The Other Hand
Brexit has failed. Everything going wrong in the UK is now connected to that simple fact.
12 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the significance of the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum?
The other hand is part of the ACAST Creator Network. Hello, everyone. I'd like to welcome today a very special guest that we've had on the podcast a few times before. It's been far too long since he's been on, so I apologize for that. That's entirely my fault. But today, my very special guest is Emeritus Professor from Royal Holloway University of London, Chris Gray. Hello.
Chris was previously professor at Cambridge and Warwick Universities. He's the author of a widely read book, Brexit Unfolded, which I have read a couple of times, and I would thoroughly recommend it. So welcome, Chris.
Chapter 2: How has Brexit contributed to political turmoil in the UK?
Thanks very much for coming on the pod. And obviously, this is a podcast about Brexit. Because, well, in large part, we're coming up to the 10th anniversary of the referendum. So in a way, it's an anniversary edition of the pod.
But first, before we get into the weeds of the various bits of Brexit that I certainly want to discuss and open to your thoughts on various aspects that we're going to touch on today. I think it's appropriate to take a step back from those Brexit details, although I think some of them are related to what I'm about to say. And that's the state of Britain today.
Because starting with a hypothesis, which I don't know if I could test or not, I think one of the reasons why we have so much political and indeed social turmoil in the UK, I would actually blame on Brexit. and I use that word advisedly, economic consequences that it has produced for the country has clearly done something to our politics. It's done something to our society.
Chapter 3: What impact has Brexit had on immigration debates in the UK?
And I don't think any of those things are good. I think a lot of the poison, a lot of the difficulties that we see observed only yesterday on the streets of Belfast, for example, and more recently in places like Southampton, I think do have a Brexit tinge to them.
It's not the only contributor to what's been happening on our streets, but I do think it is part of the story, the way in which Brexit has poisoned a lot of British life. One of the direct lines from Brexit to what happened yesterday, and we're recording this on Wednesday in Belfast, is of course the immigration debate.
Brexit was about many, many things, but a lot of people think that at the end of the day, the number one factor that, and there were many factors that people attribute to the Leave vote,
The number one was the right to freedom of movement that the single market conveys on its members and that people here, because of the immigration debate, because of the way that immigration debate was handled, voted to leave because they wanted to end immigration from the EU.
And we'll start there, I think, Chris, because one of the things that has happened, I've been listening to a lot of commentary today about the events, awful events in Belfast. is the way in which it's all been framed in terms of immigration. And I think numbers are important.
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Chapter 4: How do public perceptions of immigration conflict with actual statistics?
One of the things that has happened to immigration over the last few years is that post the referendum, there was a huge, post Brexit, there was a huge surge in immigration. It's rightly or wrongly often been called the Boris wave. But in the last year, of course, immigration has collapsed.
And one of the curious aspects about this debate is that when people on the airwaves today were talking about the need to control immigration, the fact is that immigration has collapsed. But according to survey evidence, 16% of the British population know this and that there is a majority of people who still think that immigration is going up. And so we've had several politicians say,
Northern Irish politicians on the airwaves going on and on about the necessity for controlling immigration, because if you don't control immigration, we're going to be subjected to more of these knife-style and other-style attacks that were so awful that we observed in Belfast and we've seen elsewhere.
And the fact is that if you drew a graph of immigration since the beginning, say, of this century, since the year 2000, it goes up and up and up. And if you drew a graph of crime in the UK since that same start date, it goes down and down and down. There is no obvious correlation in the aggregate between immigration and crime.
Chapter 5: What are the economic consequences of Brexit according to various studies?
The people that delve into the numbers, they've been on the airwaves today, say that the immigrants as a whole don't seem to commit any more crime than the native population. You will always get criminals from any segment of society, including immigrants and including natives.
There might be a problem with the fact that immigrants are mostly young men, but native young men and immigrant young men are more likely to commit crime than older people, for example. But there is no statistical data that we know of that connects higher crime, worse crime with immigration problems. than elsewhere.
