Today’s Brexit anniversary marks three years of political mayhem and economic calamity. It is also 50 years since Britain joined the EEC. Ten years ago this month, David Cameron made his shameless Bloomberg speech pledging a referendum to placate his party and Ukippers, who he had previously called “fruitcakes”, “loonies” and “closet racists”.
Cameron wrongly thought Brexiteers could be appeased, but they proved insatiable. The more harm their Brexit does, the more extreme versions they demand, chasing those impossible phantasms they mis-sold to the country.
“Remoaner” was a clever Brexit epithet for the 48% of us who voted remain. The heartbreak of this act of national self-harm left remainers keening in grief, in a long moan for the loss of an ideal, along with certain economic decline. The ache, too, was over the broken old Labour alliances of interest and belief, cities against towns, old against young, those with qualifications against those with few. With the sorrow there was rage, white-hot and vengeful, against cynical Brexit leaders who knowingly sold snake oil and fairy dust.
Grief ebbs when looking to what comes next. David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, last week promised there would be a civilised friendship with Europe under a Labour government. There was talk of reconnecting “a tarnished UK” with its closest allies, “for security and prosperity”; “reducing friction” on trade; unblocking the Horizon scheme; strengthening student links and pledging a “clean power alliance”.
But there is to be no rejoining, no way back to the customs union or single market, Labour says, so as to deny Tory strategists what they yearn for: a re-run of Brexit at the next general election to distract from the economy, the cost of living crisis and collapsed public services. Distressed Labour rejoiners point to how many leavers are now Bregretters. With this rapid shift still ongoing, the pollster John Curtice says that 57% of people are in favour of rejoining, with just 43% for staying out, while 49% think Brexit weakens the economy.
Remainer grief eases at signs of a country reuniting against the liars who pulled off this trick. But it’s rash to imagine that even a 14-point lead means a pro-EU referendum would be won: we know what referendums do. Besides, egocentric Britain forgets that Brussels, with a war on its doorstep and its own economic woes, might shun yet more negotiations with the UK. Let’s not forget the MEPs and envoys we insulted them with, the spite and mendacity spread by the likes of Nigel Farage and Daniel Hannan in the European parliament or David Frost across the negotiating table.
There is some cheer: these polls cause such alarm to the Brexit mis-leaders that they are the moaners now – the Bremoaners. Hannan, the ex-MEP and arch-purveyor of Brexit fabrications, is trying to scare defecting Brexit voters back. “There really does seem to be a plot to overturn Brexit,” he warns Telegraph readers. He uses Lammy’s speech as evidence, plus Labour’s resistance to the EU deregulation law. “There is little doubt the Europhile blob is giving it a go,” he writes, “to hold Britain within the EU’s regulatory orbit pending an attempt at re-entry.”
He also warns: “For their plan to have the slightest chance of success, they need to convince the country that Brexit has been an economic disaster.” But that ship has long sailed. Look what Brexit has done: a 4% shrinkage in long-run productivity relative to remaining in the EU, expects the Office for Budget Responsibility, inflation is higher than in the EU, trade has fallen by almost a fifth, while the government itself says the much-trumpeted Australian deal will raise GDP by less than 0.1% a year by 2035. Brexit has raised food prices by 6% says the LSE, while draining the workforce. Eurostar also deliberately leaves a third of seats empty due to crippling EU/UK border delays.
The Brexit press can’t hide these inconvenient truths. Jeremy Warner, the Telegraph’s associate editor, challenges Jeremy Hunt’s bizarrely Pollyanna-ish assessment of the economy, writing “trade with our European neighbours is faltering badly,” due to Brexit, with “the rather awkward fact that the UK is the only G7 economy yet to recover to its pre-pandemic size”. “The grim reality is that the country seems to be falling apart on almost every front” and “car production has fallen to its lowest since the 1950s”.
All that is why Prof Matthew Goodwin says that “Bregret is taking hold in Britain” with only one in five thinking it’s going well. Brexiters are now the minority, Bremoaning like hell because no amount of Brexit boosterism will bring back those lost supporters who know exactly whom to blame. Few will agree that their pet project has failed because it wasn’t “hard Brexit” enough. Eventually extreme Brexiters will subside back into their irrelevant coterie of cultists, unforgiven and moaning all the way.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
This article was amended on 3 February 2023 to exclude – in the context of Brexit – a reference to the subsequent high UK energy price, relative to that of the EU. As a linked-to analysis noted, the UK’s own energy policies have significantly driven UK energy prices.
