Britain is now irrationally terrified of freedom. It should just rejoin the EU – Even as a Brexiteer, I’m starting to think the time has come to cut our losses and embrace the security of the Brussels fold
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/01/britain-is-now-terrified-of-freedom-it-should-rejoin-the-eu/
by ByGollie
31 comments
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> To call it a farce does not even come close. The Brexit saga has tipped into the realms of national tragedy. For some reason, it is taboo for Leavers such as myself to admit that the project has been a calamity. When it comes to “The B Word”, British politics has become gripped by a kind of “violence of silence” – with politicians and voters alike reluctant to confront the fallout from the country’s mangled, halfway situation. But after a trip to the Devon fishing town of Brixham, I am more compelled than ever to be blunt.
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> On the one hand, Brixham represents our country at its best. It exudes an understated dynamism and a keen sense of national identity. In the morning, trawlermen watch their catch being auctioned at Brixham’s world-leading, state-of-the-art fish market. In the evening they pour into the Sprat and Mackerel where the landlord has been known to pour pints in his slippers and Wi-Fi is banned. (“We Talk to Each Other” read the signs.) In the restaurants visitors feast on the hake, gurnard and cuttlefish prolific in Channel waters (as opposed to mass-imported cod that has, in some twist of insanity, become our national dish).
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> Sadly, Brixham also captures everything that is wrong with this country. Tory Brexiteers promised that leaving the EU would allow Britain to “take back control” of its waters, and enable our fishermen to feast on a “sea of opportunity”. Instead, the fishermen of Brixham told me that they are at the mercy on a daily basis “to whatever side of the bed French customs get up on” and are “drowning in red tape”. They are in despair, as Defra – with a zeal reminiscent of Brussels bureaucrats – slaps questionable quotas on fish, from cuttlefish to pollack. As one skipper, Tom, who voted Leave, told me: “To be honest it ain’t much better, because we’ve still got the same people in government who were there before, who have still got the EU ideology.”
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> It is not just the fishing industry that is reeling from the botched Brexit. In recent weeks, Britain’s trade talks with Canada have gone over the cliff, and the wine industry has warned that the new Brexit alcohol duty regime is “unworkable”. Tory efforts to introduce border checks for goods of animal and plant origin are becoming a fiasco.
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> As Brexit trade chaos worsens, the deregulatory dreams of Tory Leavers fade. In January 2023, we were once again promised a bonfire of red tape. Within a few months, the pledge to scrap 4,000 EU laws had been completely watered down.
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> The question is why Brexit has spectacularly failed. Of course, the conventional Remainer wisdom is that it was doomed from the start. But this neglects the elephant in the room: as it turns out, Britain is terrified of freedom.
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> Much of this fear is harboured by the elites. Whitehall is terrified of allowing our fishing industry to thrive, lest trawlers decimate the ecosystem. Defra officials – working within a bureaucracy that incentivises error avoidance over public service – are afraid to use their common sense on fishing quotas.
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> Britain is equally terrified of free trade, lest it plunges us into a libertarian dystopia awash with cancerous meat and alcoholism. Canadian negotiators have walked away because the UK Government, beholden to this country’s protectionist farming lobby, refuses to allow Canadian farmers to sell hormone-treated beef here. Some 10kg of steroid-implanted cow has about as much extra oestrogen as a boiled egg. It is the chlorinated chicken hysteria all over again. The new Brexit alcohol duty regime that links rates to specific alcohol strength outdoes Brussels in its convoluted paternalism.
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> Most striking of all is that we are petrified of seizing on the biggest opportunity presented by Brexit and becoming an AI superpower. Parliament is growing sceptical that Britain can pursue a lighter regulatory approach to AI without degenerating into an America-style “Wild Wild West”. Hollywood fears that AI will exterminate humanity are starting to intermingle toxically with our Christian-socialist suspicion of “tax dodging” big tech egos. When it comes to leading the world on AI healthcare, privacy concerns are turning policymakers and voters queasy about leveraging our trump card – which is the NHS’s possession of the world’s single biggest and most detailed collection of health records
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> At some point we need to be honest with ourselves. If, as a nation, we are unwilling to maximally benefit from Brexit by leveraging our freedom, then we should decisively minimise our losses and re-enter the security of the EU fold. If we’re not going to improve on the EU fishing quota system, then we might as well go back in, so that fishermen can at least smoothly export their fish across the Continent. If we don’t actually want to strike free trade deals, then we should rejoin the EU protectionist racket, and let Brussels use its market heft to prop up our unproductive sectors. If we are unwilling to become a world leader in AI innovation, then we should throw our lot in with the EU as it aims to become the global leader in AI regulation.
