For years now, the economic situation facing this country has been buried in the small print
And just like that, with a click of the fingers, we’re in a new reality. After all these years of grinding struggle and frustration, the revolution came almost overnight. All of a sudden, the Government accepts that Brexit was a terrible idea and is prepared to say so – repeatedly, plainly and with conviction.
It began during Labour conference with several unrelated comments from Keir Starmer, disparaging Brexit and those who promoted it. This week, it went a step further. A report in The Times revealed that Starmer and Rachel Reeves would be pinning the blame for any coming tax rises on Brexit and using it to take the fight to Nigel Farage.
That was effectively confirmed by Reeves today in a Sky News interview. “There is no doubting that the impact of Brexit is severe and long-lasting,” she said, “and that’s why we are trying to do trade deals around the world”.
You could almost hear the sigh of relief from Labour politicians, as if they could finally stand up and point to the elephant looming over them behind the sofa. “I’m glad that Brexit is a problem whose name we now dare speak,” Health Secretary Wes Streeting said at a book festival this week.
This ability to speak honestly is the single most important outcome of these recent changes. The ability to discuss Brexit without fear is nothing less than the ability to discuss objective reality.
For years now, the economic situation facing this country has been buried in the small print. In the 2020 spending review, for instance, then-chancellor Rishi Sunak did not mention Brexit once, despite it being set to take place just 37 days later. Madness. It was left to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), in the economic and fiscal outlook published after the speech, to note the “heightened uncertainty”, “tighter credit conditions” and lower business investment the decision entailed.
Now economic reality can be dragged from the depths of OBR documents and brought into the light of mainstream political coverage. We can talk empirically and realistically about what is damaging us and why. We can have an honest conversation about the problems we face and how to solve them.
Once you can have that conversation, political benefits emerge. Starmer and Reeves are right to want to use the failure of Brexit to attack Farage. The message is so obvious it barely needs articulating. This man told you Brexit was a great idea. Now we are all poorer. Do you really want to trust him again?
People have refrained from this attack for years, terrified of the culture war demons the referendum unleashed. But if that attack doesn’t work on Farage what is even the point of reality as a functional concept in political life? What could be more elementary than asking voters to judge a candidate on their previous assurances? What more basic function of democracy could we ask for?
Polling shows the public is onside. In January, a Redfield & Wilton survey for UK in a Changing Europe found 57 per cent would now vote to rejoin the EU against 43 per cent who would stay out. In June, a YouGov survey found 56 per cent said they would vote to rejoin against 34 per cent who would stay out.
However, there is a danger here, which no one can rule out with any certainty.
Now that Labour is prepared to say that Brexit was a mistake, a question naturally follows. What are you going to do about it? Why are we still pursuing Brexit at all if we think that it’s a disaster? Why don’t we have another referendum?
This prompts a subtly different response from the public. When YouGov asked if there should be another referendum in the next five years, 45 per cent of people said yes and 42 per cent said no – a tight margin. But if you ask if there should be one in the next 10 years, the margin expands significantly, with 49 per cent saying yes and just 34 per cent saying no. You get the sense that people think we should vote again – but not quite yet.
We have to be careful here. People still remember what that period was like – the opposing demonstrations, the vitriolic denunciations, the arguments across the Christmas table, the sense that the country was rupturing, that it was tearing itself apart. Ironically, it is this most poisonous aspect of Farage’s project which helps protect him from a concerted effort to repair it.
This is why Labour’s current policy is simply to rationalise and de-toxify the relationship with the EU, then bring the UK as close to it as possible while staying outside the customs union and single market. This will not change until the next election. The key task for those who oppose Brexit is to get a much more radical European policy into the next Labour manifesto in 2029. A pledge of a referendum on new negotiated terms in the early 2030s would go some way to satisfying the 10-year test.
In the meantime, we should think long and hard about the debate to come. We should prepare for the fight which is coming – perhaps in four years, perhaps in 10, but coming regardless.
Which arguments damaged Remain last time and how do we neutralise them? Which are most effective to convince uncertain voters? Are we prepared to try and weaponise immigration against Farage, or is that morally unconscionable? What would it take to convince Europe to accept us, given all the efforts it had to go through for us to leave? What happens if Europe drifts to the far right, for instance under a Le Pen government in France? Would we still want to join?
And most importantly: What do we actually want? Is it single market and customs union membership, or full EU membership? What would be a more effective proposition for voters? What would best provide a promise of change in an era where people are fed up with the status quo?
These are very difficult questions to answer. But it is a pleasure to discover that they need answers at all, after a decade lost to silence and denial.