The vote
Aditya: I have three distinct memories of that entire period: the sense of anger, the sense of the confusion in Westminster and then, afterwards, this quick curdling into a really base form of racism. I remember reporting around south Wales and the north-east of England and then coming back into London, and noticing that one group were talking about their anger and frustration and the other were talking about facts.
On the morning itself, I remember waking up at 4am to write and thinking that David Cameron would have to go fairly quickly, and then at 6am I got a confirmation phone call from my editor to say he would be stepping down.
That weekend, I remember a friend telling me he was sleeping with the window open and he heard a guy shouting: “We’ve got our country back, and now I’m going to burn down that mosque.” He lived in east London and there was a mosque at the end of the road.
Polly: I spent referendum day at the Labour phone bank, where they were campaigning for remain. The group I was with were phoning Nottinghamshire. And listening to the calls, every single one was: “Out, out, out. I want my country back. I want control. Get rid of the foreigners.” It was the archetype of young middle-class students and graduates sitting in London, talking to people in a place they had never visited who were very angry and ferocious. It seemed to me to sum up exactly what you’re saying about the great remain and leave divide and how painful it was. I went to bed that night thinking, “This feels terrible.” Up until then I’d felt fairly confident, because everybody kept saying it was going to be all right, and it really wasn’t all right.
Simon: I was against our joining the EU. I was a Eurosceptic from the start. The prospect then was of joining a very bureaucratic common market, as opposed to being an international country. Why did I move from that position to being pro-Europe once we were in it? Well, the answer was that I was slightly wrong about the EU. And the alternative was going to be worse.
On the day of the 2016 vote, I was actually in Germany and had a conference about it at the Humboldt University of Berlin. The people there were European journalists and academics and so on, and they were very consumed by the issue. The thing I’ll never forget was that, finally, after they had all expressed deep concern at the very prospect that Britain may opt to leave, I said to them: “Why do you feel so strongly?” Two of them said the same thing at the same time. “You will be leaving us in charge.” And I then thought, actually, Brexit is not just about Britain and Europe. It’s about the future of Europe.
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The deal
Aditya: The thing that really struck me was that those in the leave campaign – Michael Gove, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson – none of these guys had a clue what they were going to do. The Treasury, the Bank of England, which worked very hard on Project Fear, had no plan B. So, for a period of years, we in effect had no trade policy, no fiscal policy, no sense of what we were going to do, and we became really easy to mug off as a country. The truth of the matter was that Brexit was a highly technical decision.
Simon: Ordinary people think politicians have plans until you suddenly realise they haven’t a clue. My only contribution at the time was to plead with the believers: “For God’s sake, tell us what you need. Do you mean soft or hard Brexit? Do you really mean we’re going to leave the European community in the larger sense, which I think would be a disaster, or do you just mean we’re going to get out of Brussels?” And they hadn’t a clue.
Polly: The double wickedness of the leavers was to push for the hardest possible Brexit, partly because Johnson wanted to embarrass Theresa May. So he went for the very worst and wickedest option, knowing perfectly well that, as you say, he had no idea what a hard Brexit would do.
But I really blame hard Brexit on one person. That’s Jeremy Corbyn. In those critical votes in the House of Commons when May was destroyed in vote after vote, when there was murmurings that all the remainers should get together in favour of solid Brexit, he refused to join.
Aditya: I would not want to say that Corbyn played the blinder in that period, because he didn’t. But from the Labour point of view, they were very exercised by the anti-establishment nature of the Brexit vote. To respond to that by getting together with Tories like Rory Stewart or whoever would obviously not look good, right? Palling up for the sake of a soft Brexit.
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Attitudes to the EU and migration now
Simon: It is encouraging for those who would like to see some form of reversal of Brexit that the debate has become more technical and less emotional. Some of the racism has gone. It’s about trade, it’s about student exchange, it’s about food barriers – it has become what it should always have been.
Polly: What’s interesting is that every time specific policies are put to the public – for example, what do you think about foreign students – they say: “Oh yes, that’s fine.” And even a recent poll that asked: “Would you swap freedom of movement for easier trade?”, the answer was yes. People have sort of got it. Freedom of movement doesn’t feel so bad. Perhaps partly because, to their horror, the “wrong” people from outside Europe came in after Brexit. They thought it would be the end of immigration.
Aditya: I’d disagree with Simon’s point that the debate is now less about race. One of the lasting legacies of Brexit is actually that it’s made extremism mainstream, especially on race. I mean, the idea that Farage is setting the terms of our political debate is really horrifying. The way that people now routinely say stuff in Westminster that would have had them ostracised 10 years ago is shocking to me. And the way in which the press, especially the rightwing press, just will publish things which I think are bordering on hate speech.
The Australian-style point system was meant to be the answer. And what did you get? You get a load of people coming from the Commonwealth to come and work in social care, IT, all kinds of industries that are crying out for extra workers. Now, to say, therefore, that “These are the wrong kind of people”, which is the phrase that people do use …
Polly: Yes, it’s purely about skin colour, nothing else. You have care workers from Albania or you have care workers from Nigeria. And there is a strong sense that we’ll have one, not the other.
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Our future with the EU
Simon: I think the question I want an answer to, frankly, is: should we be now moving to rejoin the EU? Or should we go forward in the fashion in which we are at the moment – bit by bit, step by step, join this, join that, rejoin the Erasmus scheme, try to sort out the appalling food-importing regulations and restrictions – such that in two or three years’ time, we’ve sort of half joined?
Polly: Let’s hope that a new prime minister will say there aren’t any red lines. We will negotiate as we go and see what the obstacles are. We also have to start speaking positively about the EU. Aren’t these rules and regulations wonderful?
I’ve been following the fortunes of an industrial valve-maker in Bristol. What he has had to do with all of his products, first of all to change it from the European CE mark to whatever the British one was, and then to be told he didn’t have to after all … what he has been through has been completely appalling.
Aditya: If you tiptoe back to Europe through laws, then that feels anti-democratic. And that, I think, is one of the greatest charges that critics can still level at the remain lobbyists.
What I would say about business is that there’s a big study that claims there was a 6-8% hit to our GDP as a result of Brexit. Which is enormous. I mean, if you think that we’re currently arguing over whether we can get another 0.1% growth … The hit came from the huge surprise and uncertainty felt by businesses such as Polly’s valve manufacturer in Bristol. So, from a democratic and a commercial point of view, you would have to make the argument and be really clear about what it is you’re signing up to.
Simon: The case has to be clear and debated in public. I hate public inquiries, but there ought to be a major research exercise in which you simply ask what the arguments and economic predictions are. So, somehow or other, make it an argument about facts, then lead on from that into an argument about negotiation.
Polly: I think it should be emotive stories about shops that have had to shut, things people can identify with. But also, the greatest development in this era: Russia is a dangerous enemy, very dangerous to Europe and very dangerous to us.
I feel entirely vindicated by what we wrote in the Guardian back then, virtually all of us, you know: don’t do this, it’ll be a terrible mistake, not just an economic mistake, but a political mistake, an emotional mistake, everything about it. And now we’re just beginning to recover and maybe we can put that decade to rest.
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Aditya Chakrabortty, Polly Toynbee and Simon Jenkins are Guardian columnists
