Brexit and society

Blog

LSE Impact:

Did Brexit make us better at communicating economics?

The referendum on the UK's membership of the EU was a watershed moment for research communication. Despite a near total academic consensus on the negative economic consequences of a vote to Leave, this message did not de...Read more...

Romesh Vaitilingam

8 July 2026

Blog

LSE British Politics:

Brexit was supposed to limit immigration, it did the opposite

Being able to control immigration from the EU became one of the defining issues of the Vote Leave campaign. While Brexit has meant the end of free movement from the EU, immigration to the UK has since risen to record lev...Read more...

Alan Manning

22 June 2026

Blog

LSE British Politics:

Brexit has been an economic failure

Putting up trade barriers, higher import prices and uncertainty have made the UK poorer. Thomas Sampson provides the evidence showing how Brexit has negatively affected the UK's economy....Read more...

Thomas Sampson

16 June 2026

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

The problems with Reform UK's immigration policy

Reform UK's policy on irregular immigration of "detect, detain, deport" has been widely criticised on legal and moral grounds. But Alan Manning looks at the practical difficulties with enacting this policy and finds that...Read more...

Alan Manning

9 September 2025

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

Stop performative Brexit and do what works for the British economy

Brexit has left its mark on UK international trade, although, so far, the effect has been smaller than economists expected. Dennis Novy, Thomas Sampson and Catherine Thomas review recent UK trade performance and argue th...Read more...

Dennis Novy, Thomas Sampson and Catherine Thomas

21 June 2024

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Global Britain has failed - what next?

The vision of post-Brexit Britain was one of international trade deals that would propel the country into a new era of prosperity. That vision of "Global Britain" is now dead. Thomas Sampson argues that the only viable a...Read more...

Thomas Sampson

16 February 2024

Blog

VoxEU:

Global supply chain risk and resilience

Supply disruptions caused by systemic shocks such as Brexit, Covid, and Russia-Ukraine tensions have catapulted the issue of risk in global supply chains to the top of policy agendas. In some sectors, however, there is a...Read more...

Richard E. Baldwin and Rebecca Freeman

6 April 2022

CEP discussion paper

Expecting Brexit

The Brexit vote precipitated the unravelling of the UK's membership of the world's deepest economic integration agreement. This paper reviews evidence on the realized economic effects of Brexit. The 2016 Brexit referendu...Read more...

Swati Dhingra and Thomas Sampson

25 January 2022

CEP Insights

Brexit

The UK's vote to leave the European Union in 2016 triggered economic reactions that will define the country's future for years to come. Why does leaving the EU have such a profound impact - and how do economists estimate...Read more...

Swati Dhingra, Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano and Thomas Sampson

14 July 2021

CEP discussion paper

Economic insecurity and the rise of the right

Economic insecurity has attracted growing attention in social, academic and policy circles. However, there is no consensus as to its precise definition. Intuitively, economic insecurity is multi-faceted, making any compr...Read more...

Walter Bossert, Andrew E. Clark, Conchita D'Ambrosio and Anthony Lepinteur

29 October 2019

CEP Brexit analysis

The economic impact of Boris Johnson?s Brexit proposals

The Prime Minister Boris Johnson has set out a means of escaping the Brexit stalemate, but his new Brexit proposals have, as yet, not managed to overcome the impasse. What has been striking, though, is the extent to whic...Read more...

Matt Bevington, Hanwei Huang, Anand Menon, Jonathan Portes, Jill Rutter and Thomas Sampson

22 October 2019