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Rory Bergin reflects on the UK’s vote to ‘Brexit’ and ponders the future consequences for architects and the wider construction sector.
Now that the dust has settled a bit, and some issues are a bit clearer, it is still uncertain what exactly is going to happen regarding UK membership of the EU. The most desirable outcome for most sensible people is to remain a member of the common market, at least, but it is clear that for most EU politicians this also means that we must accept freedom of movement, something that many voted against. One thing that is clear, is that the decision to hold the Referendum was a political miscalculation on a grand scale. It is also clear that this vote was not
just about the EU, it was about much more than that. It was an emotive campaign for both sides with the Leave campaign focusing on immigration, the Remain side focusing on the economic risks, and this strategy worked for the Leave campaign. The people who voted to leave were unmoved by the economic risks and were more concerned about the impact of future immigration. Older voters are less exposed to economic risks, and those who haven’t benefited from economic upturns are equally unmoved. By appealing to the large number of
disaffected voters who have probably not benefited from a post-recession rise in living standards, and by using immigration as the whipping boy, voters have been conned into thinking that the UK can have the best of both worlds, trade links with the EU and the rest of the world, and restricted movement for immigrants. Time will tell if this is possible, but all the signals are that it
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won’t be, leaving the UK in a worse international trade position for the foreseeable future. The decision is likely to leave our chil-
dren with a less flexible future, cutting off many trade and cultural ties with our nearest neighbours, reducing the number of foreign students and workers who come to the UK and reducing opportu- nities for UK citizens to work, live and study abroad. With the possibility of Scotland leaving the union, the news gets worse for England which risks being left in economic and political isolation as it struggles to reconcile the pressures of a fast-changing world with a conservative electorate unable to cope with it. The voting was split along new
fault lines which have opened up in the electorate, crossing traditional party boundaries, and pitting the educated metropolitan classes against the working and non-working suburban and rural population, the young against the old. Since most architects would consider themselves among the metropolitan group, and our clients are almost certainly among them, most of the profession and its clients will have voted to Remain and will be disappointed by the result and fearful about the impact on their liveli- hoods and employees. The construction industry as a whole
takes about 10 per cent of its workforce from the EU, and their future is now uncertain. It is unlikely that they will be forced to leave, but additional workers will become increasingly hard to
bring in from across the EU. This will damage the industry’s ability to cope with changing market conditions, and reduce flexibility in the sector. More positively, it will force the industry to focus more on creating and running training schemes for UK-based employees who are some of the people who voted to leave because they have not fared well in the jobs market. What is less clear is whether there is a large group of people already in the UK who want to work in the construction sector. The architectural profession is in
a similar situation, where the recent recession forced many people out of the industry and into other careers or into early retirement. They are not returning
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