UK had a great think going on but meritocracy creates both winners and losers.
In a mixture of losers with cocky winners, you have people who overestimate their abilities and people who are bitter.
The bitter ones demand protection against the people who come over and over-compete them, so you introduce non-meritocratic barriers like nationality. Starting on 2021, Polish and Bulgarians and so on will be barred from coming over and compete with the local workers.
The winners are cocky, many of them are really the best - UK has a great talent pool. They have a great thing going on for them, and they believe that they can overcome EU, USA and China.
The protection demand of the lower skill people seems to be served, shortly UK will start building it's non-merit based workforce(unless UK residency is a merit).
The time comes to put the winners on test. This is indeed a bombshell to the cocky ones, the people who had a good thing going on for them and believed that due to their expectational abilities everything will be about the same or better.
I still think that the UK would be able to find it's place in the new world order but many people will face bombshells as their freedoms and abilities to do business will get a haircut.
EU's skilled ones will be protected from UK's in a similar fashion of UK's less-skilled are about to get their protection. It is not as meritocratic system as before but that's what people wanted.