Brexit. Remember that? Fun, wasn’t it? The entire nation bickering, arguing and having a go at each other about things like flags.

Good to see we’ve all evolved and grown up since then, eh?

It feels like only yesterday that every other conversation in Britain somehow ended with someone storming off muttering something about Article 50. Then again, it somehow also feels about 200 years ago. There’s been plenty in the news to keep us occupied since the 2016 vote, after all.

Anyway, a decade on from the controversial referendum, a new poll suggests that some 55% of Britons would now vote to rejoin the EU. And only 32% of the 10,000 people quizzed said they’d stay out.

Whether that’s because we’ve changed our minds or because we’re British and therefore constitutionally incapable of not complaining about something is open to debate.

So was it a bad idea? Rather than arguing all over again about whether Brexit was a triumph or a catastrophe, we thought we’d mark its homework and decide once and for all if it was a good idea or not.

We’ve picked 10 of the biggest issues Brexit was supposed to tackle and marked its performance in each one out of 10…

Food prices

Let’s kick off with one of the easiest promises to mark. Cheaper food never materialised. While Brexit wasn’t the only reason your weekly shop has got so expensive you’ve started eating the packaging to try and get value for money, economists generally agree that new trade barriers have added a number of costs for importers and retailers.

Covid, war and inflation all played their part, of course, but this is one promise that can’t really claim a pass.

Score: 2/10

The economy

Britain just about swerved the immediate post-referendum recession that plenty of folk predicted in 2016. But most major forecasters believe the economy is smaller than it would otherwise have been.

Separating Brexit from Covid, the energy crisis and global inflation is impossible, which is why this ends up somewhere in the middle rather than at either extreme.

That said, Bloomberg Economics estimates that Brexit costs the country anywhere up to £200bn a year. To put that into some sort of financial context, that’s enough to nearly 200 billion £1 scratchcards each and every year.

Score: 4 /10

Trade

The promise we were made was that Britain would thrive as an independent trading nation if it gave the EU the old Spanish archer.

Trade didn’t exactly grind to a halt, but exporting to the EU became quite a lot more bureaucratic for many businesses, particularly smaller ones. New costs and fees haven’t helped, either. So there are a lot more forms involved now. And invoices.

New trade deals have been signed around the world, but they haven’t fully offset the extra friction with Britain’s biggest trading partner.

Score: 4/10

‘Our NHS’

The (in)famous £350 million-a-week claim very quickly became one of the defining images of the referendum. Vote Leave and the NHS would receive a giant windfall. Nice and straightforward. A cheque for £350,000,000 paid into its account every Friday afternoon.

So has that happened? Well, no. Not quite. Obviously.

NHS funding has increased since 2016, but not as the simple Brexit dividend many voters were told/lied to about. Staffing shortages and medicine supply issues have also complicated the picture, though.

The lesson? Never trust anything a bus tells you.

Score: 5/10

Red tape

No one likes red tape. It clogs up business processes, makes everyday life admin trickier than it needs to be and looks terrible on Christmas presents.

Leaving the EU was supposed to cut bureaucracy. For many firms trading with Europe, it did the exact opposite. Customs paperwork, checks and regulatory requirements all increased.

Domestically, the UK has more freedom to write its own rules, but businesses exporting to the EU have generally found life more complicated.

Score: 3/10

Farming

Giving the EU the wellie boot gave Britain a fair bit of control over its own agricultural policy and subsidies, something many farmers had long wanted. But labour shortages, changing support schemes and tougher trading conditions with Europe have left plenty wondering whether the trade-off was really worth it.

It’s tricky to assess the state of modern farming in this country, given its complexity. The answer here isn’t exactly black and white. It’s more a sort of muddy cow pat colour.

Score: 5/10

Immigration

The topic of immigration was one of the driving forces of the whole Brexit thing. It was, is and probably always will be a political potato that’s so hot it burns the roof of your mouth just looking at it.

Looking at it objectively, free movement ended, which was one of the clearest Brexit objectives. If the promise was greater control over immigration policy, that box has been ticked. If the promise was lower immigration, the record levels seen in recent years tell a rather different story. A story that gets people across the political spectrum going.

Score: 6/10

‘Levelling up’

Supporters argued that Brexit would help rebalance the economy and breathe new life into parts of Britain that had been left behind. Some replacement funding arrived after EU regional grants ended, but it’s difficult to argue the transformation many hoped for has happened.

The trouble with judging ‘levelling up’ is that no one seems to agree what level we were all aiming for in the first place. Or how far apart the levels are. Or even what constitutes a level. It’s almost as if politicians talk rubbish, isn’t it? There are levels to their game.

Score: 5/10

Fishing

Now, unless you’re a fisherman or fishmonger, this topic’s probably not going to matter all that much to you. It’s an industry worth less than 0.1% of GDP that ended up symbolising an entire political movement. So given the fanfare it’s worth considering fishing as a metric to some degree.

Few industries became as symbolic as fishing during Brexit. Britain regained a larger share of fishing rights in its own waters, although the increase was smaller than some campaigners expected and many in the industry remain dissatisfied. A tangible gain, even if it fell a little short of the rhetoric.

Score: 8/10

Taking back control

Whether you think Brexit was right or wrong, this was the promise it most clearly delivered. Britain left the EU, Parliament regained full control over domestic law, free movement ended and trade policy returned to Westminster.

The real debate isn’t whether Britain took back control. The real debate is whether we knew what to do once we’d got it.

Score: 10/10

Total score: 52%

Ah.

Well, that settles it. 52%. Debate over then, eh?