Brexit is passé. So are regrets

There is tremendous Remainer excitement on social media. Every opinion poll now underlines that on the 7th anniversary of the 2016 Brexit referendum, the British people now think it was a mistake and has been bad for Britain. As the veteran pollster and political scientist Peter Kellner writes, “Britain is now an anti-Brexit country.”

Kellner points out that 4 million voters have died since 2016. So the grim reaper, too, is now firmly in the pro-European camp.

The disgrace of Boris Johnson, the key evangelist against Europe, marked the end of the Brexit political era. Ever since the 1990s, Johnson had been writing fiction about Europe — first as Brussels correspondent, then as star columnist — in the Daily Telegraph, then the main centre-Right newspaper, under its then editor, Sir Max Hastings.

Other leading critics of the EU such as Liz Truss, Priti Patel and Jacob Rees Mogg have now left  frontline politics. Rishi Sunak has marginalised the Europhobic Democratic Unionist Party as a force in Westminster. This shift seems to herald a rejection of 25 years of Brexit politics, which began when William Hague embraced Euroscepticism in order to trip up the pro-European Tony Blair. In 1999, Nigel Farage was elected as an MEP.

The latest poll has 55% saying it was wrong to leave the EU, with barely a third of voters saying the 2016 decision was the right one. So: a slam dunk for Remainers and we should be back in the EU soon?

Please, Remainers: calm down. All my political life I have read opinion polls telling me one thing and then I have gone out to knock on voters’ doors or take part in phone-ins and the message has been very different. Four million older voters may have left us, but at 74 per cent voter turn-out amongst the over-65s was the highest of all the age categories in the 2019 election. Yes, the young are pro-European, bless them — but only 47% of 18-24 year olds bother to vote.

Rejoining is not on any EU agenda. To be sure, friends of Britain like Michel Barnier say Brexit is lose-lose. The excitable Belgian former PM, Guy Verhofstadt, will turn up at any European Movement event and say Britain would be welcomed back with open arms.

Yet whenever I meet senior government or opposition politicians on my forays to EU capitals, I hear expressions of regret but not much interest in weaker, poorly-led Britain rejoining. The UK still seems keener on being a (very junior) partner of the US, with fantasies of “Singapore on the Thames”. As one senior minister in Paris put it: “Vous avez décidé de quitter l’Europe. Faut vivre avec!” (“You decided to leave Europe. Live with it!”).

The terms that existed for the UK in 2016 — including rejection of the currency union, Schengen, social regulation and fishing opt-outs, while maintaining strict frontier controls — are not on offer to any of nations queueing up to join the EU. There is no evidence that they will be on offer to a UK seeking to rejoin.

Far more important: the UK’s political, business and media elites remain unhappily wedded to Brexit. The CBI has collapsed under very weak leadership since Brexit. The British Chambers of Commerce consist of small firms, many of whose owners read the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail. The City hates any regulation, but the EU is based on a common regulatory regime. The British CEO class prefers to hide under the duvet.

The BBC notoriously refuses to criticise Brexit or to blame Brexit when looking at food inflation. Yet this is caused in part by deliveries from Europe becoming more costly and firms in the UK no longer able to draw upon the EU’s labour market.

Sir Keir Starmer refuses to criticise the massive damage Brexit has done to the UK economy. Sir Ed Davey moans a bit about the result of a referendum he, Sir Nick Clegg, and other Lib-Dem grandees did nothing to prevent as coalition members. The government of which they were part unleashed a populist nationalist plebiscite, without any of the normal constitutional safeguards on turn-out and clear majorities for massive changes in a nation’s rule-book.

Yes, there are claims that a change of government would allow a new rapprochement with Europe. But will a Labour government agree to full Freedom of Movement for 447 million EU inhabitants? Sir Keir Starmer uses the Theresa May slogan about “Making Brexit Work”. David Lammy has produced sensible suggestions the UK can make to the EU. But they all require reciprocity, which will bring down the fury of the Europhobe media on Labour.

Sir Ed Davey has ruled out rejoining. Some talk of opening negotiations with Brussels, but these can last years.

So uncorking the Champagne — as if opinion polls heralded a return to Europe by a UK that took a decision in 2016 it may now regret but has no obvious or agreed mechanism for putting right — may be more than premature. Sadly.

Denis MacShane  was the UK Minister of Europe and predicted the 2016 result in his 2015 book Brexit: Why Britain Will Leave Europe. He is a member of the Executive of the Labour Movement for Europe.

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