I voted Leave. Five years of Brexit have shown me I was wrong

In 2016 when David Cameron called the referendum, I was ambivalent. I hoped the campaign would enlighten me, but frankly, I found the whole thing lacklustre. The broad thrust of Remain seemed to me posed in the negative; the sky would fall in if Britain left the EU. Leave were far too utopian in their predictions. 

I hated the hectoring tone of David Cameron and found President Obama’s intervention patronising. I was equally unmoved by the £350m written on a bus.

Ultimately, what made me vote Leave was the sense that the case put forward by Remain simply wasn’t compelling. I wanted to see positive arguments for Britain’s membership of the EU, clear and tangible benefits, solid reasons for being part of the bloc but I didn’t feel those were being made.

I was drawn to the notion of us being more like Singapore, an agile and effective city-state punching above its weight internationally. It also seemed to me that when issues of real political concern to people were raised, politicians of all stripes frequently attributed their failures to restrictions imposed by Brussels, so there was an argument that leaving the EU would allow Westminster to do more of the things people wanted action on, such as immigration.

Looking back, I suspect my vote was fundamentally about believing that freed from membership Britain would be able to achieve more, to be more, than it was whilst hemmed into the rigidity of the EU. I was never anti-European – my parents lived in France and I went to university in Dublin – but now as then, I don’t equate being European with the EU; one is a geographical and cultural entity, the other a political construct. 

While I voted to Leave, I suspected that Remain would win because of the support that side had from the wider establishment, especially the media. In a sense, that was perhaps also part of my decision to vote Leave, a project fear argument backed by most of the establishment didn’t motivate me to remain.

So what has changed after five years? Well in one sense nothing, and that’s part of why my view has changed. 

At the last election, immigration was a major issue, just as it had been before Brexit – that perhaps says a lot about the argument that Brexit would be a panacea. The trade deals which were much mooted have failed to materialise, the benefits of free movement have not been replaced by anything equivalent and it is a peculiar irony that one of the few things a British government has done that it could not have done inside the EU, is levying VAT on private schools – the EU forbids this.

Where there have been changes, these further undermine the case for leaving. With the new Trump presidency, it is easy to see how trade tariffs could be in place and as that storm crosses the Atlantic, economic reality will mean that large trading blocs are better able to manage. The EU imposes tariffs on external countries, and one can see how in a trade war between the EU and US, Britain could be caught between a rock and a hard place. 

I have spent a lot of time in France over the last year since my father died and very much see Britain differently from here. France has a large number of British expatriates but moving here is harder than it was and I can’t help but feel saddened that the hugely enhancing adventure my parents embarked upon 14 years ago is one others are less likely to experience. 

They came here after retirement, so it is not just youngsters who have lost out on what Europe has to offer because of Brexit. It is harder to travel here for any length of time, harder to import British goods, harder to bring wine home and there is a pervading sense that Britain is further away, less accessible and frankly, less relevant. Being closed off from our nearest neighbours in this way feels unhealthy.

The tendency to blame all of Britain’s woes on Brexit is wrong, but Brexit can be seen as a failure of the political class – both the Remainers who failed to find a convincing argument at the referendum and the Leavers who failed to match actions after Brexit to the promises made before it.  

Five years ago, I could spend as much time travelling, living and working in Europe as I wished, visa-free but that is now gone. If I could see how we had gained as a country in other ways – trade perhaps, or with improvements to our domestic legislation – then these would be small prices to pay. 

The problem is, in return for the restrictions on my travel and opportunities to study and work in Europe, I see nothing beneficial; our politics are still as underwhelming as they were, immigration is still problematic, the economy even more vulnerable to global trade headwinds. 

Five years on, I think we would have been better to remain, seeking to steer the EU away from some of its rigidity and continuing as part of one of the world’s largest markets whilst retaining our individual rights to access the huge European cultural milieu. 

The signal failure of our politicians to do anything beneficial with the supposed freedoms Brexit gave means the scales have tilted for me, and as Harold Macmillan said, when the facts change, I change my mind. Looking back and looking from France, Britain should have remained.

Richard Gibbs is a TNE reader who divides his time between the UK and France