> #Brexit was a disaster – now Starmer dares to admit it
>
> **Who on earth could claim that Brexit has been a success?**
>
> October 01, 2025 5:23 pm (Updated 7:41 pm)
>
>
> It’s the first time in a very long time that the Prime Minister has spoken critically about Brexit (Photo: Suzanne Plunkett/AFP)
>
>
> If someone does something once, it might be an accident. If they do it twice, it suggests a habit. But if they do it three times, it’s a communication strategy.
>
> Keir Starmer said something rather noticeable in his speech yesterday. He mocked the politicians who’d told voters that “Brexit lies on the side of that bus, click here for your new country”. That made the ears prick up. It’s the first time in a very long time that the Prime Minister has spoken critically about Brexit.
>
> You know he opposes it. He’s a human rights lawyer from north London. But he is usually too straitjacketed by Labour’s electoral strategy to say so publicly. Perhaps it was an accident, then. A slip of the tongue. Perhaps he let his feelings out by mistake and would keep them better concealed in future.
>
> Then, moments later, he did it again. The “self-appointed champions of working people”, he said, “lied to this country, unleashed chaos and walked away after Brexit”.
>
> Oh. So it wasn’t an accident. It was a habit. Then last night in an interview with GB News – of all people – he went even further. When we were in the EU, Britain had a returns agreement with the EU on asylum, he pointed out. Farage “told the country it will make no difference if we left – well, he was wrong about that”. The small boats were therefore “Farage Boats”.
>
> That makes it a communication strategy. You don’t do the same thing three times in 24 hours by accident. And that suggests something profound: that the view of Brexit as a failure is now settled. It has ossified into a national consensus, without us ever really realising it was happening. Even the Labour leadership, which is usually petrified of this issue, believes it can safely criticise it.
>
>
> During the Brexit wars, Remainers would ask themselves when people would realise it was a mistake. The moment stubbornly refused to arrive. The value of sterling collapsed. The EU comprehensively out-negotiated us. Our political system fell into chaos. Small businesses went bust. None of it seemed to move the dial.
>
> The truth is, people are terrible at owning up to their mistakes. They very rarely admit that they were wrong about something. Instead, they turn into mini-Stalins, expunging their historical record and replacing it with one in which they were always right. People have very poor memories, especially when it comes to their own errors.
>
> Take the Iraq War. Nowadays, everyone seems to have been against it. They always knew it would be a disaster. They’d always thought so.
>
> But this is not how it felt at the time. Back then, there was broad and animated support for the war. The Telegraph, Times, Mail, Sun, Express and Star all supported the war. With a combined circulation of 9.4 million, they massively outweighed the three papers opposing the war – the Guardian, Independent and Mirror – which had a combined audience of 2.7 million.
>
> YouGov conducted 21 polls between March and December 2003, asking whether people supported the war. On average, 54 per cent of Brits thought it was right. Now, that figure has plummeted, with just 23 per cent of people thinking it was right.
>
> Fine, so people changed their minds. Well, not quite. That would have involved a degree of honest introspection most people are incapable of. Instead, they simply rearranged the past so that it reflected their newfound view.
>
> When YouGov asked people in 2015 what their opinions of war in Iraq were at the time, just 37 per cent said they supported military action, an astonishing drop from the figures at the time. The effect is even more dramatic in the US. At the time of the war, 63 per cent of people backed the invasion. But a few years later, just 38 per cent recalled doing so.
>
> Slowly but surely, the same thing seems to be happening with Brexit. There was no one central event, no great moment of epiphany in which the nation realised what an error the whole thing was. But slowly, like rising damp, a sense of disdain, mockery and disappointment has taken over. A settled view has developed, without drama or surprise, without anyone even really noticing that it’s happening.
>
> Who on earth could claim that Brexit has been a success? Who could name a single benefit it has provided? Who could look at the promises made before the referendum and treat them with anything but bitter laughter now we know how it turned out?
>
> People will find different ways of framing their box-fresh opposition. They’ll say politicians missed the opportunities, or we had bad leadership, or the EU sabotaged us. But the truth is, it was a failure because it was a bad idea. It’s no more complicated than that. Voters were convinced to support a project to give the political class a kicking. In fact, they simply damaged themselves and their livelihoods.
