English Phrases: Lets Talk About Brexit with New English Words
Have you ever wondered what happened after Brexit? Did disaster strike the UK's trade, immigration, and travel? In this episode, we examine key Brexit vocabulary and explore how changes in the UK economy, trade rules, and travel affect everyday life. You'll learn all about simple words and phrases—like "import," "export," and "tariff"—using clear, real-world examples.
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At Adept English, we believe in learning English through immersive listening. Today’s discussion links the impact of Brexit to everyday topics, helping you understand news and exam-style questions with ease. We break down complex ideas into short, clear sentences that bring British current affairs right to your ears.
Brexit is a wake-up call for all nations, forcing us to reconsider our global interdependence.
⭐ Joseph Stiglitz
Stay with us as we connect the dots between major political events and practical vocabulary. This episode offers a thoughtful insight into how Brexit continues to influence the UK, making your journey to fluent English both informative and accessible. Don't forget to Follow and subscribe to our FREE English language podcast, wherever you listen or watch your podcasts: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/adeptenglish/
More About This Lesson
Did you know Brexit changed the way people travel, work, and trade in the UK? But what does it all mean for you? If you've ever struggled with words like "tariffs," "immigration," or "free trade," you're in the right place! Let’s explore these key terms and make sense of what happened after the UK left the European Union.
Free trade is a powerful engine of progress and prosperity.
⭐ Paul Krugman
So, let’s get started so you can:
- Build vocabulary on trade, politics, and immigration.
- Improve listening skills with natural English speech.
- Learn exam-relevant words from real news topics.
- Gain insights on Brexit and its economic impact.
- See clear examples of words used in context.
- Practice understanding complex economic ideas.
- Explore British culture and current political events.
- Mimic clear, concise speech for better fluency.
- Enhance comprehension with varied spoken content.
- Learn natural intonation and everyday language use.
Understanding Brexit vocabulary isn’t just about politics—it’s about real-life English! These words appear in news reports, conversations, and even English exams. By listening to this lesson, you’ll improve your vocabulary, sharpen your listening skills, and gain confidence in discussing important topics.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- What is Brexit and how does it relate to British English vocabulary?
Brexit refers to the UK's decision to leave the European Union, which officially took place in 2020. Understanding Brexit-related vocabulary is useful for English learners, as terms like 'trade agreements,' 'immigration policy,' and 'free movement' often appear in news and exam topics. Learning these words helps you improve your comprehension of British English discussions on politics, economics, and travel. - How has Brexit affected trade between the UK and the EU?
Since Brexit, trade between the UK and the EU has changed. While the UK secured a free trade agreement, increased paperwork and border checks have affected imports and exports. Goods trade has declined slightly, while service exports have increased. Understanding words like 'tariffs,' 'bureaucracy,' and 'frictionless trade' helps you discuss these changes in English. - Has Brexit changed UK immigration policies?
Yes, Brexit ended free movement between the UK and the EU. Instead, the UK introduced a points-based immigration system. While Brexit aimed to reduce immigration, overall numbers have increased due to visa schemes for healthcare workers and students. Learning words like 'immigration,' 'emigration,' and 'visa' can help you talk about these topics fluently. - What are the travel restrictions for UK citizens after Brexit?
UK passport holders can visit EU countries for up to 90 days in a 180-day period. Passport stamping at borders has returned, and new travel authorisation systems like ETIAS and ETA are being introduced. Understanding terms like 'passport control,' 'visa waiver,' and 'entry restrictions' is essential for discussing post-Brexit travel in English. - Is the UK better off after Brexit?
The impact of Brexit is debated. The UK no longer contributes to the EU budget but still faces economic challenges, such as a struggling job market and NHS pressures. Whether Brexit has improved the UK’s situation is unclear. Learning words like 'economy,' 'net contributor,' and 'withdrawal agreement' helps you engage in discussions about Brexit’s effects in English.
Most Unusual Words:
- Brexit: The UK's exit from the European Union.
- Referendum: A public vote on an important issue.
- Negotiation: A talk to reach an agreement.
- Bureaucracy: A system with many rules and forms.
- Tariff: A tax on imported or exported goods.
- Frictionless: Smooth without any difficulties.
- Immigration: The act of people moving into a country.
- Emigration: The act of people leaving a country.
- Settlement: An agreement that ends a conflict.
- Authorisation: Official permission to do something.
Most Frequently Used Words:
| Word | Count |
|---|---|
| People | 18 |
| About | 14 |
| Trade | 14 |
| There | 13 |
| Really | 12 |
| Brexit | 12 |
| European | 12 |
| Country | 8 |
| Which | 8 |
| Countries | 7 |
Listen To The Audio Lesson Now
Transcript: Easy English-Brexit and Economy Words
What happened after Brexit?
