignty. However, the concept was acceptable to the pragmatists on both Leave and Remain sides who had always seen EU membership primarily as an economic relationship.

Nevertheless, economic participation without political obligation did not materialize as hoped. There were two years of fraught negotiations that produced an extremely complex exit deal, in which the UK had a bespoke series of agreements which reproduced the Single Market for most sectors. This led to a long period of parliamentary chaos in which the deal was repeatedly voted down but no majority could be found for any alternative.

The main reason for London’s difficulty in finding a workable post-Brexit solution with the EU was the refusal of a third group of voters to accept the outcome of the vote. These were the minority who had identified not just with British economic cooperation with the continent, but also with the ever-closer union project. They thought that by blocking any kind of deal they could provoke a second referendum that would reverse the first. What happened though, was a very “hard” Brexit agreement, in which most of the country left both the Single Market and the Customs Union and did away with most of the existing free trade and other arrangements between the UK and EU.

Post-Brexit reality

In the decade since the split, the almost universal view is that the post-Brexit deal has not worked out well. The Remainers who opposed Brexit are mostly convinced that everything has been even worse than they feared. For them, in addition to political isolation from its partners, the UK has suffered a massive economic blow. Its gross domestic product (GDP) has taken a hit of 5-10 percent compared to where it would be had Brexit not happened – the most widely quoted figure is 8 percent.

This is double the earlier predictions from the Office for Budget Responsibility and elsewhere of a 4 percent cumulative drop. Yet these current estimates are almost certainly overstated because they make unrealistically rosy assumptions about where the UK would be if still in the EU. Many of them ignore the reality of sustained bad performance on several indicators, since at least the financial crisis of 2008. There has clearly been a reduction in growth and the level of economic activity as a result of Brexit – the debate is over the exact number. More importantly, in the political context it is perceptions rather than facts that matter in the short term.

There is now a hardening belief among the UK’s political establishment that their opposition to Brexit was justified, that it has not delivered the breakthrough promised by some of its advocates and that reversing part or all of the Brexit settlement would have a reviving effect on the British economy.

Opposition to Brexit was justified as far as the economic arguments are concerned. It is not clear, however, that the political argument against leaving the EU has been borne out, particularly given the performance of the EU and its leadership in the realm of politics since 2016.

What became clear after 2016 was that there were several alternative projects for a “post-Brexit Britain” which were mutually exclusive. The victorious Leave side did not cohere around any of them, much less develop a strategy for implementation. The result was that none of these projects were actioned. The most striking thing about many aspects of public policy today is how little has changed since Brexit – instead, there has been continued drift.

Most of Brexit’s negative consequences are the result of the deadlock that followed the vote. It was the failure to settle on a deal that preserved the UK’s membership of the Single Market (and maybe the Customs Union) that led to those consequences, given the weakness of the British state.

Proponents of rejoining the EU, whether fully or partially, claim that this would revive the economy. Absent dramatic action elsewhere in policy, that is almost certainly incorrect. Nevertheless, reversing Brexit in some form would undoubtedly stop things getting steadily worse. Given how poor the outlook is, this is very attractive to many.

Today’s political mood in the UK

Politicians and thought leaders are now increasingly gripped by the need for the UK to address the paramount realities of the present. The United States is no longer a reliable ally and the world order it has led is coming apart at the seams. In that context, the EU itself now recognizes the need for much closer and more effective political and military cooperation in its neighborhood, which is hard to achieve without British participation. The UK’s leaders are reluctantly coming to terms with the scenario of the “special relationship” with the U.S. ending, with the consequent need for a much closer relationship with continental Europeans.

Read more on the UK

• Brexit’s fiasco is Britain’s missed opportunity
• UK aligns with U.S. in security-driven global trade shift
• The UK attempts to become a ‘clean energy superpower’

The difficulty is that the UK’s three-way political divide still applies as much as ever. Advocates of Brexit reversal point to polls showing that 58 percent of the public now think Brexit was a mistake. But that still leaves the large minority of sovereignty-firsters who are opposed to any softening of Brexit, much less its reversal, regardless of any economic arguments (because, to them, economics is a secondary matter). There are the continuing strong Remainers who always did support the European project and British participation in it, but they are a smaller minority.

In between is the largest group, those who are deeply skeptical of European political integration but like the economic benefits of Single Market membership. This is the group that has moved the polls, and that makes any kind of movement back toward a closer relationship between the UK and EU politically difficult.

There are also significant challenges on the EU side, so we should not assume it would be a simple matter for a UK government to reach a consensus.

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