Today, if you feel so inclined to celebrate it, is Brexit Day: the date on which, three years ago, Britain formally left the EU – although the transitional arrangements kept us effectively within the bloc for a further 11 months. But does anyone feel like celebrating? Only really in the Lincolnshire Wash, going by an opinion poll commissioned by the website unHerd. That is the only part of the country, it seems, where most residents still think that Britain was right to bid adieu to its European neighbours.

Nationally, 45 per cent of people think Brexit is going worse than expected, according to polling by Ipsos Mori. This figure is a rise from 28 per cent in June 2021. As expected, 66 per cent of Remain voters think it’s been a flop. But interestingly, so do 26 per cent of Leave voters. The latter figure is arguably the one which really matters as it points to people who might have switched their vote to Remain had they known how things were going to turn out. However, we shouldn’t ignore the 5 per cent of Britons who voted Remain in 2016 and now say they think that Brexit is going better than they expected. Although, given the gloomy picture of Brexit Britain painted at the time by Remain voters, perhaps it is not all that surprising to find a handful of people who are pleasantly surprised to find that, actually, the world is still turning.

Some Remainers will surely seize upon these findings to argue Britain’s case for re-joining the bloc – or at least to urge Keir Starmer to put that possibility on the menu in his coming manifesto (something he has repeatedly ruled out).

But is he wrong to say that the country does not want to revisit the matter of Britain’s membership of the EU – or the single market or the customs union?

Perhaps it isn’t all that surprising to find a handful of people surprised to find that, actually, the world is still turning

It is notable that neither poll asked whether its respondents thought Britain should re-enter any of these three entities. Had they done so, we might have ended up with a different answer. It is one thing to regret the result of the referendum, but quite another to want to go through with the whole business again.

Moreover, Starmer will be aware that many of the reasons some Britons regret Brexit may not be fairly blamed on the decision at all. Covid starved us all of an opportunity to properly judge the outcome of Brexit. We hadn’t even got to the end of the transitional period when the world changed utterly when the pandemic hit: economies crashed the world over. The situation was further complicated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and soaring global inflation over the past year. Britain may appear to be in a mess as its economy struggles and its public health system is overwhelmed by staggering waiting lists for treatment. But other economies are struggling for the same reasons. It is extremely difficult to sort out what is related to Brexit – and what is not.

But what’s been happening in trade – the most obvious field in which Brexit might be implicated – since the vote? In 2016, Britain exported £572.9 billion worth of goods and services (at current prices) and imported £612.0 billion worth. But in the 12 months to November last year, the corresponding figures were £802.7 billion and £883 billion. On foreign direct investment, Britain ranked 5th in the world for outward foreign investment and 2nd for inward foreign direct investment. It is not remotely true to say, in other words, that Brexit has turned Britain into a global backwater. Trade has continued to grow substantially. This is as true of trade with the EU as it is with non-EU countries. Exports to the EU grew by 24.8 per cent last year and imports from the EU by 27.4 per cent. The only way you can turn this into an apparent fall is to compare trade as it is now with where you think it ought to have been by now had it continued an upwards trend line from before the Brexit referendum. Some people try to do just this – but that logic ignores the havoc wrought by Covid.

The economy may be in a poor way, and the public might be blaming that, fairly or not, on Brexit. But the negative forces on the economy may well reverse over the next couple of years – for example, inflation is already falling. That may mean attitudes to Brexit look a little less negative by the next election.