>
> None of that really matters anymore. What matters is that an anti-Brexit consensus helps us repair the damage.
>
> Labour is not about to commit to rejoining the EU. Of course not. But it is pursuing a plan for a really quite intimate relationship with it: regulatory alignment in many areas, deep cooperation on defence, and now the Chancellor is confidently promoting an extensive youth mobility scheme – something which the party was reticent about supporting just a few months ago.
>
> That’ll do for now. But as the consensus grows and Labour becomes more confident in criticising Brexit, the possibilities grow for the kinds of things we can demand in a few years’ time, perhaps in time for the next election. Single market membership, perhaps, or the customs union, or a bespoke arrangement like Switzerland has. Or perhaps even full-blown membership.
>
> Brexit was always a terrible mistake. But now, at least, people recognise it. And with that, things might just start to improve.
>
Hasn’t he explicitly said this multiple times? He voted Remain, from what I recall.
He had little choice. He couldn’t overtly criticise the majority of voters, dumb and gullible as they were.
History will show him as being be in an truly unenviable position.
Interesting use of the past tense there.
It still is very much an ongoing disaster.
Didn’t the Guardian support the Iraq War (at least to begin with)?
Much of the OP makes sense but I think there’s an oversimplified conflation of ‘left wing newspapers’ and ‘opposition to the Iraq War’
If we were to grant the UK privileged access without full adherence to the common rules, we would create a dangerous precedent and other countries could demand the same treatment, undermining the cohesion of the EU.
Is there anybody that thinks it was a success?
Yet for some reason i will never understand, Farage, instead of being dragged through the streets in tar and feathers, is more popular than ever.
Better late than never!
Might be a blessing in disguise for the rest of Europe if the reform party gets in to power.
Don’t make a big thing out of it, just participate in defense, join the various EU partnerships, implement the regulations. Follow Norway’s example. Then in a few years it is no longer an issue.
I think the pro-europe crowd gave done well to frame Brexit success as purely economic.
Brexit was never going to improve the economy but it was also about a lot more than that.
> Brexit was always a terrible mistake. But now, at least, people recognise it.
They don’t. Nigel Farage will be the UK’s next PM. If the people recognised it, they wouldn’t vote for the person who embodied brexit.
Brexit is the worst mistake that Britain had ever done in its modern history. The country literally been lied on and handicapped itself. I will forever blame Reform / UKIP and the Tories as well as their supporters for this mess. We are all struggling now because of some stupid people’s decision making.
Now watch them elect Reform UK to make up for it.
He’s not a tory so why would he miss an opportunity to highlight where it all went wrong
But Nigel Garage…
If only there had been some way to predict this.
brexit was a disaster, shouldnt that read brexit management was a disaster!
Brexit was indeed a mistake, but now they’re going to make an even bigger mistake. They’re going to elect the people who pushed Brexit, and that will be harder to reverse. I really hope they don’t belong to Europe again for the next 100 years.
Why “admit”? This entire bullshit move was entirely Farage and the Tories fault, bash them over the head with it and make getting back in a 2029 election promise!
The British surrendered so much for that crazy Brexit and have received nothing good in return.
What, leaving the biggest common market in the world is… bad? Who could have known.
So why don’t they rejoin EU? We would gladly take them back and give them a hug.
A politician says his predecessors made mistakes… how brave. LMAO
Please warn the Alberta separatists in Canada about this. Please
Final nail Brexit
We have compulsory voting here in Australia,, no vote, no winge
Yet stinky fromage leas in the pols.
To this day it baffles me how Farage is so popular. Creates a problem (Brexit), manages to avoid major criticism as he’s NEVER assumed any meaningful position of power, and the runs on lies and hate to garner votes.
I was just one year off voting on the Brexit vote and feel like a big decision was made that my generation has to deal with. I don’t understand why Brexit is not a major talking point anymore (maybe apathy? No appetite?).
I am very much in favour of re-joining the EU but it seems a distant dream. Maybe small steps
We shouldn’t have been given the option – I don’t understand WHY we had a referendum on it, British voters have been voting for less immigration since the 60s, it’s never been taken seriously, so why did we (the idiot masses) get the option to leave something that was generally beneficial? We knew how it was gonna go.
