Let Nigel Farage be our inspiration, let John Redwood be our role model. Not the way they would want, revered as the founding fathers of Brexit, toasted on this day every year as the men who led us to glorious independence from the hated empire of Brussels. Of course not that. On the contrary, 23 June 2016 is a milestone in our national story that evokes sadness and regret rather than celebration.
We don’t need to rehearse on this seventh anniversary all the ways in which Brexit has disappointed even those who voted for it. Farage and Redwood, along with Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg and the rest, promised increased prosperity, cheaper food, flourishing trade and a flush NHS. They said we’d be free of all that tedious European red tape and would take back control of our borders, encouraging anyone agitated by immigration to believe that fewer people would come in. There would be no downside, only upsides. As David Davis pledged soon after the vote, our exit deal would “deliver the exact same benefits” as EU membership.
Look around to see how all that turned out. The country is in the grip of a cost of living crisis, food prices are rocketing, trade is either down or static while it’s surged for our EU neighbours, and the NHS is ailing. Post-Brexit red tape is strangling thousands of small businesses, whether travelling musicians or exporters of goods, tying them up in daunting forms or extra charges that cost time and money they don’t have. Those who thought legal migration of 330,000 people a year was too much when they voted in 2016 now contemplate an annual figure nearly twice as high: 606,000. As for the terms of our exit, ask anyone who buys from, sells to or is stuck in a queue to visit the continent if we enjoy the “exact same benefits” we once did.
These are not remainer facts. They are facts understood and absorbed by a growing majority of the British people, including a good chunk of those who voted leave. As the polling guru John Curtice notes, just 33% of Britons now believe the 2016 decision was the right one, while 55% say it was wrong. More striking still, as many as 59% say they would vote to rejoin the EU if given the chance, with just 41% preferring to stay out.
Combine those two facts – that Brexit has proved to be both disastrous and unpopular – and it’s easy to conclude that it’s only a matter of time before we reverse the decision we took seven years ago today. Indeed, it’s tempting to look at the 41 years that separated the 1975 referendum that sealed our membership and the 2016 ballot that ended it, reflect that politics moves twice as fast as it used to and predict that it will take half the time to undo Brexit – with a vote to rejoin scheduled for late 2036. After all, it is surely unsustainable to continue on a course that an emerging consensus regards as an act of national self-harm.
Except the world is littered with unsustainable situations that are nevertheless sustained, seemingly for ever. And there are multiple obstacles that stand between us and what, to rejoiners, seems like a date with our obvious destiny.
For one thing, the status quo ante those 59% are longing to restore may no longer be available. The 27 remaining nations of the EU will be understandably wary of plunging themselves once more into the on-again-off-again psychodrama of the UK’s relationship to Europe – a drama that is, in fact, about the UK’s relationship to itself, its struggle to see its place in the world as it truly is and to accept being a medium-sized European power rather than the imperial superpower of the recent past. The member states of the EU would need to know that this time it’s for keeps.
If they do entertain talk of UK readmission, it won’t be on the same terms as before. The UK had a sweetheart deal – including a hefty cash rebate, an opt-out on the euro and much more – that the 27 will be reluctant to offer again. Any future referendum is likely to be on a package less appealing than the one Britons cast aside in 2016.
To get to that point, a governing party would first have to put the question. Few are rushing to do that. Labour’s preferred posture is Trappist, hoping to stay mute on the issue lest it unsettle the pro-leave members of its electoral coalition. If it does speak, it is to say that Brexit is done and there will be no change. Even the Liberal Democrats, perhaps eyeing pro-Brexit voters in south-west target seats, keep their mouths shut.
Of course, politics is dynamic and those calculations could change. But given the tortuous process of EU-UK negotiation that would be involved, rejoin is a project that could span two parliaments: which party would willingly commit that much political capital to such an endeavour? Especially when you consider that “Europe” has lost much of its salience. In 2019, 70% rated it as the most important issue facing the country; now just 19% say that.
More poignantly, rejoin is predicated on the notion that Britons miss what they no longer have. What if that feeling dissipates, as memories fade? “A generation brought up without the Erasmus scheme and who find it easier to travel to the US than to the EU will think differently,” says Anand Menon, director of UK in a Changing Europe.
All these obstacles are real. None can be wished away. Which is why rejoiners need to look to the likes of Farage and Redwood for inspiration. The long march from 1975 to 2016 required a dogged, even obsessive, persistence and, as important, a strategic patience. They didn’t move straight to their end goal: before they were Brexiters, they posed as mere Eurosceptics. They were prepared to play the long game, inching incrementally – a rebellion over the Maastricht treaty here, opposition to joining the euro there – towards their ultimate goal of exit. Sad to say, it worked.
Rejoiners should do the same. Start with commonsense, popular demands – say, a new, reciprocal exchange scheme for young people, closer cooperation on security or shared food safety and environmental standards – moves only an ideologue could oppose. A review of the EU-UK trade agreement is due to start in 2026: with a Labour government in place, that could be the vehicle for steady, gradual convergence. After that, the Overton window could be sufficiently open to let in a conversation about re-entering the customs union and the single market. And once you’re talking about that, rejoining the EU itself becomes the natural course of action.
Step by step by step. Mocked and on the margins at first, dismissed as unrealistic or swivel-eyed, prepared to be a Europe bore – the Brexiters showed us how it’s done and what it takes. It might be harder for us than it was for them. We have the young, but they had the old and the old vote. We have facts, but they had myths, and myths are often more potent. Still, theirs is a path worth studying. It led them to a rupture from our neighbours. It might just lead us to a reunion.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