Hi there and welcome to this podcast from Adept English. How about today we cover some really good vocabulary for understanding countries, money, economics? Exactly the sort of things that you might be asked about in an English speaking exam and the sort of vocabulary you need to understand the news. So guess what? It's the five year anniversary of Brexit when the UK left the European Union. Let's talk about what divided the country in 2016 and what was big news in Europe. So one of the biggest changes in European politics was when the United Kingdom left the European Union five years ago now. Although the vote that decided the change took place in 2016, it took until 2020 for the leaving to actually take place. Five years on, 31st January 2025, what's changed? What's different because of Brexit? People predicted a ll kinds of things. So what has actually happened? As I said, vocabulary for talking about countries and their economies, really good English speaking exam material today. Trade, immigration, money and travel. How have they all been affected? And what is it like when you leave the European Union?
Hello, I’m Hilary, and you’re listening to Adept English. We will help you to speak English fluently. All you have to do is listen. So start listening now and find out how it works.
2016 Shock at the Brexit Vote Result
So I think that people in the UK and around Europe were shocked, very surprised at the result of the referendum, the vote on leaving the EU. And once that vote had happened in 2016, there were a number of years during which negotiations took place. It took a long time. It was entirely new territory. No country had ever left the European Union before. Usually countries are more keen to get into the European Union rather than to leave it. So there was no pathway. An exit hadn't been written into the agreement. And so far, Britain is the only country to have left. In the UK, Brexit was an issue which divided households, divided families. Some people were in favour of Brexit and many people were against. It really wasn't clear what was going to happen for a very long time. It took years of negotiation and some parts of it are still not sorted out.
📷
A depiction of a tense EU v UK negotiations for Brexit. Practice listening with real UK events and simple vocabulary.
Where are we five years later?
But on the five-year anniversary, what have been the effects of Brexit so far? Let's look at a number of common areas and do some great vocabulary while we're doing that. Just a reminder, meanwhile, that our New Activate Your Listening Course is available. In this course, which is 'Listen & Learn' just like the podcasts, you'll hear English conversations about common topics - The UK, Food and Education. So you'll learn all the much needed vocabulary for these subjects and have some enjoyable listening at the same time. That course contains quite a lot of English conversation and would really help you. It's available on our website at adeptenglish.com.
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What’s been the effect of Brexit on UK Trade?
So let's look at trade first of all. When we talk about trade, T-R-A-D-E, we mean basically 'buying and selling', but on a big scale. You might talk about how much trade a company does or a shop does, or you may be talking about the trade that a whole country does, trade with other countries. So how has Brexit affected trade in the UK?
Another way to ask that question, what has happened since Brexit around imports and exports? If you 'import' something, I-M-P-O-R-T, you buy it in from another country. And if you 'export' something, that's E-X-P-O-R-T, it means you sell something to another country. You move the goods out. So you might export coffee and import wine. You might export potatoes and apples and import televisions. So the UK was successful in negotiating a free trade agreement with the EU. 'Free trade' means there are no taxes, no duty to pay on goods coming in and out. So we're free to trade with the EU. The UK did well on that. And 'free trade' is much better than if there were tariffs. Tariffs, that's T-A-R-I-F-F, that's what Donald Trump is threatening currently. He wants to set up tariffs, a percentage charge that other countries must pay to the US for the US to import their goods. So between the UK and the EU, we don't have any of that.
Not quite yet at ‘frictionless trade’ with the EU
But there is a small barrier standing in the way of free trade for goods. And that's about the amount of paperwork, the bureaucracy, the forms that must be completed when goods enter the country. If you look at the port of Dover, the part of the UK nearest to France and the European mainland, the lorries are often queued because of the paperwork involved in bringing goods through. So called 'frictionless trade', that means free trade with no difficulty, that would be much better. If there is a change and it's really hard to measure, apparently we export fewer goods to the EU, but we export more services. So 'goods' are products, things that are made that you can touch.
Trade deals with other countries? Not doing so well…
So if anything, trade in goods is down or trade in services is up, would this have happened anyway? How much is that the result of Brexit? It's quite difficult to say. The UK has been able to do its own trade deals with countries like Australia and New Zealand. And the UK is pursuing trade deals with India and the US. Good luck with that last one then! But the impact of these trade deals is going to be relatively low on the economy. Takes a lot to fly something from Australia. It's hard to make that economically viable. It's hard to make that make sense. In the UK, we're not as good at producing things. We don't have as much manufacturing as we used to. So importing more goods and exporting more services is probably part of a general trend and nothing to do with Brexit.
What’s been the effect of Brexit on immigration?