31 comments
> #Brexit was a disaster – now Starmer dares to admit it
>
> **Who on earth could claim that Brexit has been a success?**
>
> October 01, 2025 5:23 pm (Updated 7:41 pm)
>
>
> It’s the first time in a very long time that the Prime Minister has spoken critically about Brexit (Photo: Suzanne Plunkett/AFP)
>
>
> If someone does something once, it might be an accident. If they do it twice, it suggests a habit. But if they do it three times, it’s a communication strategy.
>
> Keir Starmer said something rather noticeable in his speech yesterday. He mocked the politicians who’d told voters that “Brexit lies on the side of that bus, click here for your new country”. That made the ears prick up. It’s the first time in a very long time that the Prime Minister has spoken critically about Brexit.
>
> You know he opposes it. He’s a human rights lawyer from north London. But he is usually too straitjacketed by Labour’s electoral strategy to say so publicly. Perhaps it was an accident, then. A slip of the tongue. Perhaps he let his feelings out by mistake and would keep them better concealed in future.
>
> Then, moments later, he did it again. The “self-appointed champions of working people”, he said, “lied to this country, unleashed chaos and walked away after Brexit”.
>
> Oh. So it wasn’t an accident. It was a habit. Then last night in an interview with GB News – of all people – he went even further. When we were in the EU, Britain had a returns agreement with the EU on asylum, he pointed out. Farage “told the country it will make no difference if we left – well, he was wrong about that”. The small boats were therefore “Farage Boats”.
>
> That makes it a communication strategy. You don’t do the same thing three times in 24 hours by accident. And that suggests something profound: that the view of Brexit as a failure is now settled. It has ossified into a national consensus, without us ever really realising it was happening. Even the Labour leadership, which is usually petrified of this issue, believes it can safely criticise it.
>
>
> During the Brexit wars, Remainers would ask themselves when people would realise it was a mistake. The moment stubbornly refused to arrive. The value of sterling collapsed. The EU comprehensively out-negotiated us. Our political system fell into chaos. Small businesses went bust. None of it seemed to move the dial.
>
> The truth is, people are terrible at owning up to their mistakes. They very rarely admit that they were wrong about something. Instead, they turn into mini-Stalins, expunging their historical record and replacing it with one in which they were always right. People have very poor memories, especially when it comes to their own errors.
>
> Take the Iraq War. Nowadays, everyone seems to have been against it. They always knew it would be a disaster. They’d always thought so.
>
> But this is not how it felt at the time. Back then, there was broad and animated support for the war. The Telegraph, Times, Mail, Sun, Express and Star all supported the war. With a combined circulation of 9.4 million, they massively outweighed the three papers opposing the war – the Guardian, Independent and Mirror – which had a combined audience of 2.7 million.
>
> YouGov conducted 21 polls between March and December 2003, asking whether people supported the war. On average, 54 per cent of Brits thought it was right. Now, that figure has plummeted, with just 23 per cent of people thinking it was right.
>
> Fine, so people changed their minds. Well, not quite. That would have involved a degree of honest introspection most people are incapable of. Instead, they simply rearranged the past so that it reflected their newfound view.
>
> When YouGov asked people in 2015 what their opinions of war in Iraq were at the time, just 37 per cent said they supported military action, an astonishing drop from the figures at the time. The effect is even more dramatic in the US. At the time of the war, 63 per cent of people backed the invasion. But a few years later, just 38 per cent recalled doing so.
>
> Slowly but surely, the same thing seems to be happening with Brexit. There was no one central event, no great moment of epiphany in which the nation realised what an error the whole thing was. But slowly, like rising damp, a sense of disdain, mockery and disappointment has taken over. A settled view has developed, without drama or surprise, without anyone even really noticing that it’s happening.
>
> Who on earth could claim that Brexit has been a success? Who could name a single benefit it has provided? Who could look at the promises made before the referendum and treat them with anything but bitter laughter now we know how it turned out?
>
> People will find different ways of framing their box-fresh opposition. They’ll say politicians missed the opportunities, or we had bad leadership, or the EU sabotaged us. But the truth is, it was a failure because it was a bad idea. It’s no more complicated than that. Voters were convinced to support a project to give the political class a kicking. In fact, they simply damaged themselves and their livelihoods.
