We really could still rejoin the EU. But Tory Britain isn’t up to it

All Keir Starmer’s plans for the economy and spending would be enhanced by the boost of returning to the single market. Photograph: Andy Buchanan/PA

In his classic work The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1951), the New York Herald Tribune humorist Will Cuppy’s verdict on Attila the Hun was: “Attila’s career teaches that you may get by for a while, but it can’t last.”

Without wishing to push the comparison too far, I think Cuppy’s observation epitomises the situation our present prime minister – they come and go, these Conservative prime ministers – now finds himself in.