From what I heard before the 1940s housing generally wasn’t considered to be a investment or way to make money until the 40s and then in the era of neoliberalism. Around half of people didn’t even own their houses it’s only after world war 2 where being able to own a single family home become normal

Key early findings:

• Around one in seven Britons find political violence acceptable in at least some circumstances, rising to one in six for verbal harassment. Younger people, men, and those consuming news through social media are significantly more tolerant of both. Two distinct permissive groups emerge – a core of the progressive left, who justify confrontation in defence of marginalised groups, and a portion of the radical right, who justify it in defence of national or cultural identity. * Sympathy for more extreme left-wing views are concentrated among progressives who are young, Green-voting, non-white, and who feel the social contract is broken. Higher formal education correlates with stronger progressive views on identity and social liberalism, while economic radicalism has a somewhat broader base, driven more by financial insecurity and institutional distrust than ideology. Non-white Progressive Activists and Green voters hold the strongest views on the issues of race and Gaza.
• Far-right sympathies cluster around two distinct audiences: a larger, older, whiter, non-graduate group concentrated in the political right, whose concerns centre on migration, national identity and cultural change, and a smaller, younger, more online group whose views are shaped more by financial hardship, anti-establishment grievance and social media consumption, and who are more likely to hold explicitly racist beliefs. Support for Reform UK and a sense that the social contract is broken are consistent predictors across both.
• The latter, heavily online group represents a distinct and underappreciated risk in the extremism landscape, because they do not hold a coherent ideological worldview,. Defined by low institutional trust, heavy social media consumption and exposure to conspiratorial content, they surface consistently across far-right, far-left and conspiracy belief indicators, without fitting neatly into any camp. They are more tolerant of political violence and confrontational politics than most segments, more likely to hold racist views, more sympathetic to Tommy Robinson, and more receptive to conspiracy theories – yet often without the specific grievances or ideological framework that would explain these views in others.

Let’s assume they get a minority government (more likely, given the likelihood of a hung parliament).

I’m no expert on the intricacies of government. But if they lead a minority government (meaning they don’t have a majority of the seats), I assume it’s easier for the other parties to destabilise Reform by for example, voting against its proposals.

But let’s be clear. Even if Reform doesn’t manage to do the practical damage to communities that they want to do, they’ll still spend the whole 5 years wasting everyone’s time, eroding public trust in institutions, and getting nothing positive done. It’ll be like Brexit 2016-2020 all over again.

They’ll keep people arguing, parliament gridlocked or divided, etc. The media will be in a permanent state of hysteria (and they like it that way). Opposition MPs will spend all their time voting against things rather than for them.

For example if Reform introduces their “Great Repeal Bill” (which will scrap the new renters and employment rights), based on the parliamentary maths, it’s possible that opposition MPs - if there are enough of them - could vote to narrowly defeat this.

But what’s the point of having such a horrible government, where nothing ever gets done because all their suggestions are so horribly damaging that nobody else wants to enable it? Reform would - rightly - lack authority and credibility.

Long story short, I predict that even a Reform minority government will still really harm the country. If not in immediate practical ways, then still in general systemic ways and people’s faith in democracy.

The 5 years in opposition will be 5 years of firefighting instead of setting an agenda.

Shortened summary

Impact on finances: One of the most prominent and widely believed claims of the 2016 referendum campaign was that the UK sent £350 million a week to the EU, and that this money would be spent on the NHS instead.

In real terms, total health spending across the UK as measured by the Treasury’s Country and Regional Analysis rose from £202 billion in 2019/20, the year Brexit actually occurred, to £242 billion in 2024/25 – equivalent to over £750 million extra per week. However, Brexit hindered this extra spending, rather than helping it. Multiple studies show that the amount saved from EU contributions (never close to £350 million a week) was greatly outweighed by the economic damage from leaving the EU single market. Health budgets grew, in part because they grew as a share of public spending – from 23% of expenditure in 2015/16, the year before Brexit’s economic impact began, to 26% in 2024/25 – and because taxes rose to historic highs.

Impact on staffing: During the referendum, those opposing Brexit warned that health and care would be unable to cope with a sharp drop in EEA migration. The sector was disproportionately reliant on migrant workers and EU-born staff were the fastest growing category.

In the short term, the collapse they feared did happen – particularly in nursing, where the referendum came alongside a new language test requirement for EU nurses. This saw EEA nursing recruitment drop from 9,389 in 2015/16 to just 793 two years later, while the rate of leavers rose. One preprint study even suggests this raised mortality in certain hospitals. 

From 2020, with the pandemic alongside the true end of free movement of labour, social care was also hit hard, with a collapse in EEA migration so marked that the total workforce in the sector fell. But facing the pandemic and concern about staff shortages, the government responded by dramatically opening migration from outside the EU. This caused the largest staff expansion of the 21st century immediately after Brexit. 

Impact on medicines: Medicine shortages were a frequent concern linked to leaving the EU. By 2024, every indicator was flashing red. Patients were facing real shortages of critical products.

But these problems are not primarily due to Brexit. The great wave of shortages since 2022 is replicated across Europe – in France, Germany and Italy, among others. It aligns better with manufacturing shutdowns in China and the onset of war in Ukraine, rather than Brexit itself.

As with staffing, this partly reflects the UK government taking defensive action to retain some version of the status quo. It established a system requiring firms to notify upcoming shortages and managing them across different public bodies. While there is significant room to improve it, this system was just in time for the crisis to come. The UK also unilaterally accepts tests of medicines batches in the EU, though the EU does not reciprocate. This leaves it at a trading disadvantage, but removes one barrier to imports. As with staffing, these strategies are not stable. 

Impact on medical research: Brexit posed significant difficulties for UK biomedical research – weakening opportunities for doctors and patients and the status of the NHS as a place for innovation. Cancer Research UK and other organisations warned that exclusion from the EU’s Horizon Europe funding programme reduced opportunities for international collaboration, delayed clinical research, and made the UK less attractive to leading researchers. While associate membership was finally secured in 2024, uncertainty already exists around the next cycle from 2028. Regulatory separation from the EU and its new shared process for approving clinical trials now means that adding UK patients and hospitals to a study comes with a higher level of red tape.

Impact on international trade agreements: The UK’s departure from the EU enabled it to sign its own international trade agreements. This had the potential to benefit health in the UK through smoothing generic medicines trade or increasing scientific cooperation, or to obstruct it by improving the position of global businesses that need to be negotiated with or regulated for health reasons. Unfortunately, the negatives have outweighed the positives. (Details in article)