A load of plonk: the only Brexit 'benefit' the government has managed to find is pint-sized bottles of wine

It’s also when government departments try to sneak out bad news, such as the consultation which showed 99% of respondents were not in favour of Boris Johnson’s fabled return to imperial measurements. However, the Department for Business and Trade still ably managed to find one Brexit “benefit”. 

“‘Pint’ size wine stocked on Britain’s shelves for the first time ever thanks to new freedoms from leaving the European Union,” the press release proudly proclaimed. After all the chaos of the last seven years, all we’ve got to show for Brexit is that we’re able to sell wine in pint-sized bottles. I can’t think of much else.

Immigration, the main focus of the Leave campaign during the referendum, has gone up since Brexit by more than 560,000. Rishi Sunak, who was a Brexiteer before it became cool as we keep being told, presided over the highest net migration since records began in December 2022. It turns out those Europeans were filling pretty important jobs in the NHS, social care and agriculture sectors.

Jacob Rees-Mogg famously promised that food prices would go down after Brexit. Instead, we’ve had double-digit grocery inflation - the worst in decades. Of course there have been significant other factors, such as energy prices and the war in Ukraine, however ask any farmer or business and they will tell you that post-Brexit trade friction has also had an impact.

And what about that £350million to go to the NHS every week. That would have been pretty useful in settling today’s junior doctors’ strikes. Sadly that figure was a lie, and the NHS has been left on its knees after years of under investment. 

The problem for Sunak and other Brexiteers is that people are starting to associate these issues with leaving the EU. A recent poll by Opinium found that more than half of voters say Brexit has had a bad impact on food prices, the state of the NHS and the ability to control immigration. While only 10% or less think it’s had a good impact on any of those things.

This year, people are only likely to blame more problems on Brexit. Soon the EU will require holidaymakers from the UK to provide fingerprints and facial scans to visit, which travel companies say will only lead to more queues and chaos. We’ll also have to start paying a fee to go on holiday to Portugal, Greece and Spain. And at some point the government will bring in full checks on food being imported from the EU, which will inevitably push up prices. 

At the moment, despite polls showing more Britons are in favour of the EU, there’s little appetite among political parties or voters to have a conversation about rejoining. The next few years of increased friction and disturbance could change this. Either way, I’ll need more than a pint-sized bottle of wine to start seeing the Brexit benefits, and I’d rather have a full bottle of Bordeaux anyway. 

Ralph Blackburn is NationalWorld’s politics editor based in Westminster, where he gets special access to Parliament, MPs and government briefings. If you liked this article you can follow Ralph on X (Twitter) here and sign up to his free weekly newsletter Politics Uncovered, which brings you the latest analysis and gossip from Westminster every Sunday morning.