Britain Won Brexit. Why Didn't It Call Its Own People Home?
Written 28.09.2026
POST-IMPERIALECONOMICSTRADITION
Stefan-Niko Tanskalainen
9/28/20266 min read
Britain Won Brexit. Why Didn't It Call Its Own People Home?
The boats crossing the English Channel have become one of the defining images of Britain's post-Brexit immigration crisis.
But perhaps Britain is asking the wrong question.
For years, British politics has revolved around how many foreigners should be allowed to enter the country, how asylum claims should be processed, and how people arriving by small boats can be returned.
Yet Brexit was supposed to give Britain something much more fundamental: the ability to decide its own immigration policy.
So why did Britain not use that opportunity to ask a more ambitious question?
Who should Britain invite home?
Brexit changed the labour market as well as the border
Before Brexit, Britain had access to a large European labour market.
Workers from Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Spain, Italy, France and many other European countries could move to Britain with comparatively few administrative barriers. They became part of British agriculture, logistics, construction, hospitality, manufacturing, healthcare and other sectors.
The post-Brexit system changed that.
Net migration from EU+ nationals began falling after the referendum and has been negative since the year ending June 2022, meaning that more EU+ nationals have been leaving Britain than arriving. This decline has been accompanied by a major increase in non-EU migration, which has more than offset the reduction in EU migration.
The change therefore did not simply mean "less immigration".
It meant a different immigration system and a different composition of the labour force.
The economic consequences are visible in individual sectors. ONS data, for example, showed that the number of EU citizens working as HGV drivers fell by 14,000 between mid-2020 and March 2021, a decline of more than one third. The ONS cautioned that not all of those workers necessarily left Britain, since some may have changed occupations, but the change illustrates the dependence of important sectors on European labour.
Britain therefore faced a peculiar problem.
It had decided that it wanted greater control over immigration, while many parts of its economy had become accustomed to a large and flexible European labour supply.
The obvious response was to redesign immigration.
But there was another possibility.
Britain could have redesigned repatriation.
What if Brexit had included a call to return?
Britain has one of the largest historical diasporas in the world.
For generations, British people left Britain for Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the United States and elsewhere. Their descendants now form established communities far beyond the British Isles.
These people are not refugees.
They are not necessarily looking for work.
And they do not need to be.
Some of them may simply retain a connection to Britain through their ancestry and family history.
That connection can be documented.
Genealogy can establish descent. Historical records can establish family origins. In some circumstances genetic testing can provide additional evidence of biological relatedness.
I do not think the proportion of British ancestry should be treated as a sacred threshold.
If someone has 100% of their recent ancestry from Britain, the connection is obvious.
If someone has 50%, it is still obvious.
If someone has 10%, but can demonstrate a genuine British family connection and personally wants to return, why should that connection suddenly become meaningless?
The relevant question does not have to be:
"Are you British enough?"
It could instead be:
"Is there a genuine British connection, and do you want to build your future in Britain?"
Other ordinary requirements could then apply: identity verification, criminal-record checks, security screening, financial requirements where appropriate, and a willingness to participate in British society.
An ancestry-based repatriation route would therefore not have to be based on racial purity or biological exclusivity.
It could be based on descent, connection and choice.
The diaspora may be more than a population reserve
There is an even more interesting reason to think about this.
A diaspora does not only carry genes.
It carries memory.
A family that left Britain one hundred or one hundred and fifty years ago may have carried with it surnames, stories, books, religious traditions, political ideas, manners, family structures and memories of the country from which it came.
Some of these traditions may have changed or disappeared in Britain itself.
That does not mean that the diaspora preserved a perfectly authentic version of British culture. It almost certainly did not.
But it may have preserved fragments of an older British tradition.
That creates a remarkable possibility.
Repatriation could become not simply the return of people, but the return of cultural memory.
A descendant of British emigrants might come back with the experience of Canada, Australia, America, South Africa or another country — but also with a family story that began in Britain.
The country could therefore gain something more than another worker.
It could gain someone who consciously chose to reconnect with it.
