Editor's note: Jonathan Arnott is a former member of the European Parliament. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

It's been six years since the United Kingdom made the once-in-a-generation decision to hold a referendum on whether Britain should remain in, or leave, the European Union. I voted Leave. I'd do it again without a doubt, but there's huge frustration. Four of those six years were spent on internal political schisms, politicians fighting amongst themselves and in the courts, battle lines drawn between three camps: those who respected the vote to leave the EU; those who wished to overturn it, and those who wished to leave in name only while remaining closely entangled with the union.

Prime Minister David Cameron resigned after losing the referendum and was replaced by Prime Minister Theresa May. The referendum result was designed to make Britain more flexible; but our internal political wrangling made it sclerotic. Amid all the chaos and court cases after every election results (Westminster and Brussels) favored those wishing to follow through on the referendum vote to leave.

Accordingly, Britain departed from the EU almost four years after the vote. The costs of political in-fighting remain very consequential to this day. The UK's rudderless approach to negotiations has given birth to an appalling deal: Brexit, yes, but in slow motion.

The UK government in May introduced a bill, which will bring into force our first independent negotiated Free Trade Agreements in more than 50 years. The transition on fisheries, a clear benefit of Brexit, will not be complete until 2026 – a full decade after the vote to leave. Moving away from the cumbersome General Data Protection Regulation is a necessity for allowing businesses to use data dynamically but safely instead of box-ticking compliance exercises.

Yet it was barely a month ago, almost six years after the referendum, that the new Data Reform Bill was included in the Queen's Speech. We still have no clear date for the changes. The Financial Services Act 2021 dipped Britain's toe timidly in the water for building a post-Brexit financial services sector; more sweeping changes were again only announced in the 2022 Queen's Speech.

Even the eye-watering UK contributions to the EU budget (the famous "£350 million per week" figure, which Vote Leave misused in the referendum – the true net cost of EU membership in 2016 was £181 million per week) have not ended: the UK will still pay a modest amount to settle outstanding commitments on projects until 2028.

This is the EU's so-called Reste à Liquider, the difference between financial commitments and actual payments. Direct financial savings from Brexit have started, but we are still six years away from paying off the "EU credit card" and seeing the full benefits.

We have already seen some benefits: an immigration system based upon workers' skills rather than whether someone is coming from the EU, and a COVID-19 vaccine rollout, which was reportedly more agile than the European Commission's procurement.

Nonetheless, we've seen an undue focus on some inconsequential changes. Such trifles may matter to some people, but they are not the stuff, which Brexit was built from: the return of Duty Free shopping from the EU, zero-rating women's sanitary products for value-added tax, savings on digital downloads, and the return of traditional passports.

History will judge Brexit as a generational decision. The short-term ups and downs will be irrelevant. Decisions taken today will have a huge impact over the decades rather than months to come. Why, then, am I so convinced that my decision to campaign for Brexit and vote to Leave the EU was the proper one?

The answer is simple: It's not only about the economy. Some things in life matter more than whether (taken over the next 30-40 years) I end up financially better off, or worse off. I expect that most people will be better off, judged on the long-term impacts, but that isn't the fundamental question.

Issues of sovereignty do matter. We know this, instinctively, whenever we see a mention of China's Taiwan region or the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Nobody considers the question of "who governs" a territory to be a hard-nosed economic one. It's predominantly a question of identity.

The question as to whether Britain should be governed from Brussels or London is a fundamental one. Perhaps, for historic and geographic reasons, that matters more to the UK than to other European nations.

Some of those national borders have been in a state of flux over centuries, and many share a "world view" as continental Europe. It's possible that the ties, which bind mainland Europe are sufficient to justify that so-called pooling of sovereignty for many of those nations, not least because their legal frameworks – embedded in the Napoleonic legal code rather than Magna Carta – mesh better together than with the UK. The EU may not be fit for this purpose, but I respect the wishes of those nations, which wish to remain in it – just as (I hope) they would respect the wishes of those who do not.

Yes, I'd vote for Brexit again in a heartbeat – but that doesn't spare me the frustration of delays, which are nearly as bad as our trains right now.

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