The Mayor of London’s recent declaration that his “ultimate goal is to reverse Brexit” and rejoin the EU captures the continued strain facing UK politics. When the British people voted to leave the European Union, they did not merely withdraw from a political union, but rather, they withdrew from the world’s most integrated economic bloc. That decision carried long-term consequences that today, six years on, are evident not just in statistics but in the structural reorientation of the British economy.
I was a strong proponent of Brexit because the structure of the EU is inherently unstable. You cannot have a single monetary system, regulatory regime, and political authority imposed on vastly different cultures and economies without creating permanent internal conflict.
The EU does not permit real democracy. When voters in France, the Netherlands, Ireland, or Greece rejected EU policies, they were forced to vote again until they produced the “correct” answer. When Italy or Greece elected governments that challenged Brussels, unelected bureaucrats intervened. Brexit was not an accident, nor was it some irrational emotional outburst by the British public as the press endlessly claims. It was the inevitable consequence of the European Union evolving into a centralized bureaucratic regime that stripped sovereignty from its member states.
I consistently supported Nigel Farage, who understood that this was not about tariffs or GDP forecasts, but about sovereignty. Those now calling to reverse Brexit argue that Britain has suffered economically. That is a dishonest framing. The entire European continent is in economic decline. Germany is deindustrializing, France is facing civil unrest and debt instability, and southern Europe never recovered from the sovereign debt crisis. To claim that Britain’s challenges stem solely from Brexit ignores the global contraction cycle that began long before the referendum.
Brexit was not a mistake. The real mistake would be pretending that voters did not know what they were doing. Markets will adjust. Capital will flow where it is treated best. What never survives is a system that refuses to listen to its own people.