On 31 January 2020 Britain left the European Union. This is the list of what we left behind. None of it has been recovered.
Membership of the European Union. Held by Britain since 1973. Voted away on 23 June 2016 by 51.9 percent.
The Single Market. A trading area of 450 million consumers. We left it.
The Customs Union. Frictionless trade across 27 countries. Now requires customs declarations and origin paperwork on every shipment.
EU citizenship. Held by every UK passport holder. Surrendered.
Free movement of people. The right to live, work, study and retire across the EU and EEA. Replaced with visa requirements and 90-day stay limits.
Seats in the European Parliament. 73 British MEPs. Removed.
Erasmus+. The student exchange programme that sent UK students to European universities for over thirty years. Replaced with the Turing Scheme.
European Medicines Agency. Headquartered in Canary Wharf since 1995. Relocated to Amsterdam in 2019. Around 900 jobs went with it.
European Banking Authority. Headquartered in London. Relocated to Paris.
European Aviation Safety Agency. UK was a leading member. Now governed by the domestic Civil Aviation Authority.
European Chemicals Agency. UK firms registered their products under REACH. Now they register them again under UK REACH. The same product. Twice.
Galileo. We helped design it. We helped pay for it. We lost access to the encrypted military signal.
European Investment Bank. UK was a founding shareholder. We withdrew our capital. UK projects no longer qualify for lending.
Schengen Information System II. Real-time access to 90 million European crime records. UK police lost access at 23.00 on 31 December 2020.
European Arrest Warrant. Suspects extradited within days. Replaced with a slower bilateral process.
Europol full membership. Downgraded to third-country status.
Eurojust full membership. Downgraded to third-country status.
Common Agricultural Policy. Subsidy regime for British farmers since 1973. Replaced with the Environmental Land Management scheme. Smaller. Slower. Less.
Common Fisheries Policy. Replaced with annual quota negotiations. Total catches and fleet size have both fallen.
European Health Insurance Card. Free emergency healthcare across the EU and EEA. Replaced with the GHIC. Narrower coverage.
Pet passports. Replaced with Animal Health Certificates. Issued by a vet. Each trip.
The EU passports lane at European airports. We now queue with the rest of the world.
Six years on, the country has changed its mind.
YouGov polled the UK in February 2026. 63 percent of Britons would now vote to rejoin the European Union. 37 percent would stay out.
Among 18 to 25 year olds, 86 percent would rejoin. Among the retired, 60 percent would rejoin. The cohort that delivered Brexit has reversed.
Every region of the UK now backs rejoin. Scotland leads at 73 percent. London follows at 65. Even the Midlands and the North, the regions written about as Leave heartlands, are now majority rejoin.
Brexit won by 51.9 percent on 23 June 2016. Rejoin has led every credible poll since 2022. Each new cohort entering the electorate backs it by margins above 80 percent. The Leave coalition is dying. The Rejoin coalition is coming of age.
This is not a campaign. This is arithmetic and the arithmetic only moves in one direction.
Sources: YouGov, Savanta for ITV/Peston, Deltapoll, UK Government, European Commission, House of Commons Library.
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