The British political summer has been cancelled as Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss tour the country competing to see which of them can offer the more authoritarian, backward-looking vision of Britain to the Conservative Party membership. Keir Starmer has filled the Tory integrity vacuum with a significant speech on economic policy. Yet for all this political activity there is a major question that is going unasked. Brexit has dominated British politics for six years, but it doesn’t make sense for anyone to talk about it.
The Conservative Party is a long way from being able to admit that Brexit is not working out. For some in the party, who simply desired the abstraction of returned sovereignty, Brexit cannot go wrong. If you believe power should reside in Britain then it doesn’t much matter what the practical consequences are. So what if there is a queue of lorries at Dover? You can always pass on the blame to French officials and their irritating habit of stamping our passports, just as we insisted that they should do.
In the debates and hustings of the leadership contest so far Truss and Sunak have not been asked to engage with Brexit in any serious way. In their BBC debate they were asked only one question on it and that was in the one-word answer section. Was Brexit to blame for the queues at Dover, they were asked? Given the nature of their audience they could hardly do anything other than pretend and say no, which is what they both did. At a hustings in Leeds, Truss was asked about businesses that can’t get enough staff but she simply denied that Brexit was the cause.
A party that has invested so much in such a policy cannot yet concede that it might not be all it was supposed to be. The referendum debate was so bitter, and so reduced to cliches such as “Project Fear”, that a lot more time will have to pass before anyone can change their mind. One day a senior figure on the Brexit side of the argument will reflect that it wasn’t, in the event, really worth the candle. It will be a moment reminiscent of the speech Theresa May made in Bournemouth in 2002 in which she told the assembled Conservative Party that the rest of the country regarded it as nasty. In retrospect, this looks like the moment that the Tories began their return to serious politics. It came five years into a spell in opposition. It might require the same this time before any senior Tory dares to broach the obvious.
By then, of course, it may sound like ancient history. The paradox of Brexit was that, politically speaking, it was always a revolution that arrived too slowly. Brexit was not, as the Remain side always characterised it, a “cliff-edge”. It was never going to be as cataclysmic as that, or as fatal. Brexit would have been better described as a long slide down to nowhere. But that does make it hard to capitalise on. It just isn’t often dramatic enough and it is always possible to muddy the causation by pointing to other proximate reasons for economic problems – Covid-19, global growth rates, the war in Ukraine. Just when it comes into view Brexit, like Macavity, disappears again. This is probably the best hope for the Conservative Party. That out of boredom we all simply forget what they did.
Certainly, there doesn’t seem to be much chance of the Labour Party reminding anyone. After being the shadow Brexit secretary who led the campaign for a second referendum, Starmer immediately shut the issue down on becoming leader. It has to be said that he was unequivocally right to do so. In 2019 Brexit was an electoral disaster for Labour. If Starmer is to find his way into Downing Street then the party needs to win back people who voted to leave the European Union but who have since became disillusioned with the Conservatives. Not many of those people have yet concluded that they made a mistake in the referendum so it would be a poor electoral strategy to tell them that they did.
At the same time, Labour’s core vote is still very annoyed about the issue. It is pressing Starmer to say more yet still he resists. In his economic speech last week Starmer did consider Brexit but his remarks were careful and judicious, cleverly designed to alienate nobody. There was none of the fire and brimstone that some of the unrepentant Remainers in the party are demanding. It will be a long while yet before Labour wants to open the Brexit conversation.
The long silence has in fact been protracted further by the campaign for a second referendum. If the Remain side had simply accepted the Leave vote with good grace and gone quiet for a spell then it might have been possible by now to raise the prospect of rejoining the single market or the customs union. As it is, there is nobody with the authority to make this entirely sensible argument. The absurd second referendum campaign, which never had the slightest chance of securing its objective, has set back the cause of a sensible relationship with Europe by years.
That then provides an opportunity for the Liberal Democrats. If there is one advantage of not being a genuine candidate for victory, it is that you can be candid about what is going on. Yet on this, which should be the party’s signature issue, the Lib Dems are not especially vocal. There is a constituency that is available to hear that Brexit is a disaster and the Lib Dems are well placed to bring them together. It is a measure of the oddity of British politics today that nobody can talk about the question that has transformed politics. We shall have to hope that the Liberal Democrats find their voice.
