{"id":20772,"date":"2026-04-23T23:32:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T23:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/20772\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T23:32:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T23:32:20","slug":"former-brexit-boss-says-britain-should-rejoin-eu-after-failed-heady-promises-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/20772\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Brexit boss says Britain should rejoin EU after failed \u2018heady promises\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain<\/a> should consider rejoining the European Union<\/a> after none of the Leave campaign\u2019s \u201cheady promises\u201d materialised, the man who led the country\u2019s departure<\/a> from the bloc has said.<\/p>\n

Philip Rycroft, former permanent secretary at the Department for Exiting the European Union, said there needs to be a \u201cclear-headed appraisal of what is in the country\u2019s best interests\u201d and that life outside the EU<\/a> had not lived up to lofty expectations.<\/p>\n

Writing in The Times<\/a>, he warned the road back into the bloc would be \u201clong and windy\u201d but that the \u201cargument is there to be won\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Philip<\/p>\n

Philip Rycroft led the Department for Exiting the European Union (PA)<\/p>\n

The unusual intervention comes after Sir Keir Starmer<\/a> said the UK would not cross the \u201cred lines\u201d of rejoining the single market<\/a> or customs union.<\/p>\n

But the newspaper reports several senior figures in government are pressing for the policy to be reviewed ahead of the next general election.<\/p>\n

Mr Rycroft cited figures from recent YouGov polling for the campaign group Best for Britain, which shows that 53 per cent of people are now in favour of rejoining the EU while with 32 per cent are opposed and 14 per cent don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost economic analysis suggests that we have taken a significant hit to GDP as a result of leaving the single market,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe precise number, and the impact on our export performance to the EU and beyond, might be subject to debate, but no one can credibly claim that we have marched to the sunny uplands of sustained economic growth as a consequence of Brexit<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said it was \u201cnot hard to see\u201d why people may be \u201cfalling out of love\u201d with Brexit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seemingly no nearer achieving an immigration policy that commands general consent,\u201d he continued, in reference to the Leave campaign\u2019s promise that leaving the bloc would allow the UK to take back control of its borders.<\/p>\n

Last month, European affairs minister Nick Thomas-Symonds<\/a> told The Independent \u201cthere is no appetite\u201d to return to the debates of the past over EU membership.<\/p>\n

While he insists that the government wants to develop closer ties with the EU, particularly as the world becomes a more dangerous place, Mr Thomas-Symonds ruled out any sort of deal that would lead to the UK and the EU entering a customs union.<\/p>\n

He said that even a bespoke version, like the agreements the bloc has with countries like Turkey and Norway, is off the cards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain should consider rejoining the European Union after none of the Leave campaign\u2019s \u201cheady promises\u201d materialised, the man…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,9586,1469,9587,9585],"class_list":{"0":"post-20772","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-customs-union","10":"tag-european-union","11":"tag-permanent-secretary","12":"tag-philip-rycroft"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116456635971944339","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}