So the facts don't support all of this, but we are whipped up into a frenzy about immigration and politicians are using it to try and scare us into voting for them because they promised to cut immigration, something that's already happened. So I suppose the only thing left for them to do, Chris, is to send all the immigrants home. Is that where we're going with this?
Are we ending up with Rupert Lowe and his party of repatriating them, ICE style? Is this where it's going?
Chapter 6: How do different political parties respond to the challenges posed by Brexit?
Well, first of all, thanks for having me on again, Chris. It's nice to talk to you again. As you say, I've been on before and it's great to be back. Well, gosh, there's an awful lot in there, isn't there, to unpack. One thing to start with is that you, you know, you sort of began that by talking about Brexit somehow, whether you think this was the sort of the legacy of that. And
You know, I think it's, as you implied, it's obviously more, you know, more complicated than that. But I mean, one of the things on the blog that I write is that I've, in the last few months, since last September, I retitled it to be Brexit and Brexitism. And that's kind of partly trying to sort of capture the idea of
that something has kind of escaped, if you like, from Brexit in this literal meaning of Britain leaving the EU.
Chapter 7: What are the implications of Brexit for future UK-EU relations?
And we've got stuff going on, which is in some way, not always very clear and sometimes slightly nebulous, kind of connected back into it. And yet it is not. It is not Brexit. And I think that what you're describing is very much a part of that. Now, one of the difficulties, there are many, many difficulties with the whole way in which the so-called immigration debate is happening in this country.
And not just in this country, I think it's fair to say, but in this country. And one of the ways is that there is a conflation of a lot of different kinds of things. So if we look at these recent, and as you say, you know, really awful events that have happened. So the Southampton, well, the Southampton murder, the Henry Nowak murder, of course, occurred longer ago, but we had the trial.
And then there was the Belfast stabbings.
Chapter 8: In what ways has Brexit affected the stability of UK politics?
Now, if we're talking about immigration and immigrants... the murderer of Henry Novak wasn't an immigrant. He was the child of immigrants, I think, but he himself was born in Britain. And that in itself then becomes a kind of an issue because there is increasingly a kind of a discourse on the right or on the far right, which is wanting to say,
well, even if you're born in Britain, it doesn't make you properly British, you know. And so that's one thing. And then on the other hand, if we look at the alleged, and we obviously have to say alleged, the alleged perpetrator of the Belfast stabbings, the person who's been charged with attempted murder, as I understand it, he was a refugee who sought asylum and
was, I think, given five years leave to remain. The point I'm making here is that asylum seekers and immigrants and the children of immigrants, these are all different categories. And by lumping them all together, that creates a certain sort of an impression. And I think it's probably directly relevant to this issue about public perceptions of whether immigration is falling or not.
Because a lot of the public discourse about immigration, increased immigration, it talks as if it is all about people who are coming on small boats across the Channel. Not that that applies in any of the... Now, as a matter of fact, that also is falling, by the way.
And it's a very small proportion of total immigration.
But because these things have all been conflated together, it has this effect. But the other thing, which is more, I think you used the word poison or poisonous, and the thing which I think is more poisonous, in a way, is that what is being obviously by some people quite deliberately constructed is
is a narrative which focuses only on the murders or other violent crimes committed by everybody who in some sense can be connected with immigration, even though in all these different senses. and ignoring all of the other crimes of a similar nature.
So, for example, about the time of the Belfast stabbings, within a few hours, I can't remember whether it was before or afterwards, there was an extremely awful stabbing incident in a school in Manchester. And the alleged perpetrator of that has been arrested and charged. Now, for a few hours on social media,
there was a kind of a buzz of people saying, here we are, here's another one, and linking it directly to the Belfast stabbing and so on. And then it turned out, or at least as far as has been reported, there is no immigration collection, even in the extended understanding of immigration. And suddenly all that dropped away. No buzz about that, no street demonstrations.
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