Britain's future, examined without illusion.
The cost of feeding a British household has risen sharply since 2020, and while global inflation bears much of the blame, post-Brexit trade arrangements have introduced structural pressures on food prices and supply chains that long predate the energy crisis. A closer examination of the data reveals that the impact has been neither uniform nor temporary.
Eight years on from the referendum, the promise of a nimbler, self-governing regulatory state is being tested against commercial reality. Across sectors from pharmaceuticals to financial services, British businesses are discovering that sovereignty over rule-making carries a price — and that price is not always distributed evenly.
Brexit was sold as an act of national unity — taking back control on behalf of a sovereign United Kingdom. Yet nearly a decade on, it has done as much to strain the bonds between Britain's constituent nations as any policy in living memory. From Holyrood to Stormont, the post-Brexit settlement has exposed deep fault lines in how the UK governs itself.
Since the Brexit vote, a quiet but consequential shift has been under way in Britain's workforce. Skilled professionals — from NHS consultants to university researchers — are reassessing their futures in the UK, and the data suggests the flow of talent outward is more than anecdotal. What does this mean for the long-term health of Britain's knowledge economy?
Eight years after the referendum that reshaped Britain's economic trajectory, we examine the data on household finances, grocery bills, wages, and regional wellbeing to ask a straightforward question: are ordinary Britons materially better or worse off? The picture is considerably more complicated — and in places more troubling — than either side of the Brexit debate predicted.
From NHS wards to harvest fields, British employers are confronting a skills drought that tighter post-Brexit immigration controls have helped to deepen. We examine which sectors are bearing the heaviest burden, what it is costing the wider economy, and whether policymakers have any credible answers.