Formal Autonomy and Economic Capacity: A Ten-Year Economic Assessment of Brexit
Year: 2026
Type: peer-review
Abstract: A decade after the 2016 referendum, Brexit can be evaluated as an established economic settlement rather than a political promise. This article examines whether the United Kingdom’s choice to exchange deeper European Union integration for greater formal autonomy has generated benefits commensurate with its economic costs. Using comparative policy analysis, official assessments, macroeconomic modelling, firm-level studies, labour-market evidence, and policy research, the study evaluates Brexit’s economic effects over a ten-year period. It distinguishes sovereignty as legal and political discretion from sovereignty as practical economic capacity, including growth, investment, productivity, labour-market resilience, and bargaining power. The findings indicate that Brexit has delivered real but limited policy discretion while generating wider and persistent economic costs. New UK-EU trade frictions have weakened trade intensity, investment, productivity, sterling, and labour-market flexibility. Meanwhile, gains from regulatory autonomy, independent trade policy, and migration control have been insufficient to compensate. The study concludes that Brexit is more defensible as a democratic and political choice than as an economic strategy. It highlights tensions between sovereignty, integration, and economic independence and recommends trade facilitation, selective regulatory cooperation, stronger investor confidence, and improved labour-market responsiveness.
Author: Shakib Ahmad Mohebzada
Institution: Euclid University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7204720596