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An exhaustive dossier on Brexit contains over 2,000 examples of the negative – and 39 positive impacts of the UK’s exit from the EU.
Britons voted by a narrow majority to leave the EU in 2016 but it is still a cause of friction with some wanting a chance to vote again on membership of the 27-strong bloc.
EU-UK relations came under the spotlight when UK foreign minister David Lammy attended a meeting in Luxembourg this week of the EU Foreign Affairs Council to exchange views with EU Foreign Affairs Ministers on shared security challenges facing Europe.
This was taken by some as a sign of the Labour government in the UK wanting to re-set relations with the EU.
Lammy is the first Foreign Secretary to attend the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council for two years, and he hailed his visit as a historic moment.
The trip was at the invitation of Josep Borrell, a former president of the EU parliament and EU high representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and followed UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s recent visit to Brussels where he pledged to move beyond Brexit and make the UK’s relationship with the EU work for the British people.
Separately, a UK based citizen journalism publication Yorkshire Bylines has compiled what it calls the David Downside Dossier which charts numerous examples of how Brexit has, reportedly, impacted on life, both in the UK and in Europe.
David Davis is a former UK government minister who championed the idea of Brexit for many years. He was contacted by this site for a comment but, at the time of going to press, had not replied.
The dossier was compiled by Anthony Robinson, from Yorkshire Bylines, who concedes that some of the issues that first arose after Brexit have now been ironed out.
Many still argue that Brexit was good for the UK and the dossier itself reports some positives.
Pieter Cleppe, Editor-in-Chief of BrusselsReport.eu, an opinion website covering EU affairs, also points out that Brexit comes with costs and benefits and that there are real benefits though these may only be visible after a long time.
He says. for example, that Britain can now independently close trade deals and, post Brexit, it will be easier for the UK to implement changes, such as in the field of energy policy, than it would have been as a member of the EU.
But the dossier, which was updated daily until 26 September 2024, claims there are countless issues that continue to harm relations between the EU and UK and cause numerous practical difficulties for citizens and industry in particular.
Robinson says, “The reason we first began to systematically log the downsides was to show that those at the forefront of Brexit – particularly David Davis himself – who threw accusations of scaremongering at anyone who opposed them, had no evidence to support their often wild assertions and little idea what they – or more accurately, we – were embarking on.”
He told this site, “The dossier is a clear record of the damage inflicted by Brexit, but also a monument to the colossal ignorance of the EU and the single market by those who recklessly took Britain over a cliff in 2016.”
The dossier adds a word of caution saying “it is not, and has never pretended to be, a reference work on Brexit.”
“We leave that for the historians of the future. We have simply culled items that have appeared in the news that seemed to us to be downsides.”
The dossier adds, “Brexit has become all too real for many UK companies with unwelcome hurdles to doing business in Europe.”
It says that eight years after the vote to quit, the ripples caused by Brexit continue to be felt.
For example, it says that this month a new phase of Brexit will begin when the Border Target Operating Model will apply to goods imported from the EU.
This, it states, will add further friction, costs and disruption to complex supply chains.
Similar issues are recorded including in the transport and the haulage sector which has, it is claimed, been badly hit with the dossier stating that, “An exodus of EU lorry drivers from the UK since Brexit has left the British haulage and logistics industry facing an acute staff shortage and a looming crisis for industrial and retail deliveries, the sector has warned.”
UK arms manufacturers, it claims, have been hit by long delays in attempts to export weapons overseas because of Brexit red tape while the UK has fallen in a ranking of the world’s best countries for entrepreneurship after scoring poorly for infrastructure, ease of entry for foreign workers and red tape linked to Brexit.
It cites a report by Durham University which claimed that former UK PM Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal is the primary factor in the crisis of small boat crossings in the English Channel.
The author said: “The government used to have a deal on returning migrants, but it ended with Brexit and no alternative was agreed. This made it far more difficult to return any new arrivals, and numbers have skyrocketed after this deal stopped.” The study found there were no recorded small boat crossings until 2018.
Elsewhere, it is reported that farming and veterinary groups have warned that delays to applying checks on EU food imports are an accident waiting to happen while Brexit has led to a decline in crops and fewer home-grown products on the shelves of Britain’s supermarkets.
The dossier also quotes data said to have found the number of EU students who were placed on 2021/22 academic courses in the UK has plunged 56 percent and that back-to-work schemes across England previously funded by the EU are being forced to close and lay off staff.
The extensive study also says that the Turing scheme replacement for Britain’s participation in the EU’s Erasmus+ academic exchange scheme, has been plagued with delays and red tape.
It says that applications from EU students who want to study in Irish universities have more than trebled since the 2016 Brexit referendum while tuition fees for students from the EU increased dramatically following Brexit.
The dossier contains no fewer than 2,000 separate entries, each detailing alleged or perceived problems and issues caused by Brexit.
It cautions, “This is only the first 2,000. Expect the numbers to go on rising.”
