Is Britain still one of the best places in the world for academic freedom?

MATCH OF THE DAY: ACADEMIC FREEDOM — EU 3, Britain 0

Referee: Academic Freedom Index

Deep Brexit was supposed to increase Britain’s academic freedom and power. In 2016 Brexit minister David Jones promised universities “new, stronger global collaborative links”; Boris Johnson later said the UK would “regain its status as a science superpower”; and the government’s own Benefits of Brexit paper promised a “less-bureaucratic mindset” for research.

The referee here is the Academic Freedom Index by V-Dem. It tests whether academics can research and teach freely, exchange ideas, keep institutional autonomy, protect campus integrity and speak without improper pressure.

Ten years on, the result is clear. Britain did not become the freer academic hub Brexit sold. It became more isolated from European peers and more brittle at home.

So we have a university system that is still globally famous but strategically weaker. This is the first thing to see: Brexit did not liberate British academia. It thinned the networks abroad and thickened the pressure at home, as shown by the CGHE Brexit study and the History & Policy analysis of the “Brexit moment”.

SO, WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

This is a league-table slide. The UK falls from 0.93 in 2012 to 0.750 in 2026, dropping from third to fifth, behind Italy on 0.873, France on 0.867, Germany on 0.859, and the EU benchmark on 0.835. The Academic Freedom Index Update 2026 marks the UK as a statistically significant decliner and the Office for Students says Britain sat only between 60th and 70th worldwide in 2023, below Germany, Italy, Spain and France on the global table.

Why?

3 REASONS — why Britain lost the academic freedom match to the EU

1) PLAN — Freedom was promised, hiatus was delivered

Brexit promised stronger global links, but there was no serious funded route from sovereignty to academic openness. The UK left Erasmus+, endured years of uncertainty over Horizon Europe, and European academics became less likely to choose UK universities as leaders on collaborative bids according to CGHE’s European perspectives report. The EU, by contrast, kept the continent’s reciprocal mobility and research machinery on the pitch. Britain promised academic freedom and delivered an administrative holding pattern.
Plan score: UK 3/10, EU 8/10 — big promises, no route-map.

2) POLICY — The Brexit moment turned campuses into targets

Britain did not follow de-Europeanisation with stronger domestic protection. A comparative UCU report put UK legal protection for academic freedom at 35%, against an EU average of 53%, and found 35.5% of UK academics self-censored. The OfS says 21% of academics in England do not feel free to discuss controversial topics in teaching and 16% do not feel free in research. Meanwhile the History & Policy paper says the “Brexit moment” fuelled popular antipathy to universities, and UK in a Changing Europe records the extraordinary episode of a Conservative MP asking vice-chancellors for the names and syllabi of staff teaching Brexit. Sovereignty was sold as freedom. In practice, it often felt like supervision.
Policy score: UK 4/10, EU 7/10 — the chill got sharper.

3) PERFORMANCE — Europe kept the network; Britain lost the dressing room

Europe’s working model was not glamorous but effective: stay inside the shared research and mobility system, keep thicker protections, and preserve the dense peer relationships that make scholars more mobile, more fundable and harder to isolate. The CGHE 2023 study concludes Brexit weakened collaboration with EU counterparts, cut student mobility, reduced staff attractiveness and damaged UK research centrality, while the earlier CGHE Europe report found Germany looked a likely winner as countries reinforced partnerships there. Britain finishes last in this five-team match. The continent kept playing one-touch academic football. Britain kept explaining why leaving the tournament would somehow improve possession.
Performance score: UK 3/10, EU 8/10 — Europe kept the pattern of play.

FINAL WHISTLE — what this score really means

Britain’s problem on academic freedom is not a lack of brilliant universities. It is a Brexit model that loosened the European ties which reinforced excellence, while never building stronger protections at home. The winner won because it kept the networks, the reciprocity and the thicker institutional guardrails identified by the Royal Society, UCU and CGHE.

Britain’s problem on academic freedom is not that its universities stopped being prestigious. It is that Brexit made them less connected, less buffered and therefore less free.

That is the political test for Starmer now. If he wants Deep Brexit to mean more British power, he will need more than free-speech theatre and science-superpower slogans. He will need a harder reset with Europe on research and mobility, and a stronger domestic settlement for academic freedom, autonomy and academic self-government. Otherwise Britain will keep fielding famous institutions inside a weaker system — and keep losing this match.