The UK’s relationship with the EU after Brexit

Abstract

The Brexit deal, as represented by the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) is the start of a new relationship between the UK and the EU. As the economic and political consequences of Brexit play out, there will be pressure to change the TCA, either in a “softer” or “harder” direction in one particular issue area or another. To try to find out where the EU-UK relationship might be heading in the medium-term we conducted a conjoint survey experiment with a random sample of British voters, where we asked them to choose between different hypothetical “package deals”. This forced respondents to have to make trade-offs across key issues. When faced with such choices, British citizens overall prefer a “softer” form of Brexit to the TCA: where the UK applies EU regulatory standards in return for greater access to the EU’s single market. However, a majority of Leave voters prefer a much “harder” trade-off: of full regulatory sovereignty but continued restrictions on UK exports. We also found that Scottish citizens prefer a closer relationship with the EU across a range of issues than do English citizens. Reconciling these differences will continue to be a challenge for British politicians and policy-makers.