On Tuesday this week, the 2019 London Book Fair took over Olympia Hall in central London. That evening, only four miles away at Westminster, British MPs began a series of historic votes to determine the nature of the United Kingdom’s leave-taking from the European Union.

Guest authors offered opinions on Brexit that were as gloomy as the weather, reports Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly senior writer. “Ian McEwan described leaving the E.U. as ‘a national tragedy.’ He said he would like the Prime Minister to revoke Article 50 and that a one-line email would do.”

As PW reported, author Caryl Phillips pointed out that the British Empire in 1945 ruled 760 million people; by 1991 that figure was 168 million.

“But Phillips noted that there has not been a subsequent fall-off in the British people’s sense of that Empire. They still think they have those 760 million. That’s what [Phillips believes] has fed Brexit,” Albanese tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally.

If the nature and even timing of Brexit remain unclear, one may yet confidently predict that Brexit will mean important changes for the UK’s scholarly publishing community. With Kenneally as moderator, a panel of publishing executives agreed that Brexit was complicating what has always been an international enterprise.

Tim Britton, formerly of Springer Nature, raised the psychological effect of Brexit on researchers, Albanese noted. “Would you move your family here? Would you build a house here?’ he wondered.

Britton said that the “psychological effect” on researchers, “which is impossible to measure” could potentially have a far bigger impact than any of the actual policies Brexit may eventually settle on, making it harder for U.K. institutions, including publishers, to recruit and retain the best talent.