Three years after Brexit was concluded — and approaching seven years since the referendum — Bregret is in the air and not just among those who put their cross in the Leave box in 2016. A heady mix of inflation, cost-of-living crisis and tax rises, with no sunny uplands of an economic growth or business upswing, has led to an outbreak of buyers’ remorse. Matt Goodwin, a pollster whose research has focused on the changing views of Brexit and Red Wall voters, noted that “the trend of Bregret is accelerating and looks set to cause a growing problem for the Conservative Party”. It has also shaped opportunity and some pitfalls for Labour, which may well end up inheriting the task of reconnecting the UK to a suspicious and touchy institutional Europe, itself facing divisions on energy policy and the response to the Ukraine crisis.
Do we Bregret rien, a bit or a lot? As things stand, the numbers of outright Bregretters is 54 per cent. What has changed is the number of convinced Leavers — down 12 per cent and the commensurate rise in “don’t knows”.
Polls can wax and wane and with no serious attempt to revisit the 2016 vote, it’s a moot point whether the Brexit vote would be reversed if it were offered in practice. So the big pivot of the Sunak government, shared with Sir Keir Starmer as he contemplates the realities he would face if he eclipses the Conservatives at the 2024 election, is how to make a scratchy relationship with the EU work better — and thereby remove some of the roadblocks holding back trade and business opportunities. The kiss and make up process is already under way. Rishi Sunak, a Brexiteer, had made clear in the Cabinet that he wants to make progress on ironing out the Northern Ireland protocol. For Brexiteers, this heralds the Great Betrayal. This is the backdrop which makes news of a conference to explore better ways to work with institutional Europe a hot potato. The Ditchley gathering brought together senior front benchers (Michael Gove for the Tories and Labour shadow foreign secretary David Lammy) as well as influential Remainers (headed by Labour’s Lord Mandelson), now in a new incarnation as guru to Starmer. Also present were Olly Robbins, the civil servant who fought to get Theresa May’s ill-starred withdrawal agreement over the line, and Tom Scholar, the senior Treasury mandarin whose ousting by Liz Truss widened divisions about her economic approach in her short starburst of a premiership.
The core Brexit cause was represented by Gisela, now Baroness, Stuart — a Labour apostate and strong voice in the Leave campaign — as well as a raft of “previous people” in the Brexit wars, with Norman Lamont and Michael Howard from the Tory ranks — and Remainers, including the One Nation Tory David Lidington.
Sources from the talks say the agreed focus was that Brexit has not delivered concrete results — and given the failures of its opponents to unravel it, a backdrop of economic uncertainty and at least the prospect of a possible change of government, “it seemed like a good idea to bring some va va voom to the options”.
But that has already sparked a backlash. Mick Hume, writing in the Daily Mail, thought the “top-secret cross-party conference… should alarm anyone who believes in democracy”. The veteran Leave MP Iain Duncan Smith deemed it a “a classic Mandelsonian attempt to manipulate the process”.
Even Sunak seemed surprised to find Gove, who has become a semi-autonomous minister, parting company from the more rambunctious style of Brexiteering embraced under Boris Johnson, attended the gathering. So was it a conference or a conspiracy? Really it was both. One senior figure described the “secret summit” angle of the Observer’s reporting as “malicious leaking — it suits some to make it look as if Labour and Leavers are in agreement. That is straight out of the 1997 Labour playbook”.
The central charge here is that Labour Remainers allied to Lord Mandelson are creating a new narrative — that Brexiteers and Remainers alike agreed on what to do next. That effectively benefits Team Starmer, because it established what one Tory Brexiteer calls “a misery memoir” about Brexit — which assesses only its failures. Crucially from Starmer’s point of view, it positions a Labour government as ready to re-boot relations with the EU, leaving his earlier, unsuccessful crusade for a second referendum behind.
The conspiracy charge thus has a grain of truth to it. But so does the inconvenient fact that Brexit has not brought tangible economic benefits and continues to bog down UK trade, which ultimately slows the chances of recovery. This alliance of thoughtful Leavers and Remainers is a sign of a growing recognition across the spectrum that something needs to be done to mitigate the worst impacts of leaving the EU. If there is a criticism of Ditchley it is one that applied to a lot of group-think institutions. Its Foreign Office-inspired thinkathon retreats and events have a Left-liberal institutional bias. On a bad day its events can fulfil the reputation of being as “dull-as-Ditchley” — a roster of inter-connected thinkers, largely supporting each other’s world views. The net effect is what Gove in his earlier incarnation might have called “the blob”: the new Establishment who network frequently in politics and economics.
That said, the retreat which has caused such ire was a more balanced set of views, which is precisely why it matters and has caused such enraged reaction from those who fear the “betrayal” of Brexit — but are stumped by how to deliver on it. And one way or the other, the ground is shifting; for example, the resolving of the Northern Ireland protocol. In short, the era of confidence in Brexit is waning and a new one which aims to nuance it and take the edge off the worst impacts is here to stay. It may once again divide a tense Tory party which has yet to find its way to those sunlit uplands, promised in the heat of battle in 2016.
But across the political spectrum a number of “frenemies” have good reason to think anew about what is to be salvaged from Brexit. And as Frankie Goes to Hollywood might have put it, they are starting to figure out that the two tribes which went to war can find the better road to peaceful co-existence. Not so much treachery then — just reality, rearing its head.
