Britain’s fickle voters know a dud when they see one, and Brexit is perhaps the ultimate dud. More than half of Britons now reckon Brexit was wrong. Some 62 per cent call it an outright failure.
Westminster, however, pretends not to notice. Prime Minister Keir Starmer treats Europe much like a live grenade—mention it and he dives for cover. The Conservatives, having delivered the mess in the first place, now compete with Reform to see who can demand the hardest borders. The Lib Dems mumble about “closer cooperation” without defining what that means. Even the surging Greens, who openly advocate for rejoining the EU, have said that doing so is not a priority.
Nobody will say what the data makes plain: Britain’s migration crisis—the very thing that drove Brexit—could be solved by rejoining the European Single Market. Not full EU membership, which remains toxic and would drag in euro and Schengen membership and resurrect the divisions of 2016. Just the European Economic Area arrangement that Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein use. It’s sitting there in plain sight. Both sides of the Brexit debate ignore it for opposite reasons.
The Brexit migration muddle
Brexit promised control. It delivered chaos. Net migration from the EU predictably collapsed—from over 200,000 annually to slightly negative. In this sense, Brexit has been a complete success. Free movement has ended.
But the vacuum got filled. Non-EU migration rose from roughly 300,000 in 2019 to 1.1 million in 2023. Net migration hit a record 906,000 in the year to June 2023. The much-heralded ‘Australian-style’ points system that replaced free movement was quietly loosened to plug desperate labour gaps, especially in health and social care. Boris Johnson’s so-called ‘Boriswave’ brought more migration than Britain ever saw under free movement. Just from Nigeria, India, Pakistan and the Philippines instead of Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.
The difference matters, though nobody in polite society wants to examine why. EU migrants under free movement were overwhelmingly young, economically active, and often temporary. They came, worked, left. Employment rates ran higher than British natives—86 per cent for EU-born men versus 78 per cent for UK citizens in 2022. They paid more tax than they consumed in services. They filled hospitality, construction, agriculture and logistics jobs that needed little training but considerable flexibility.
The new regime works differently. Work visas need employer sponsorship and minimum salaries, encouraging permanent settlement over circular migration. Students bring dependants at extraordinary rates—sub-Saharan African students brought 103 dependants per hundred students in 2022-23. The care sector got unlimited work visas in 2022 and turned into an immigration motorway. This isn’t temporary labour filling gaps. It’s permanent settlement with all the pressure on housing, schools and public services that entails.
And illegal migration? Soared. Small boat crossings rose from 300 in 2018 to over 37,000 in 2024. Nearly 190,430 people have crossed since 2018. Last year was the deadliest—73 deaths. Britain burned billions on the Rwanda scheme that never took a single deportation flight. The asylum backlog stretches years. The ‘control’ Brexit promised turned out to be entirely fictional.
The Single Market solution
The EEA extends the EU’s Single Market to Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein without requiring EU membership. These countries adopt the four freedoms—goods, services, capital, people—but stay outside the Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy. They join programmes like Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe, match regulatory standards for the Single Market, and contribute to EU cohesion funds at roughly three per cent what full members pay.
For Britain, this solves the migration problem precisely. Restoring freedom of movement reopens access to that flexible, temporary European labour that kept the service economy running pre-Brexit. Polish builders, Romanian fruit-pickers, Spanish hospitality workers, Italian baristas—the workers who filled gaps without needing permanent infrastructure. Employers could hire them directly without bureaucracy. They’d come and go with economic cycles instead of settling permanently.
That’s genuine control. Not the theatrical sovereignty of visa requirements, but practical ability to match labour supply to demand flexibly. EU workers need no integration support, no settlement infrastructure. They arrive, work, pay taxes, often leave. Norway demonstrates this works: despite free movement, it runs lower immigration per capita than post-Brexit Britain.
What’s more, freedom of movement might actually reduce the migration that bothers voters most. Britain’s labour shortages force expensive recruitment from South Asia and Africa. With EU labour available, pressure to issue non-EU work visas drops substantially. The care sector could recruit from Romania and Bulgaria instead. Workers who adapt faster, and cost less to bring given fewer dependants tag along.
Transforming Britain’s position
Brexit smashed Britain’s illegal migration toolkit. Leaving Dublin III killed the primary mechanism for returning asylum seekers to EU countries they’d travelled through. Pre-Brexit returns were modest—roughly 560 annually—but the system provided legal authority and cooperation frameworks.
Post-Brexit? Gone. Britain proposed bilateral returns agreements with France, Germany and others. All refused, citing lack of reciprocity and no interest in helping a departed member. The ‘inadmissibility’ rules Britain adopted—declaring asylum claims invalid if applicants passed through safe countries—can’t work without agreements to actually send people back. The 2025 UK-France returns deal permits a pilot potentially returning 50 people weekly. That’s nothing compared to arrivals.