No need to. Brexit was a decision taken over six years ago so we move on with what we’ve got, who ever is in government.
When Tories fail in next elections and grown ups take control
When the eu collapses in the recession next year.
I think in Scotland are tryng to exit Brexitland…
Every other thread on r/unitedkingdom is about Brexit.
You never bloody stop. Get over it.
If you forget/ignore the mistakes of the past you are doomed to repeat them.
[deleted]
Have we stoped?
Did we ever stop?
We are talking about it, it is just that too many people still think everything is fine. It is no different to COVID or climate change, everything is fine because they think so, not because of any evidence suggesting it is. The realities of Brexit are still happening and some of the effects will be slow, such as reduced economic output over several years, so ordinary people are not yet severely affected. They won’t talk about Brexit until they are seriously affected in a way they can feel, other than long queues at customs in Benidorm.
The obsessives never stop bloody talking about it.
I always find it interesting, how the more radical remainers/rejoiners think we are gonna waltz back into the EU into a situation we had before. We won’t be getting a rebate, we won’t be getting immigration controls, we won’t be getting the veto or opt outs of policy, we won’t be able to keep our currency. Those things (i.e. full membership) will push a lot of people into voting against it and we won’t be able to re join without a referendum.
No politician on Earth could effectively sell that as the best option to the majority of the British electorate, it just isn’t realistic. It just won’t fly with the media or many over 25. We voted to leave with perhaps the best possible form of membership cultivated over decades to fit a large amount of what the public and UK Governments wanted. We will never get that back. I don’t see us ever rejoining in the next 40 years, under the current terms the EU will offer.
Best the rejoiners can do is accept joining the customs union or single market as their best option and focus on negotiating that type of deal and arguing for it with brexiteers, rather than outright rejoining. This is essentially what Starmer is after and imo is the best thing on the table for rejoiners. The more time that passes the less likely this is, particularly with things like Truss’s “bonfire of EU regulations”.
You just did.
When the remoaners stop lying.
Never I hope, we can’t go through it again. We need to move forward.
17 comments
The British political summer has been cancelled as Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss tour the country competing to see which of them can offer the more authoritarian, backward-looking vision of Britain to the Conservative Party membership. Keir Starmer has filled the Tory integrity vacuum with a significant speech on economic policy. Yet for all this political activity there is a major question that is going unasked. Brexit has dominated British politics for six years, but it doesn’t make sense for anyone to talk about it.
The Conservative Party is a long way from being able to admit that Brexit is not working out. For some in the party, who simply desired the abstraction of returned sovereignty, Brexit cannot go wrong. If you believe power should reside in Britain then it doesn’t much matter what the practical consequences are. So what if there is a queue of lorries at Dover? You can always pass on the blame to French officials and their irritating habit of stamping our passports, just as we insisted that they should do.
In the debates and hustings of the leadership contest so far Truss and Sunak have not been asked to engage with Brexit in any serious way. In their BBC debate they were asked only one question on it and that was in the one-word answer section. Was Brexit to blame for the queues at Dover, they were asked? Given the nature of their audience they could hardly do anything other than pretend and say no, which is what they both did. At a hustings in Leeds, Truss was asked about businesses that can’t get enough staff but she simply denied that Brexit was the cause.
A party that has invested so much in such a policy cannot yet concede that it might not be all it was supposed to be. The referendum debate was so bitter, and so reduced to cliches such as “Project Fear”, that a lot more time will have to pass before anyone can change their mind. One day a senior figure on the Brexit side of the argument will reflect that it wasn’t, in the event, really worth the candle. It will be a moment reminiscent of the speech Theresa May made in Bournemouth in 2002 in which she told the assembled Conservative Party that the rest of the country regarded it as nasty. In retrospect, this looks like the moment that the Tories began their return to serious politics. It came five years into a spell in opposition. It might require the same this time before any senior Tory dares to broach the obvious.
