Beware political comfort blankets. When times are tough, parties, movements or even whole nations tend to reach for sources of wishful reassurance to make themselves feel better.
Perhaps the most extreme example of this is Argentina, where any government experiencing a wobble in its popularity at home inevitably reiterates their claim on the Falkland Islands. But plenty of other groups are guilty of the same retreat to a psychological safe space when events, voters or the economy – or all three – turn against them.
There are occasions when new shibboleths enter our political culture. We’re seeing one emerge right now in the intermittent resurgence of calls to rejoin the EU, or failing that to subscribe to one or more of its major institutions such as the Single Market.
With Labour low and sinking in the polls, torn asunder by a painful combination of Green Party and Reform UK surges on its left and right and Downing Street floundering at the centre, the conditions are ideal for some unrealistic silver bullet solutions. And lo, here it comes, whispering in Labour’s ear that all this pain could go away, if only it would indulge something that speaks to its heart rather than its head.
It’s no secret that the party of government finds Brexit a difficult topic. After Jeremy Corbyn’s unsatisfactory fudge in the 2016 referendum, the Prime Minister himself insisted that Labour should subsequently back a second referendum, contributing to the collapse of the Red Wall in the 2019 general election.
After belatedly acknowledging that the result of the referendum should be accepted, the Starmer administration has taken several practical steps to use Brexit freedoms to pursue its policy goals – from its zero-tariff deal with the US on our pharmaceutical sector to the “build baby build” reform of planning laws – while visibly grimacing if anyone mentions that that’s what’s happening.
In other words, the head is getting on with the job, while the heart is pining wistfully for a blue beret covered in yellow stars. The deeper the government’s political troubles become, the more tempting it is to check out of political reality and begin to daydream.
A week ago, the Lib Dems tabled a motion in the Commons to join a Customs Union with the EU. It wasn’t a stunt (there was no bungee-jumping, jetskiing or samba, surprisingly), but a way to punch the Labour Party’s bruise on the topic. And it succeeded: the Commons was tied 100-100 on the topic, because the vast majority of Labour MPs stayed away while 13 rebels voted in favour. An unpopular Downing Street was left squirming about an issue they know to be a weak spot, while those in Labour’s ranks who are particularly keen on a Rejoin agenda rushed to talk about their favourite subject.
This is toxic territory for the government. For starters, wishful thinking distracts from the actual hard work that needs to get done. Those 13 MPs may not have wanted Brexit in the first place, and they may regret losing the referendum – and second referendum – campaign, but those are emotional, not practical, concerns.
Ministers across government, grappling difficult jobs, already find it hard enough to marshal backbench support sufficient to make headway. The prospect of diverting their limited time and energy into debating anything beyond the legislative and policy agenda is dispiriting to say the least.
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Even worse, formal alignment with EU trade policy or environmental construction regulations would require actively undoing various things that those ministers have actually achieved. Is anyone seriously under the impression that this government has had so many wins that it can afford to start scrapping its own trade deals and gutting its own Planning Bill and exports policy, 18 months in?
Then there’s the question of whether the Labour Party really wants to reopen the very issue that it found most challenging politically over the course of its 14 years in Opposition. It was Brexit which exposed the growing gulf between the traditional Labour base and the party’s inner circles in many parts of the country. The sustained attempt to frustrate the referendum result became so unpopular that Boris Johnson’s “get Brexit done” campaign in 2019 even appealed to former Remainers who just wanted to hear the end of it.
Starmer’s most effective message at the last election was that such psychodramas would end, and be replaced with a focus on a “government of service” that would just get on with things. The idea of restarting the Brexit wars by trying to re-enter the orbit of the EU runs directly contrary to that. There are already more than enough self-inflicted wounds marring the government’s body without adding another.
Mark Wallace is chief executive of Total Politics Group
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