Post-Brexit mess leaves me glad that I voted to Remain - Jayne Dowle

Four years post-Brexit, more than half of British people believe that leaving Europe has been more of a failure than a success, according to a new poll delivering a damning verdict on the 2016 referendum.

According to the Ipsos findings, for the Evening Standard newspaper, 57 per cent of adults think that the aftermath of 2016’s narrowest of margins (52 per cent Leave, 48 per cent Remain) means it’s harder to live in Great Britain now. Just 13 per cent claim it’s been a success.

Looking round, and obviously not ignoring the impact of the mitigating factors of the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, it’s hard to see Brexit in a positive light.

What happened to the benefits we were promised by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, orchestrators of the Leave campaign?

With small boats crossing the Channel in ever increasing numbers, we don’t seem to have taken back control of our borders – illegal immigration being a major tenet of Brexiteer faith.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, having blundered into an unholy mess over deportations to Rwanda, is now facing the double ignominy of the Home Office slamming an end to his plans to send migrants back to Turkey.

Last week, it emerged that officials are concerned Turkey is not a safe country for returnees because of human rights concerns.

The Cabinet had hoped to set up a migrant returns deal with Ankara after a surge in the number of Turkish people arriving illegally in Britain by small boats. Now this one looks sunk too.

£350m more a week into the NHS? I’m no NHS accountant, so I can’t see the figures, and yes, we’ve had a pandemic, but by every measure I can think of the NHS is further on its knees than at any time since its birth in 1948.

In November, according to official NHS England figures, the waiting list for routine treatment – so appointments for orthopaedic surgery, for example – hit a record high, 6.5 million people on hold, with no idea when they might be treated.

If £350m a week more really ‘is’ going into the NHS, why does everything take longer post-Brexit?

As for a free trade deal with America, a priority in the 2019 Conservative party manifesto. Guess what? It never materialised. Precious few new trade deals - ones which don’t simply re-iterate existing arrangements under EU trading rules - have been secured, including an arrangement with Japan, and another with Australia, which backfired when British farmers said they would be undercut by cheap imports.

At the end of January, hardly serendipitous timing considering the anniversary of the UK leaving the EU falls at 11pm on January 31, a much-heralded potential trade deal with Canada hit the buffers after two years of trade talks collapsed in a row over beef.

All of this impacts us directly in the pocket. Buffered by his millions, Mr Sunak may dismiss concerns about a ‘cost of living crisis’, but it’s definitely real and seemingly getting worse.

The overall price of food and non-alcoholic beverages rose around 26 per cent between December 2022 and December 2023, according to the latest figures published by the Office for National Statistics, on February 2. In the 10 years prior, overall food and non-alcoholic beverage prices rose by nine per cent – in a whole decade.

Meanwhile, the ONS also says that in the last two weeks, around one in 25 UK adults have reported that their household had run out of food and could not afford to buy more. This means thousands of people in our own region of Yorkshire are literally on the brink of starvation, unless food banks and charities can help them.

Perhaps Brexit cannot be held directly to blame for every single case of severe poverty, but it has certainly played an insidious part in making life more difficult for so many of us.

If this is the reality of life in our post-Brexit land, I am glad of just one thing. I can look my children in the eye and tell them that I am proud to have voted Remain.