‘While pay fails to keep up with inflation, household goods cost £870 more a year, and there’s been a £250 increase in annual food bills’, Naomi Smith, chief executive of Best for Britain writesMore than half (53%) of the public are in favour of the UK becoming an EU member(Image: Steve Parsons/PA Wire)On Tuesday, June 23, it’s ten years since the country voted to leave the EU.That referendum result – of 52:48 – revealed a divided nation, split on the most basic questions. Or so we thought. Brexit in 2016 was an idea, not a reality.The vote that day was a fork in the road. Voters were offered two visions of the UK’s future. Two realities to choose between.Leave campaigners, including Reform UK’s Nigel Farage who championed Brexit more than anyone, promised supporters the UK would be better off outside the EU.OPINIONMore money for the NHS. More ‘control’ over immigration. More trade deals with more countries across the world. Well, a decade on, and Brexit is no longer just an idea. It’s not pie in the sky, or what you could have won.It is now a reality – our daily reality. Whether you voted Leave, Remain, or were too young to have had your say, that reality is bleak.It’s this country being 8% poorer. It’s a 10% drop in the value of the pound. That’s not just numbers on a spreadsheet – or deals being done in financial markets.That’s real people, real jobs and real lives. Things getting harder and ever more expensive. Just take the supermarket shop. While pay fails to keep up with inflation, household goods cost £870 more a year, and there’s been a £250 increase in annual food bills.As ever, the impact has been felt hardest by the people least able to afford it.Parents struggling to afford new school shoes. Families who won’t have a holiday this year. Shoppers at the checkout worrying that they’re already at their overdraft limit.It doesn’t stop there. Almost 2m jobs were lost in the UK due to Brexit by 2023, as firms struggled to export and went bust. Rising medicine shortages, as trading got trickier, making it harder to get prescriptions.Brexit means £90bn in tax revenue lost – every year. Money that could be invested in badly needed new infrastructure, funding our national health service, our state schools and strengthening our armed forces.At Best for Britain, we’ve polled the public’s shifting views on Brexit, over the past ten years. One thing has become all too clear. People know.More than three in five (62%) of Brits say Brexit has been more of a failure than a success. And well over half (57%) of those – rightly – say the huge damage to our economy is why. But our research, conducted by trusted pollsters at YouGov, goes even further.More than half (53%) of the public are in favour of the UK becoming an EU member, with fewer than a third (32%) opposed. That’s a gap ten times the size of 52:48Ten years on from the referendum, support for EU membership is strong – and growing. While support for our current Brexit reality has collapsed.So, as we reach June 23, 2026, there is another fork in the road ahead of us. We have a new choice.We can choose to continue with decline, or we can choose to be ambitious. For ourselves, for our country, and most importantly, for our future.There’s another, better vision of how Britain could be. Another reality we can choose.
