What are the benefits of Brexit?

When they ask you this question, say this ...

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Eight years ago today a majority of British people stunned the establishment by voting to Leave the European Union (EU). And ever since then many of the people who belong to that establishment have not forgiven them for it.

Even now, nearly a decade on, many people in the media, political, and ruling class are desperate to transform the 2024 general election into a debate about Brexit. Or, more specifically, how they consider it to be a complete and utter failure.

Writing in the Times this week, Hugo Rifkind speaks for many in the media class when he complains that Nigel Farage has the audacity to keep “appearing on talk shows, untroubled by accountability for the disastrous outcome of his project”. Polly Toynbee similarly writes in the Guardian that UK expats are “blisteringly furious about what Brexit has done to their lives”. And in response to the return of Nigel Farage, who is once again connecting with many voters who are fed-up with the expert class, Emily Maitlis, queen of liberal progressives, writes that Farage can only say Britain is Broken, because “he broke it” with Brexit.

No doubt, too, as you are reading this, similar arguments are being made by fervently anti-Brexit figures on one of Britain’s dizzying array of podcasts that are all hosted liberal progressives, directed toward liberal progressives, and which rotate the same liberal progressives who share the same values, beliefs, tastes, and priorities —journalists, academics, writers who simultaneously like to think of themselves as the arbiters of truth and reason but who are still, nearly a decade on from that seismic shock, very clearly suffering from Brexit Derangement Syndrome (BDS).

So, given that many people want to have this debate, perhaps then we should give them what they’ve been asking for and talk about what Brexit has done for the UK, what benefits voting to Leave the European Union brought the country.

Back in September, I wrote a piece regarding what I felt then were the ten most visible benefits of Brexit. I linked to work from others, including the prolific X/Twitter Brexiteer and insightful commentator Gully Foyle. That same list was recently expanded to include 56 items at last count, and has this weekend been expanded onto a new website with more in-depth explanations.

Personally, I neither campaigned for nor voted for Brexit. However, with my background and upbringing outside of metropolitan London, and my decades of research into the feelings of the nation, I completely understood why millions did.

And so, when people voted Leave I promptly irritated the vast majority of my colleagues in the universities by simply saying out loud what I thought was obvious to everybody else out there in the country —if the people voted for it then we should respect their decision and do it. Why? Because that’s how democracy works.

So, putting some of the big, obvious benefits to one side, like the fact that we have left a supranational organisation that has no meaningful competition from executive office and therefore is not a genuine democracy, or the fact we’ve not been dragged through the biggest corruption scandal in the history of the EU, here are ten of the lesser known but easily evidenced benefits of Brexit —benefits I think will also resound among British voters given the mood at the 2024 general election.

1.         Brexit means we avoid the EU Migration Pact. The recently passed policy means EU member states will be required to take their fair share of the total asylum seekers that arrive within the bloc each year – and the UK’s share would’ve been around 12 per cent. In 2021, nearly 1 million asylum seekers arrived in the bloc, so the UK share would’ve been over 120,000 people. The pact does allow member states to buy their way out of this obligation though, at a price of €20,000 per person – so to do this with the same 120,000 people would have cost the UK taxpayer €2.5 Billion.

2.         Brexit means we no longer pay EU Budget contributions. The UK was responsible for around 12.5 per cent of the annual core budget of the EU, which in 2024 was over €189 Billion – which would have resulted in the UK contribution being over €24 Billion, seeing as the budget would have been even higher if the UK was still a member. The EU expansion project has a further eight recognised candidates in the queue that would be net recipients, so would push this gross contribution even higher in future years, with less return for the UK economy.

3.         Brexit helps protect our borders and citizens. It is a relatively unknown fact about EU membership, but the rules around Freedom of Movement required the UK to permit entry into the country for known criminals from fellow EU countries, who could only be turned away if the UK border force were able to demonstrate a credible threat posed by the individual. In 2023, the UK turned away over 12,000 EU citizens from entry to the UK, that would’ve otherwise been allowed to enter had we not left.

4.         Brexit allowed for quicker and more robust support for Ukraine. As recently explained by the Polish Foreign Affairs Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, the UK was able to be nimbler and more robust with its support for Ukraine due to the lack of need for gathering consensus opinion first with the other EU member states. He went on to say that “The UK has found a niche … You do the right thing before others and therefore encourage the rest of us.”

5.         Brexit allowed for greater standards in Animal Welfare. EU Single Market rules have prevented the UK from being able to make numerous improvements to animal welfare rules over the years, that are widely supported by the British public. Since leaving the EU, the UK government have banned live shipment of animals for slaughter, it has clamped down on the vile trade of shark finning for export to the Indo-Pacific, and it has proposed the ban on the sale of traditionally made Foie Gras. All not possible from within the EU.

And here are another five Brexit benefits the expert class won’t want you to know about ….