Britain’s politicians have long been scared of Brexit. At the last general election, Labour made it clear that it did not want to reopen the national debate on membership of the EU. The UK would stay out of the customs union and single market, Sir Keir Starmer vowed – a striking promise from a man who was a key mover in the push for a second referendum.
Not even the Liberal Democrats promised to take Britain back into the bloc, scarred by the “bollocks to Brexit” approach that had proven a disaster in the 2019 election.
The process of leaving the EU was a national nightmare. Whether you blame the short-sighted promises of the Leave campaign or the stubbornness of the Remainers, those years were so traumatic for the denizens of Westminster that most wanted Brexit swept under the carpet.
All this time, however, voters have been quite keen on reopening the question. Ask the public whether Britain should rejoin the EU and they have tended to say yes. A poll for The i Paper by BMG Research last week found that 48 per cent of people would like to reverse Brexit with only 35 per cent preferring to stay out.
Support for rejoining is highest, unsurprisingly, among backers of the left-of-centre parties: 65 per cent of Labour supporters and 79 per cent of Greens like the idea. But even 37 per cent of Conservatives and 22 per cent of those backing Reform UK would vote to re-enter the EU if they could.
The political discourse is starting to catch on. Labour MPs tend still to be more modest about their ambitions, often saying only that they would support a return to the customs union – though this would totally undermine Starmer’s strategy of striking trade deals with countries outside Europe.
But other senior figures are much bolder: Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, says Labour should put a Rejoin policy into its next election manifesto – suggesting that a second referendum would not be needed – and the party’s venerated former leader Neil Kinnock is adamant that Britain’s future is inside the EU, even if the 84-year-old admits he is unlikely to see this happen himself.
This is partly prompted by Starmer’s obvious struggle to secure the quick wins he once promised from the so-called “reset”, which was Labour’s solution to fixing some of the economic problems from Brexit, without breaching its manifesto red lines. Even the relatively modest objectives the Prime Minister is pushing, such as a deal to align food regulations – which in reality have never much diverted from the EU’s – are taking years to negotiate and implement.
The rise of the Greens, the only UK-wide party to be full-throatedly in support of rejoining, is also pushing Labour figures closer to that position – a trend set to continue after today’s local elections, where Zack Polanski’s party is expected to pick up votes in the big cities which were the heart of the Remain movement.
Nigel Farage’s rise to be the leader of Britain’s most popular party has come despite a growing swell of unhappiness with Brexit, the policy with which he is most associated. For Labour to go into the next election with a strident pro-EU position would neatly highlight the contrast.
But pro-Europeans should be careful what they wish for. The EU of 2016 is gone: negotiations to re-enter would be prolonged and potentially bitter, involving the UK paying in more than before to the Brussels budget and possibly signing up (at least in principle) to joining the eurozone and open-border Schengen area.
Public support for Rejoin could melt away once the practicalities become clear. And do not underestimate the anger that reversing the Brexit vote would evoke among those who still believe leaving was the right thing to do: they would doubtless feel that the democratic verdict of the people was being unfairly overridden.
The final danger is that for Starmer – or a new Labour leader – to embrace a full reversal of Brexit ends up looking dangerously retrograde. Is the only way to boost our economy and society to take a step backwards into the past? It would be a pity if relitigating the battles of a decade ago prevented us from having a serious conversation about Britain’s place in a world that is not standing still but changing at great speed.
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