TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsBeyond Brexit, and back to Europe
According to a poll, the British public is thoroughly disillusioned with Brexit and thinks it has only exacerbated the country’s biggest problems.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer visits a housing development on June 19, 2026 in north London. (Reuters/Pool/Peter Macdiarmid)
I
t is only partially a coincidence that the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum, the event that provoked a toxic polarization of politics in the United Kingdom, was marked by another political casualty: the resignation of Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Starmer is leaving with characteristic dignity, but without having delivered on the promise he made two years ago to revive the UK economy. One key reason for his failure was Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. Just last week, a major study put the cost of Brexit at 6–8 percent of the UK’s gross domestic product over the decade since the vote. Given such eye-watering costs, it should come as no surprise that the UK public’s thinking about the relationship between them and continental Europe has undergone a quiet revolution since 2016.
You wouldn’t know it from following intergovernmental negotiations or debates in the media. Politicians in London and across EU capitals insist that almost nothing has changed. Many of the faces are even the same. Nigel Farage’s Reform party is leading the polls in the UK, and the Labour government still refers to previous governments’ “red lines” vis-à-vis Europe.
Similarly, in Brussels, many still hold a hard line against allowing the UK to “cherry-pick” the economic benefits of its proximity to the EU without assuming the obligations that come with membership. The desire to set an example by “punishing the UK” remains strong in some circles. Many European politicians describe Brexit as a “bad divorce” that will haunt them. They harbor resentments against those Britons who always saw the EU as a market rather than a political community. With so many other crises on their plate, they argue that Brexit has already occupied too much bandwidth, and they are wary of putting their fate in the hands of Britain’s fickle electorate ever again.
But while the elite debate remains the same, public opinion on both sides of the English Channel has undergone a remarkable shift. The change in the UK is especially dramatic. According to a poll conducted by my organization, the European Council on Foreign Relations, the UK public is thoroughly disillusioned with Brexit and thinks it has only exacerbated the country’s biggest problems, from the rising cost of living and illegal immigration to new security threats.
Some 75 percent of people want a closer relationship with Europe, and when asked to define what that means, the most popular choice is rejoining the EU. The desire to re-engage even cuts across the old Leave/Remain divide, with six out of ten Leave voters expressing openness to a closer relationship.
The biggest game-changer has been United States President Donald Trump’s return to office. Faced with an unreliable US, large majorities of UK voters are looking to Europe rather than America to protect their economies, their security, and even their borders.
