‘It feels like we never left’: resentment builds in one of UK’s firmest Brexit-backing areas

Nigel Guest, standing next to his family’s market stall on the high street in Grays, feels that Brexit was a ‘missed opportunity’. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

When Keir Starmer was asked last week whether he thought Britons had finally moved on from the issue of Brexit, his answer was a definitive yes.

It’s not difficult to see why the prime minister would hope to settle the question, before a week in which he hopes to reset the UK’s relationship with the EU, clearing a way for easier access to a marketplace that could help increase the economic growth he badly needs.