Replacing an economic model with a national invitation
This becomes particularly interesting when considered alongside Brexit's labour-market consequences.
Britain previously had a very simple mechanism for attracting workers from Europe.
If British employers needed more workers, European workers could move to Britain.
After Brexit, that mechanism became much more restrictive.
Britain could compensate by recruiting increasingly from outside Europe.
But that is not the only imaginable model.
Why not also create a British Diaspora Repatriation Programme?
Someone with demonstrable British ancestry could receive assistance with:
recognition of professional qualifications;
employment matching;
relocation;
language and civic orientation where necessary;
housing information;
starting a business;
and integration into British communities.
The programme could be voluntary and selective.
It would not replace ordinary immigration.
It would create another route.
Britain could continue accepting workers from around the world where they are needed.
It could continue humanitarian resettlement.
It could continue family migration.
But alongside these categories there could be one specifically directed towards people who can say:
"My family left Britain. I want to come back."
Israel offers an example — but not a template
Israel provides an obvious comparison because its Law of Return makes return from the diaspora an explicit component of national immigration policy.
The Israeli model is unique to Israeli history and cannot simply be copied by Britain.
But Britain does not need to copy Israel.
It could take the broader institutional idea: a country can regard its diaspora as a potential part of its future population rather than merely as people who once left.
The difference is important.
Britain's programme would not need to say that ancestry automatically grants citizenship.
It could instead create preferential access to a controlled immigration route for people who can demonstrate a meaningful British connection.
The state would still retain security and eligibility requirements.
The individual would still have to choose Britain.
The essential element would be the invitation.
The psychological difference between immigration and repatriation
There is also a difference in how people might perceive the two systems.
An ordinary immigration programme says:
"Britain needs people, so Britain will admit some people."
A repatriation programme says:
"Britain has not forgotten the people who left."
That is a much more powerful political message.
Imagine a British descendant in Melbourne, Toronto, Cape Town or New York receiving an official message:
Your family left Britain generations ago.
If you wish to return, Britain would like to hear from you.
That is not a demand.
It is an invitation.
And invitations can sometimes achieve something that immigration statistics cannot.
They can create a sense of participation in a national project.
Britain could have offered a different answer to labour shortages
This is perhaps the greatest missed opportunity.
After Brexit, Britain needed to reconcile two objectives that appeared to conflict:
greater control over immigration and access to sufficient labour.
Instead of treating these as mutually exclusive, Britain could have created several distinct channels.
Humanitarian resettlement would protect people who genuinely need protection.
Economic migration would provide workers where the economy needs them.
And repatriation would provide a route for people with established British ancestry and a genuine desire to return.
The result would not necessarily mean fewer immigrants.
It would mean a different relationship between immigration and the British national project.
The country would not merely be receiving people who happen to find a route into Britain.
It would be actively deciding whom it wants to build its future with.
Brexit and the question Britain never asked
The deepest irony of Brexit may therefore be that Britain concentrated on the negative side of sovereignty.
It asked:
Who can we stop from coming?
But sovereignty also means being able to ask:
Who do we want to invite?
Britain has already begun experimenting with the first half of the answer. Its recent agreement with France links returns of some Channel arrivals with legal admission routes for others, moving towards the principle that dangerous irregular entry should not be the only way to reach Britain.
But the second half remains largely unexplored.
Britain has a global diaspora.
It has millions of descendants of people who left the country over the last two centuries.
Some may have no interest in returning.
Some may have forgotten Britain almost entirely.
But others may still carry a connection — genetic, genealogical, cultural or simply familial.
Why not give them the opportunity to answer a call to return?
A country concerned about demographic decline does not have to see immigration only as an external pressure.
It can also look outward and discover that part of its own population is already scattered across the world.
Perhaps the question after Brexit should never have been only:
How do we stop the boats?
Perhaps it should have been:
How do we build a country that people connected to Britain want to return to?
And perhaps the most radical immigration policy Britain could have introduced after Brexit would not have been a larger wall around the country.
It would have been an invitation.
Come home.