EEA membership wouldn’t automatically restore Dublin access—Norway uses separate Schengen arrangements—but it transforms Britain’s position. As a Single Market participant paying EU funds and accepting free movement, Britain becomes a cooperative partner instead of a defector demanding favours. Bilateral agreements become feasible when counterparties see burden-sharing rather than burden-shirking.
Britain would regain Europol for intelligence on smuggling networks, Frontex for border management expertise, the EU’s network of readmission agreements with source countries. Britain operates alone now, without leverage from EU-wide coordination. Joining this cooperative framework wouldn’t solve Channel crossings overnight, but it provides tools and partners currently absent.
Political impossibilities and possible politics
The objection arrives immediately: voters rejected free movement in 2016. How could any government propose restoring it?
The question assumes public opinion is physics when it’s actually weather. In 2016, free movement meant unlimited EU migration when net arrivals exceeded 300,000 annually. Eastern European workers flooded labour markets after 2004 enlargement. Wages stagnated, public services felt strained, the ‘temporary’ nature of such migration hadn’t yet revealed itself.
Non-EU migration dwarfs anything under free movement. That record 906,000 in 2023 makes 2016’s 300,000 look insignificant. Housing waiting lists stretch longer, GP appointments grow scarcer, visible demographic change continues faster—just from different countries. Labour shortages persist across the economy, from fruit farms to building sites to restaurants.
The pitch writes itself: “We tried leaving Europe’s Single Market. Didn’t work. Migration went up, not down. Labour markets seized up. We lost control and gained nothing. Let’s try something different—restore the flexible European labour system that actually worked, cutting dependence on permanent migration from elsewhere.”
This isn’t a referendum on the euro or Schengen. No ‘ever closer union’ rhetoric required. Norway manages EEA membership with fierce independence in other spheres—oil, fisheries. Britain could copy this model, trading regulatory sovereignty for economic access. Every trade agreement involves that bargain.
The political path exists, if narrow. A weakened Conservative party bleeding voters to Reform UK lacks authority for this shift. Labour, terrified of Red Wall seats and determined to avoid Brexit betrayal accusations, sits paralysed. But the surging Greens could force it. If they keep climbing in the polls, the Overton window could shift.
Or, economic necessity forces hands. Brexit was meant to reduce migration. It exploded instead. If Starmer’s new visa restrictions—aiming to cut net migration by 100,000—actually work, labour shortages become acute. Employers scream, services deteriorate, government faces an ugly choice: relax restrictions and admit failure, or find new flexible labour sources.
The pragmatist’s reformation
This doesn’t address Brexit’s other wounds—trade friction, regulatory divergence, financial services fragmentation, diplomatic isolation. Nor does it resolve Britain’s European identity crisis. Those matter.
But they’re separate. The migration question stands alone as uniquely solvable through Single Market membership, precisely because it was Brexit’s defining issue and clearest failure. Voters tolerate economic complications they barely grasp. They notice immediately when promised control produces its opposite.
Britain needn’t reverse Brexit entirely to fix its worst mistake. The EEA model offers pragmatic reformation: acknowledging error without the trauma of a full mea culpa referendum splitting the country again. It provides what Britain desperately needs—flexible labour markets, cooperation on illegal migration, genuine rather than theatrical border control—without requiring the euro, Schengen, or full EU acquis.
The case for Single Market accession is profoundly conservative: recognising the current system doesn’t work, drawing on proven templates rather than utopian schemes, proposing evolution not revolution. Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein demonstrate daily you can stay outside the EU yet inside its economic orbit, maintaining sovereignty where it counts whilst cooperating where national interest benefits.
That Britain’s politicians won’t discuss this seriously reveals contemporary British statecraft’s bankruptcy. Both of the traditionally major parties remain trapped in Brexit’s amber, unable to acknowledge failures without triggering internal wars. Yet polls show voters have moved on, even if Westminster hasn’t. They see what evidence screams: Brexit produced more migration, less control, diminished prosperity. They want alternatives.
The Single Market offers exactly that—not Brexit betrayal but course correction. Britain chose leaving the European Union. It needn’t stay outside Europe’s economic structures forever. The former was political statement; the latter, economic mistake that can be remedied without referendums or constitutional anguish.
The irony of course is that restoring freedom of movement—the thing Brexit meant to end—might be the only way to achieve what Brexit actually promised. A migration system serving British interests rather than defying them. Sometimes progress requires admitting error. More often, it requires admitting yesterday’s solution became today’s problem, and having the wit to change course.
Britain spent four years negotiating EU departure, five more discovering departure’s consequences. Perhaps time to spend less energy defending the indefensible, more finding the pragmatic middle path serving actual national interests.
Photo: Dreamstime.