By then, of course, it may sound like ancient history. The paradox of Brexit was that, politically speaking, it was always a revolution that arrived too slowly. Brexit was not, as the Remain side always characterised it, a “cliff-edge”. It was never going to be as cataclysmic as that, or as fatal. Brexit would have been better described as a long slide down to nowhere. But that does make it hard to capitalise on. It just isn’t often dramatic enough and it is always possible to muddy the causation by pointing to other proximate reasons for economic problems – Covid-19, global growth rates, the war in Ukraine. Just when it comes into view Brexit, like Macavity, disappears again. This is probably the best hope for the Conservative Party. That out of boredom we all simply forget what they did.
Certainly, there doesn’t seem to be much chance of the Labour Party reminding anyone. After being the shadow Brexit secretary who led the campaign for a second referendum, Starmer immediately shut the issue down on becoming leader. It has to be said that he was unequivocally right to do so. In 2019 Brexit was an electoral disaster for Labour. If Starmer is to find his way into Downing Street then the party needs to win back people who voted to leave the European Union but who have since became disillusioned with the Conservatives. Not many of those people have yet concluded that they made a mistake in the referendum so it would be a poor electoral strategy to tell them that they did.
At the same time, Labour’s core vote is still very annoyed about the issue. It is pressing Starmer to say more yet still he resists. In his economic speech last week Starmer did consider Brexit but his remarks were careful and judicious, cleverly designed to alienate nobody. There was none of the fire and brimstone that some of the unrepentant Remainers in the party are demanding. It will be a long while yet before Labour wants to open the Brexit conversation.
The long silence has in fact been protracted further by the campaign for a second referendum. If the Remain side had simply accepted the Leave vote with good grace and gone quiet for a spell then it might have been possible by now to raise the prospect of rejoining the single market or the customs union. As it is, there is nobody with the authority to make this entirely sensible argument. The absurd second referendum campaign, which never had the slightest chance of securing its objective, has set back the cause of a sensible relationship with Europe by years.
That then provides an opportunity for the Liberal Democrats. If there is one advantage of not being a genuine candidate for victory, it is that you can be candid about what is going on. Yet on this, which should be the party’s signature issue, the Lib Dems are not especially vocal. There is a constituency that is available to hear that Brexit is a disaster and the Lib Dems are well placed to bring them together. It is a measure of the oddity of British politics today that nobody can talk about the question that has transformed politics. We shall have to hope that the Liberal Democrats find their voice.
No need to. Brexit was a decision taken over six years ago so we move on with what we’ve got, who ever is in government.
When Tories fail in next elections and grown ups take control
When the eu collapses in the recession next year.
I think in Scotland are tryng to exit Brexitland…
Every other thread on r/unitedkingdom is about Brexit.
You never bloody stop. Get over it.
If you forget/ignore the mistakes of the past you are doomed to repeat them.
[deleted]
Have we stoped?
Did we ever stop?
We are talking about it, it is just that too many people still think everything is fine. It is no different to COVID or climate change, everything is fine because they think so, not because of any evidence suggesting it is. The realities of Brexit are still happening and some of the effects will be slow, such as reduced economic output over several years, so ordinary people are not yet severely affected. They won’t talk about Brexit until they are seriously affected in a way they can feel, other than long queues at customs in Benidorm.
The obsessives never stop bloody talking about it.
I always find it interesting, how the more radical remainers/rejoiners think we are gonna waltz back into the EU into a situation we had before. We won’t be getting a rebate, we won’t be getting immigration controls, we won’t be getting the veto or opt outs of policy, we won’t be able to keep our currency. Those things (i.e. full membership) will push a lot of people into voting against it and we won’t be able to re join without a referendum.
No politician on Earth could effectively sell that as the best option to the majority of the British electorate, it just isn’t realistic. It just won’t fly with the media or many over 25. We voted to leave with perhaps the best possible form of membership cultivated over decades to fit a large amount of what the public and UK Governments wanted. We will never get that back. I don’t see us ever rejoining in the next 40 years, under the current terms the EU will offer.
Best the rejoiners can do is accept joining the customs union or single market as their best option and focus on negotiating that type of deal and arguing for it with brexiteers, rather than outright rejoining. This is essentially what Starmer is after and imo is the best thing on the table for rejoiners. The more time that passes the less likely this is, particularly with things like Truss’s “bonfire of EU regulations”.
You just did.
When the remoaners stop lying.
Never I hope, we can’t go through it again. We need to move forward.