In the ninth season of Dallas, the 1980s blockbuster TV show about Texas oil barons, the handsome young scion of the Ewing dynasty – Bobby – appeared in the shower of his ex-wife and true love Pam even though the character had been killed off a year earlier. Dumbstruck viewers had to swallow the idea that 12 months’ worth of storylines had all been a dream. But the show’s declining ratings suggested the audience missed Bobby – and waking up from a slumber offered the cleanest way to recover Dallas’s mojo. Across Britain, lots of voters must think the same might be true of Brexit, reasoning that the decision to leave the European Union is a nightmare that the country needs to wake up from.
That might be one cause for the UK’s decision to sign up as an associate member of the EU’s £85bn Horizon research programme. Being outside the project meant UK science lost funding, collaborations, and key contact with EU universities. Getting back into the scheme – or at least most of it – was the right thing to do, because being fully outside was an exercise in self-harm. Negotiations to return were going nowhere until the Conservative party relieved itself of the delusional idea that the Irish border would be unaffected by leaving the EU, with its “Windsor framework”.
This outbreak of realism in Rishi Sunak’s Tory party is down to self-interest. Like Dallas’s falling ratings, the Conservatives’ poll standings are heading south. Public opinion has swung away from Brexit, with more than half the country thinking it was wrong to leave the bloc. Crucially, a chunk of 2016 leave voters have changed their minds because Brexit hasn’t delivered either on promises that it would energise the economy or on reducing immigration. Rather, leaving the EU probably made the cost of living crisis worse.
Even Brexit’s true believers see that “global Britain” is a middleweight, rather than a heavyweight, in trade terms – and one so inexperienced that the UK came off worse when it signed a deal with the smaller economy of Australia. As voters lose faith in the government’s ability to control the UK’s borders, it is not easy to square a trade deal with India that might make it easier for citizens of that country to gain entry to the UK.
The Tory party, however, has not changed as much as the UK. In 2019 most Conservative members were willing to countenance the destruction of their party to achieve Brexit. Mr Sunak, who was a Brexiter in 2016, is now having to clean up a mess that he helped to create. But neither the prime minister nor any of his ambitious rivals can ever admit this in public – or even perhaps to themselves, given the emotional and ideological sunk costs involved. Nigel Farage’s ability to wreak havoc in Tory ranks is another reason the party is still in favour of Brexit and won’t change its mind.
Rejoining is probably a hard sell for the EU. Brussels gets the better end of the “trade and cooperation agreement”, as it helps goods exports but does little for services, Britain’s strength. Better, more equitable relations might be obtained in 2025 with the five-year review of the agreement. The dream of Brexit’s sunlit uplands has died. Britain has woken to a more prosaic view: that whoever wins the next election will be moving towards closer relations with Brussels, not moving further away.
