Today (January 31) marks five years since the United Kingdom officially left the European Union – and pretty much everyone seems to agree that it’s been a disaster.
Even some of the staunchest Brexiteers have changed their tune, and an increasing amount of people are admitting they regret voting to leave the EU.
To mark the fifth anniversary of Brexit, GB News decided to venture to the town of North Shields, where just under 780,000 people voted leave on that fateful day in 2016.
But if the channel were hoping to find some positive opinions on Brexit here, they were mistaken.
One fisherman told the broadcaster that leaving the EU had been a “disaster” and that Brexit was “costing us dearly.”
Speaking to reporter Nana Akua, Andy Dixon of 55 fisheries said: “Brexit has been bad. It hasn’t worked out, as the Government promised.
“Locally here in North Shields, which all I can speak about, it’s been a bit of a disaster.”
Dixon, who managed langoustine exports to Europe, told the channel how Brexit had had an almost-immediate negative impact on his work.
“From the moment Brexit happened for three or four months, we couldn’t literally send anything,” he said. You’re dealing with a product that has a four or five day shelf life, and once we manage to to go, I think it was April of the same year or four months later, the costs that hit us then still remain now.”
Dixon explained he had voted leave in the referendum because of the “red tape surrounding the UK industry in North Shields” but said red tape documentation is “100 fold what it used to be” since Britain left the EU.
He continued: “Nothing’s changed on the legislative side and we’ve just been affected by cost. If I could I would change my vote to remain in a heartbeat.”
Related: Alan Sugar labels Brexit the ‘biggest disaster of my lifetime’