This June marks ten years since that referendum in which 17.4 million Britons —the largest vote in the history of the United Kingdom— decided to leave the European Union. The anniversary invites less nostalgia than a question that almost no one wanted to answer honestly back then: what was really voted on that June 23, 2016?
The answer fits in the most resonant slogan of the campaign: take back control. It was not a vote against Europe, its cathedrals, or its literature. It was a vote against a caste that does not tolerate losing power.
Brexit as a rebellion against the anointed
It is important to name that caste precisely. Thomas Sowell called it “the anointed”: that enlightened minority that claims superior knowledge, believes it has the right to decide for millions of people, and when reality contradicts its plans, does not conclude that it was wrong but that the people are too ignorant to understand it. The distinctive trait of the anointed is not that they govern, but that they never submit to the verdict of the governed. The dissenter is not treated as mistaken: they are treated as immoral. Those who object to uncontrolled immigration are xenophobic; those who defend their currency and traditions are dangerous nostalgics; those who vote differently are manipulated without criteria. That is the grammar of the anointed, and Brexit was, above all, a heresy against it.
Because the European Union deserves to be observed beyond its own narrative. It was born with legitimate goals of commercial integration and cooperation among nations that had just gone through two devastating wars. But as the integration process advanced, the logic of the common market gave way to increasing regulatory and political centralization. What began as a project of economic openness ended up evolving into a bureaucratic structure increasingly distant from the democratic control of citizens.
The United Kingdom was from the beginning an uncomfortable partner: when the integration project started in 1957, the British preferred to stay out; Churchill himself had said that European peace required moving towards a United States of Europe that should not include Great Britain. Its membership was always transactional, never identity-based. And as decision-making slowly but inexorably shifted from London to Brussels, the British discovered that their democracy was being hollowed out from above.
The EU presents itself as the great exercise of free trade, but its practice is different: no space for business experimentation and institutional competition, protectionism, and a bureaucracy that regulates everything from permitted working hours to the storage of olive oil. Its Commission —the most powerful arm— is elected in conclaves of heads of government with little or no reference to voters. The euro also contributed to shifting fundamental decisions from the realm of democratic deliberation to the domain of technocratic administration. More and more aspects of economic policy became subject to rules, bodies, and negotiations far removed from the direct control of voters. The
British saw this drift before anyone else. That is why, when the anointed announced that Brexit would unleash apocalypse, they deduced, with common sense, that such fear could only hide a threatened privilege.
The Brexit they never let be completed
What came next was proof that control is not given up without a fight. For years, the anointed did everything to neutralize the vote. Theresa May, who had campaigned for remaining, negotiated an agreement known as BRINO —Brexit in Name Only—: it kept Great Britain out of European decisions but still subjected it to a good part of its rules. The People’s Vote campaign filled the streets of London demanding a second referendum, that is, to vote again until the people got it right. The exit that was supposed to take place in March 2019 was kicked down the road time and again.
And when, later, a conservative prime minister dared to propose tax cuts and deregulation, the International Monetary Fund publicly reprimanded her with unusual harshness. Her defenders argued that she was reacting to an inconsistent fiscal program. But the episode revealed something deeper: to what extent international institutions consider it legitimate to intervene when a government tries to deviate from the dominant economic consensus. The sabotage, moreover, was never just from Brussels: it came from within, from the very managerial class that runs the West. Today, Labour leader Keir Starmer crowns that trend with his “reset”: a dynamic alignment that will copy much of European legislation on energy, electricity, and food standards. If Brussels says “jump,” Great Britain will ask “how high?” From competitive partner to satellite market, and without true democratic scrutiny, against two consecutive majority votes.
It is also worth remembering what Brexit really promised. It was never a promise of automatic prosperity or a shortcut to growth. No institutional reform produces miracles on its own. The bet was to regain decision-making capacity to define its own regulatory, trade, energy, and migration policies. Judging Brexit solely by the evolution of some aggregate indicators is like evaluating a privatization by looking only at the GDP of the following year: it loses sight of the fundamental issue, which is who decides and to whom they are accountable.
That is why the balance of this decade must be read carefully. The United Kingdom has not fared badly, but it has not done as well as it could have, and the reason is simple: it never fully implemented the Brexit it voted for. Where it was allowed to breathe, it worked: British lamb exports grew strongly, beef exports reached record levels, and the genetic editing sector flourished thanks to the regulatory liberalization following the exit. But those achievements are often reported with the condescending asterisk of “despite Brexit,” while it is silenced that broad sectors of the economy remain tied to a regulatory architecture designed for another political scheme. It is not that Brexit has failed. It is that it was never allowed to fully assess what a completed Brexit would have meant.
