A Decade of Brexit: Beyond Economic Loss, Britain Mired in Social Polarization
Hameed Hakimi
Ten years after the EU referendum, Britain is grappling with both economic damage and a deterioration in political culture, as hate speech and racism become normalized. Only 30% of Britons now think leaving the EU was the right choice, while the social legacy of division and extremism deepens.
Ten years after the referendum to leave the European Union, the British people are still wrestling with the consequences of their decision. According to a YouGov poll marking the 10th anniversary of the vote, only 30% of Britons now think leaving the EU was the right choice, a sharp drop from 64% on polling day, June 23, 2016. Meanwhile, 57% say it was a mistake, and 6 in 10 consider Brexit a complete failure.
The arguments that carried the Leave campaign—sovereignty, the pound, economic independence, and cutting red tape—have now hit a dead end. A recent analysis by the Bank of England shows the economy has shrunk by 6% due to the impact of leaving the EU. Many economists say the "honeymoon" is over and Brexit has turned into "Bregret."
However, the lasting legacy of Brexit may not be economic but social: a slow shift in political culture, a growing tolerance of extremes, and a rhetoric about who belongs in Britain, who is an outsider, and how to exclude them—no matter how toxic the polarization becomes.
Pervasive Culture of Hostility
According to Tahir Abbas, Director of the Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, Inclusion and Social Justice at Aston University, "Brexit is a long-term process" rooted in decades of Euroscepticism within the Conservative Party. But what has become increasingly clear is that Brexit strongly mobilized public opinion and people, especially through Islamophobic campaigns with controversial posters.
Rhetoric once confined to the fringes—such as claims that the country was being "invaded," that asylum was a scam, or that minorities like Muslims do not share "British values"—has gradually moved into the mainstream of political debate. Successive governments, racing to appear tougher on immigration, have introduced measures like offshore processing of migrants, threats to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, and deporting asylum seekers to third countries.
Measures once considered unacceptable—such as indefinite detention of migrants and asylum seekers, criminalizing sea rescue operations, and equating refugees with criminals—have been normalized in the name of border control.
From Words to Street Violence
A week before the 2016 referendum, Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered. Her attacker, Thomas Mair, shouted "Britain First" and "This is for Britain" before shooting and stabbing her to death. More recently, during riots in Belfast in June 2026, following a knife attack by a Sudanese national, masked mobs burned homes, businesses, and vehicles, searching house to house for immigrants.
According to Nichola Khan, an expert in anthropology and migration at the University of Edinburgh, not all far-right and racist politics in Britain is linked to Brexit, but the divide has exacerbated the rise of hate politics, reinforcing a nationalism that threatens fair democracy. She argues that cultural diversity, a precious British value, faces the risk of being erased.
The Online Misinformation Machine
The polarization and division amplified by Brexit have created fertile ground for information warfare. Poor white working-class communities, angry at austerity policies and post-industrial decline, blamed immigration and voted overwhelmingly for Brexit. According to Amil Khan, head of the organization Valent, which exposes misinformation, the Leave victory validated new approaches in communications where technology and data can break through traditional barriers.
After Brexit, a younger, more tech-savvy, and less rule-bound generation of strategists entered the market. Ancillary services like bot farms also grew, helping to spread misinformation—a problem likely to worsen with artificial intelligence.
The Challenge Ahead
Britain's economic difficulties are likely to keep fueling debates over the best ways to link with the EU, while sovereignty and immigration remain contentious issues. Meanwhile, the social impacts are present and tragic. Ten years of treating immigration as the key to solving all social problems have weakened discourse, normalized extremes, and placed non-white families, particularly British Muslims, in harm's way.
If this trajectory is not corrected, Britain will need more than a healthy economy to restore trust among its citizens.
