London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 09, 2025

On a London high street, Brexit fatigue sets in

For Bill Elliott, who has sold flowers on the streets of London since he was 13, the promise of Brexit is fading.

"I've given up on it slightly, to be honest. It's gone on so long," the 56-year-old street vendor, a Leave supporter, said as he removed a bouquet from its plastic wrapping. "It looks like we'd take any deal now just to get it done."

He relies on flowers shipped to Britain from growers in the Netherlands to sell to his customers on a corner of Streatham High Road, which people in the South London neighbourhood claim is Europe's longest high street.

A no-deal Brexit, under which Britain would leave the European Union without a transition deal to soften the economic shock, might cause short-term disruption to the capital's wholesale flower markets.

But he says that might now be worth the risk. "Sometimes I think we should just have a clean break and see how things lie in five years' time with our economy," Elliott said.

"My opinion is that the EU has run its course. There are too many countries taking from it and not enough putting in. If we did make a success of Brexit, I don't think the EU would last."

Three years and four months after British voters shocked the world by deciding to become the first country to leave the EU, the nation remains divided on how, or even whether, to do it.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson once said he would rather be "dead in a ditch" than ask for a delay to the Oct. 31 Brexit deadline, which is already the third such cut-off date.

But now it looks like he will need more time.

For many voters in Streatham, leaving the EU is just as worrying a prospect as it was when the referendum was held in June 2016.

Much of the area lies within the borough of Lambeth where nearly four in five voters backed staying in the bloc, the strongest pro-Remain vote in Britain which reflected Streatham's diverse, multi-cultural population.

Judith Perez, who was born in Spain but has lived in Britain since she was a child, worried that Brexit would diminish the opportunities for younger British people who might want to study and work in other European countries.

She said several of her friends had left the city for Berlin, Barcelona and Spain since the referendum.

"It's not perfect, the euro (zone), of course. There is high unemployment," Perez said as she worked in a charity shop selling used clothes, books and compact discs.

"But you're part of something. I remember how things were here when I first came here. It wasn't great. It's much better now. We are going backwards, not forwards."

For Kafele Fairman, 54, who moved to London aged 16 from Jamaica, Brexit comes with a different worry - the fear of racist discrimination on the back of tougher border controls.

"As black people travelling, we have enough problems as it is," she said while enjoying a glass of Prosecco on an outside table of a bar in the sunshine on the high street.

In one of Streatham's churches, rector Anna Norman-Walker said people in her congregation held different political views but their Christian belief in a shared humanity had remained undimmed by the Brexit upheaval.

"Living in Streatham, we have a lovely, ecumenical, diverse community and people feel sad that the world seems to be scurrying back to individual little corners and pulling up the drawbridge," she said.

Brian Watkins, 58, who works in ADS One, a building supplies shop piled high with paint brushes, drills and saws, said he voted to leave the EU but now believed that he had been lied to about how much money Britain would save as a result, one of the main claims of the Leave campaign in 2016.

He, like most people in Britain, said he had no idea what the outcome of Brexit would be, with members of parliament (MPs) as deadlocked as ever over the way forward.

"It looks like it will be going on for another three months and who knows, perhaps another six or seven after that," Watkins said. "We might as well stay in. The MPs aren't going to let us out, are they?"

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×