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> If the ruling class is out of its depth using tax breaks and moonshot projects to seduce multinationals into building the super processors needed to train large AI models on UK soil, then we had better fall in with the EU’s vaguely forming plan to build one giant pooled data bank, for machine learning firms to feast on.
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> Similarly, if we are not going to fight for freedom on the global stage by forging a new model for liberty in the 21st century, then we should at least do our bit for Western security by reclaiming our disproportionate sway over EU foreign policy – not least given its shifting stance towards Russia.
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> What we categorically should not do is go on pretending that the country can afford to live with a halfway Brexit. The soft-Remainer view that Keir Starmer might be able to negotiate a superior, closer deal with the EU, while remaining outside the single market, is deluded. Having outwitted British negotiators into signing an agreement almost entirely on Brussels’ terms, the EU has little incentive to reopen talks.
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> Equally, the view that the symbolic or theoretical regaining of British liberty makes it all worthwhile is based on a flawed idea of freedom. True liberty is not simply a principle of non interference, or “freedom from”. It is also the “freedom to” – the liberty to act, to build, to progress. Without the latter dimension, Brexit “freedom” is meaningless. And in this high stakes era, as we teeter on the brink of both an AI revolution and a geopolitical dark age, it is dangerous.
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No, stay away.
Britain is scared of woke sausage rolls. We’re finished.
Tories once again confuse populist dreams with reality. It’s simple to promise „bonfire of regulations” unless you actually go through those regulations and figure out that vast majority of them is there for a reason. It’s easy to promise „AI superpower” if you naively think that „regulations” are the whole problem. There were no regulations at all until recently so why US and China are AI superpowers and not UK (or EU for that matter) ?
As usual fiasco of brexit (at leat they finally admit) is attributed to it being „not real brexit” with malign spirit of EU somehow infecting Tory elites who have become „terrified of freedom”. Think brexit went bad? Obviously the real solution is to exit even harder. And when this fails, attach some tugs to British Isles and tow them into middle of Atlantic. Maybe this will be finally hard enough brexit?
This “journalist” is an absolute joke…
Brexit has failed miserably and the UK will backtrack for the next 10 years.
But we don’t really want you guys back. Give us another 50 years first to build a better EU.
And you realize that you’ll get the euro and schegen and no special privileges?
Tracking the dawning realisation by Sherelle
* [Why the battle for Brexit is now a fight to save Western democracy](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/01/25/battle-brexit-now-fight-save-western-democracy/) – Sherelle Jacobs – January 2019
* [This chaotic global era will be a golden age for an independent Brexit Britain](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/08/22/chaotic-global-era-will-golden-age-independent-brexit-britain/) – Sherelle Jacobs – August 2019
* [Brexit Day marks a historic people’s victory against the reeling metropolitan elite](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/01/31/brexit-day-marks-historic-peoples-victory-against-reeling-metropolitan/) – Sherelle Jacobs – January 2020
* [This imperfect Brexit deal means the battle to truly Leave has only just begun](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/12/31/imperfect-brexit-deal-means-battle-truly-leave-has-just-begun/) – This flawed settlement contains all the ingredients for Remainers to work towards ever-closer EU alignment – Sherelle Jacobs – December 2020
* [The EU is a failed empire that has condemned itself to irrelevance](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/10/18/eu-obsolete-empire-has-condemned-irrelevance/) – Every day brings a fresh reminder that the UK was lucky to escape when it still had the opportunity – Sherelle Jacobs – October 2021
* [I’m beginning to fear that Brexit will be crushed](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/08/beginning-fear-brexit-will-crushed/) – Sherelle Jacobs – July 2022
* [Britain is going to rejoin the EU far sooner than anyone now imagines](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/01/16/britain-going-rejoin-eu-farsooner-anyone-now-imagines/) – It is the Tories’ greatest betrayal: they have made such a hash of the project it is probably unsalvageable – Sherelle Jacobs – January 2023
* [Brexit is finally dead – and the Tory party will soon suffer the same fate](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/13/brexit-finally-dead-tory-party-will-soon-suffer-fate/) – Sherelle Jacobs – February 2023
* [Britain isn’t in ‘managed’ decline. The country is about to fall off a cliff](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/07/britain-isnt-managed-decline-it-is-about-to-fall-off-cliff/) – Sherelle Jacobs – August 2023
* [Britain is now irrationally terrified of freedom. It should just rejoin the EU](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/01/britain-is-now-terrified-of-freedom-it-should-rejoin-the-eu/) – Even as a Brexiteer, I’m starting to think the time has come to cut our losses and embrace the security of the Brussels fold – Sherelle Jacobs – April 2024
Nah, we’re good.