>
> None of that really matters anymore. What matters is that an anti-Brexit consensus helps us repair the damage.
>
> Labour is not about to commit to rejoining the EU. Of course not. But it is pursuing a plan for a really quite intimate relationship with it: regulatory alignment in many areas, deep cooperation on defence, and now the Chancellor is confidently promoting an extensive youth mobility scheme – something which the party was reticent about supporting just a few months ago.
>
> That’ll do for now. But as the consensus grows and Labour becomes more confident in criticising Brexit, the possibilities grow for the kinds of things we can demand in a few years’ time, perhaps in time for the next election. Single market membership, perhaps, or the customs union, or a bespoke arrangement like Switzerland has. Or perhaps even full-blown membership.
>
> Brexit was always a terrible mistake. But now, at least, people recognise it. And with that, things might just start to improve.
>
Hasn’t he explicitly said this multiple times? He voted Remain, from what I recall.
He had little choice. He couldn’t overtly criticise the majority of voters, dumb and gullible as they were.
History will show him as being be in an truly unenviable position.
Interesting use of the past tense there.
It still is very much an ongoing disaster.
Didn’t the Guardian support the Iraq War (at least to begin with)?
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/jan/19/leaders.politics
Much of the OP makes sense but I think there’s an oversimplified conflation of ‘left wing newspapers’ and ‘opposition to the Iraq War’
If we were to grant the UK privileged access without full adherence to the common rules, we would create a dangerous precedent and other countries could demand the same treatment, undermining the cohesion of the EU.
Is there anybody that thinks it was a success?
Yet for some reason i will never understand, Farage, instead of being dragged through the streets in tar and feathers, is more popular than ever.
Better late than never!
Might be a blessing in disguise for the rest of Europe if the reform party gets in to power.
Don’t make a big thing out of it, just participate in defense, join the various EU partnerships, implement the regulations. Follow Norway’s example. Then in a few years it is no longer an issue.
I think the pro-europe crowd gave done well to frame Brexit success as purely economic.
Brexit was never going to improve the economy but it was also about a lot more than that.
> Brexit was always a terrible mistake. But now, at least, people recognise it.
They don’t. Nigel Farage will be the UK’s next PM. If the people recognised it, they wouldn’t vote for the person who embodied brexit.
Brexit is the worst mistake that Britain had ever done in its modern history. The country literally been lied on and handicapped itself. I will forever blame Reform / UKIP and the Tories as well as their supporters for this mess. We are all struggling now because of some stupid people’s decision making.
Now watch them elect Reform UK to make up for it.
He’s not a tory so why would he miss an opportunity to highlight where it all went wrong
But Nigel Garage…
If only there had been some way to predict this.
brexit was a disaster, shouldnt that read brexit management was a disaster!
Brexit was indeed a mistake, but now they’re going to make an even bigger mistake. They’re going to elect the people who pushed Brexit, and that will be harder to reverse. I really hope they don’t belong to Europe again for the next 100 years.
Why “admit”? This entire bullshit move was entirely Farage and the Tories fault, bash them over the head with it and make getting back in a 2029 election promise!
The British surrendered so much for that crazy Brexit and have received nothing good in return.
What, leaving the biggest common market in the world is… bad? Who could have known.
So why don’t they rejoin EU? We would gladly take them back and give them a hug.
A politician says his predecessors made mistakes… how brave. LMAO
Please warn the Alberta separatists in Canada about this. Please
Final nail Brexit
We have compulsory voting here in Australia,, no vote, no winge
Yet stinky fromage leas in the pols.
To this day it baffles me how Farage is so popular. Creates a problem (Brexit), manages to avoid major criticism as he’s NEVER assumed any meaningful position of power, and the runs on lies and hate to garner votes.
I was just one year off voting on the Brexit vote and feel like a big decision was made that my generation has to deal with. I don’t understand why Brexit is not a major talking point anymore (maybe apathy? No appetite?).
I am very much in favour of re-joining the EU but it seems a distant dream. Maybe small steps
We shouldn’t have been given the option – I don’t understand WHY we had a referendum on it, British voters have been voting for less immigration since the 60s, it’s never been taken seriously, so why did we (the idiot masses) get the option to leave something that was generally beneficial? We knew how it was gonna go.
Comments are closed.