What about immigration? Again, some really good vocabulary for you. 'Immigration' means 'the number of people coming into a country' and 'emigration' means 'the number of people leaving a country and going to live somewhere else'. So the UK in doing Brexit no longer had free movement of people within the EU. I'm really sad that we've lost this. Before, any EU citizen was free to move around and to live and work in another EU country. I'd love to live in France and I miss this opportunity. It used to be great that people from the UK could experience living in other European countries and that people in other European countries could come here. Brexit put a stop to all that free movement of people. And this was also meant to reduce immigration, reduce the number of people coming into the UK. So did it work? Did Brexit reduce immigration?
Well, the short answer is no. A post-Brexit immigration system came into force in January and since then there has been much more immigration than there was before. It's just it's from different countries. At the point where Britain left the EU, there were around 300,000 people coming into the country each year. Now the figure is around 900,000 people. They come from the rest of the world. This has been because of special visas, special permits for healthcare workers. Our NHS runs on people from other countries. I'm not sure what we'd do without people from other countries. And also because students, people coming from other countries to study, were allowed to bring their families. Now the new Labour government has retained the much more restrictive immigration policy which Rishi Sunak's government set up.
Everyone must ‘stay within their own lane’ - and a real negative effect of Brexit!
It's a difficult topic this one. I'm just giving you the facts. I don't think the UK is on its own in being more restrictive of immigration. All over the world it's now becoming much more difficult to live and work in another country. America was already pretty restrictive on this. Almost impossible to emigrate there. And now with Mr Trump it's going to be even more difficult! It's as though we all have to 'stay within our own lanes', stay in the country of our birth. Which is a lot less interesting than when everyone can move around.
I think one of the really horrible, unpleasant elements of Brexit is how unpopular the UK has become. There was a sense soon after it happened when you visited Europe that people didn't like us very much. We also used to come bottom in the Eurovision Song Contest! No one could quite bring themselves to vote for us! It's also given an impression that the UK is a racist country. Lots of people from Europe who were living in the UK at the time of the vote in 2016 felt really unwelcome. As though they weren't wanted here. That's a shame because the UK is one of the most open countries. Most people are not racist in the UK. We are a very tolerant and welcoming society. And I think that Brexit and immigration policy has given a wrong impression on this. Which makes me very sad.
What’s been the effect of Brexit on travel to and from the UK?
What about travel? Well, there are longer queues at passport control. In the airports in European Union countries, if you've got a British passport. And if you travel to Europe, you can stay a maximum of 90 days only in any 180 day period. That's somewhat restrictive and not what we had during 'free movement'. Which again makes me sad. If you're British and you enter an EU country, they always stamp your passport. That's so that they can check that you've left within the 90 days!
Apparently there is going to be more control. The EU says it will introduce a new system of authorisation for European travel, E-T- A-S. And this means that citizens will have to obtain ETIAS permission for travel to 30 European countries. And it will cost 7 Euros or £5.90. And of course the UK is doing something similar. Planning to introduce the ETA, Electronic Travel Authorisation. Which will mean that EU citizens will have to have a permit to enter the UK, costing £16. Bit more expensive then. These measures haven't happened yet. But apparently they're coming. What about the money that the UK had to pay the EU in order to leave? It was a little bit like a divorce settlement perhaps.
What about the ‘divorce settlement’ between the EU and the UK?!
The claim was that when the UK was part of the EU, it contributed £350 million every week. Or £18 billion per year. The UK was a net contributor to the EU. Meaning the UK put in more money than it took out. Of the £18 billion though, £5 billion would come back every year to the UK in the form of payments to farmers and things like educational support to people in poor areas in the UK. All through EU projects.
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And the UK continued to pay the EU the same amount, all the way up until the 'divorce', or rather the actual leaving in 2020. The UK will continue to pay the EU as part of the official Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. And this has meant payments of £14.9 billion in two years, 2021 to 2023. It's estimated that from 2024 onwards, the UK will pay a further £6.4 billion, although spread over many years. It really does feel like a divorce settlement, doesn't it, from that angle?
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And the overall effect of Brexit on the UK?
Are we better off in the UK?
Well just having a look around the UK at what's going on, it's quite hard to answer that question. There's a lot of negatives. The NHS seems to be struggling to cope. Our jobs market is not what it was.
And our economy is refusing to grow. Much to Rachel Reeves's dismay! So we're not doing that well at the moment here. But how much of that is down to Brexit? I think it's really difficult to tell. We've certainly survived Brexit. But I'm not sure we're doing better for it. Just a different set of problems perhaps.
Goodbye
Let us know what you think about this. And if you're living in an EU country, let us know whether you think the EU membership is a good thing. Also, if your country is trying to gain entry to the EU, it would be really interesting to hear from you too. Enough for now.
Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.
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Links
- Rachel Reeves
- Statistics on UK-EU trade
- Brexit leaves UK trade unscathed
- HGV drivers avoiding UK
- Queues at Dover
- Brexit five years on
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