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Three years on from Brexit, all UK voters are
left with is a bitter taste of Bregret
Polly Toynbee
Most people are now in favour of rejoining the EU, but
Labour is right to steer clear of another row over Europe
Tue 31 Jan
2023 06.00 GMT
Today’s
Brexit anniversary marks three years of political mayhem and economic calamity.
It is also 50 years since Britain joined the EEC. Ten years ago this month,
David Cameron made his shameless Bloomberg speech pledging a referendum to
placate his party and Ukippers, who he had previously called “fruitcakes”,
“loonies” and “closet racists”.
Cameron
wrongly thought Brexiteers could be appeased, but they proved insatiable. The
more harm their Brexit does, the more extreme versions they demand, chasing
those impossible phantasms they mis-sold to the country.
“Remoaner”
was a clever Brexit epithet for the 48% of us who voted remain. The heartbreak
of this act of national self-harm left remainers keening in grief, in a long
moan for the loss of an ideal, along with certain economic decline. The ache,
too, was over the broken old Labour alliances of interest and belief, cities
against towns, old against young, those with qualifications against those with
few. With the sorrow there was rage, white-hot and vengeful, against cynical
Brexit leaders who knowingly sold snake oil and fairy dust.
Grief ebbs
when looking to what comes next. David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary,
last week promised there would be a civilised friendship with Europe under a
Labour government. There was talk of reconnecting “a tarnished UK” with its
closest allies, “for security and prosperity”; “reducing friction” on trade;
unblocking the Horizon scheme; strengthening student links and pledging a
“clean power alliance”.
But there
is to be no rejoining, no way back to the customs union or single market,
Labour says, so as to deny Tory strategists what they yearn for: a re-run of
Brexit at the next general election to distract from the economy, the cost of
living crisis and collapsed public services. Distressed Labour rejoiners point
to how many leavers are now Bregretters. With this rapid shift still ongoing,
the pollster John Curtice says that 57% of people are in favour of rejoining,
with just 43% for staying out, while 49% think Brexit weakens the economy.
Remainer
grief eases at signs of a country reuniting against the liars who pulled off
this trick. But it’s rash to imagine that even a 14-point lead means a pro-EU
referendum would be won: we know what referendums do. Besides, egocentric
Britain forgets that Brussels, with a war on its doorstep and its own economic
woes, might shun yet more negotiations with the UK. Let’s not forget the MEPs
and envoys we insulted them with, the spite and mendacity spread by the likes
of Nigel Farage and Daniel Hannan in the European parliament or David Frost
across the negotiating table.
There is
some cheer: these polls cause such alarm to the Brexit mis-leaders that they
are the moaners now – the Bremoaners. Hannan, the ex-MEP and arch-purveyor of
Brexit fabrications, is trying to scare defecting Brexit voters back. “There
really does seem to be a plot to overturn Brexit,” he warns Telegraph readers.
He uses Lammy’s speech as evidence, plus Labour’s resistance to the EU
deregulation law. “There is little doubt the Europhile blob is giving it a go,”
he writes, “to hold Britain within the EU’s regulatory orbit pending an attempt
at re-entry.”
He also
warns: “For their plan to have the slightest chance of success, they need to
convince the country that Brexit has been an economic disaster.” But that ship
has long sailed. Look what Brexit has done: a 4% shrinkage in long-run
productivity relative to remaining in the EU, expects the Office for Budget
Responsibility, inflation and energy prices are higher than in the EU, trade
has fallen by almost a fifth, while the government itself says the much-trumpeted
Australian deal will raise GDP by less than 0.1% a year by 2035. Brexit has
raised food prices by 6% says the LSE, while draining the workforce. Eurostar
also deliberately leaves a third of seats empty due to crippling EU/UK border
delays.
The Brexit
press can’t hide these inconvenient truths. Jeremy Warner, the Telegraph’s
associate editor, challenges Jeremy Hunt’s bizarrely Pollyanna-ish assessment
of the economy, writing “trade with our European neighbours is faltering
badly,” due to Brexit, with “the rather awkward fact that the UK is the only G7
economy yet to recover to its pre-pandemic size”. “The grim reality is that the
country seems to be falling apart on almost every front” and “car production
has fallen to its lowest since the 1950s”.
All that is
why Prof Matthew Goodwin says that “Bregret is taking hold in Britain” with only
one in five thinking it’s going well. Brexiters are now the minority,
Bremoaning like hell because no amount of Brexit boosterism will bring back
those lost supporters who know exactly whom to blame. Few will agree that their
pet project has failed because it wasn’t “hard Brexit” enough. Eventually
extreme Brexiters will subside back into their irrelevant coterie of cultists,
unforgiven and moaning all the way.
Polly
Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
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