Britain can come back and join the EU, no hard feelings. But all the fishing waters will go to the French and Northern Ireland will be reunited with Belgium.
Its just a shame all the games British politicians played between 2017 and 2019 in their efforts to stop Brexit well and truly poisoned the EU well.
The columnist is ranting after a read of the article….
At this point I honestly think UK should rejoin even if EU would have to grant many of the same exceptions UK had before, I’m sure many would make a fuss about it but realistically UK would be still a very worthy member and it’s also important aspect of European security.
It’s a shame it probably won’t happen because there’s way too much pride to swallow.
The UK can’t really come back. At least not yet. Even if the next government is Labour, we couldn’t be sure that the next time the Tories have power they do the next weird thing and try the whole thing again.
One of the issues of the UK Government is the serious lack of planning beyond the next election. Just take a look at the leveling up program and how bad they did that.
There would have have to be ways to make sure they couldn’t just go rogue anytime they want to extract the money out of their population to give it to the greedy chaos libertarians
This is such a backhanded way of saying ” I was wrong to club that seal, but the only reason I was wrong is because we didn’t club it enough”.
Will the eu let uk in ? Doubt it
Not the same UK as in the past… not sure if good idea to rejoin.
It’s a moot point, since neither Labour nor the Tories will pursue that goal in the foreseeable future. I personally voted Remain, but Brexit was voted for, it happened, and now we have to make the best of it.
Please try not to paint us *all* with the ‘Hurrdurr stoopid Brits’ brush, though.
The EU, once again, is not there to resolve your internal political issues…
Only when they accept €’s and metrics 🙃
Yes, accept the Eypo
Every time we have this type of post I start to remember why I was in favour of continuing to distance ourselves from Europe’s problems.
It’s like reading the thoughts of a deranged ex with some of you lot. We are stronger together but sure let’s keep having a paddy.
It’s one of those fallen empire problems. As an Austrian that grew up in Britain with a deep connection to the country, I see a lot of parallels.
It’s the problem when you still see yourself as the hot 20 year old that is full of ideas, everyone wants to be around you and youre the most important person. But really, you’re at best the balding uncle people accept at the Party.
People have a sense of pride and accomplishment for what used to be, but it’s really just gone and the World is something completely different.
Though it’s not sure the E.U. will agree to take the UK back on board. And even if in the end they do agree eventually to take them back, England won’t have same treatment as before.
With Brexit the UK lost all their privileges and dominant position they accumulated in 51 years. Their former position and power shifted to countries like France and Germany.
They will be treated like just any other applicant, and worse than the minor countries there.
Waiting for the older voters to die off before we rejoin.
Considering this was posted on the 1st, how sure is everyone that this isn’t just an April Fools bit?
So you say once again Britain should do what Britain wants, in Britain’s sole interest, until next time when Brits think they can save 2 pounds if they Brexit again, because EU has saloon doors and Britain doesn’t give a shit about the rest of EU about what EU stands for?
As a Canadian, I was mystified by the reasons for the collapse of the Canada-UK free trade talks. It makes my eyes roll into the back of my head, honestly. We even managed a free trade deal with the EU, despite that moment of uncertainty over Walloon reticence, but it got done.
Brexiteers still saying that they didn’t do Brexit right. They should be given new opportunities to mess up their country even more. 4 years in and they learned nothing.
If you have issues understanding the concept of infinity then watch the Brexiteers rhetorics closely as it never ends despite facts and reality.
There is no way in hell that they will ever backtrack this. Brits are too proud to ever admit they were wrong about something, let alone on a national scale.
Neither mainstream UK party is advocating to re-join the EU.
Move on.
If you’re coming back you’re going to have take the pound down and also get on your knees !