The problem with Keir Starmer\u2019s approach to Brexit is that it fundamentally misunderstands the country. It isn\u2019t that the Leave-voting public have realised that they made the wrong choice, foolishly tricked by the slogan on the side of a bus a decade ago. Voters in Grimsby have not suddenly been won round to the virtues of the Common Fisheries Policy. Most Leavers do not suddenly think shorter queues at the airport in Sofia is worth the downward pressure on wages caused by thousands of young Bulgarians who (understandably) will think Britain\u2019s \u00a312.21 minimum wage is more attractive than Bulgaria\u2019s roughly \u00a33 per hour.<\/p>\n
The reason people feel dissatisfied with Brexit is not that the UK has diverged from the EU but because it hasn\u2019t diverged enough. Leave voters were rejecting a political economy that concentrated wealth in London\u2019s financial and creative industries and sucked out meaningful employment from other parts of the country. It\u2019s globalisation that voters are fed up with.<\/p>\n
Brexit was a constitutional \u2018revolution\u2019 in the old meaning of the word \u2013 a return to the original state of things. It returned to the government full control of industrial policy \u2013 trade, state aid, nationalisation, immigration, procurement, fishing, agriculture. Brexit brought back these powers along with an expectation of a much more active state; this was plain to the public but perhaps less so to the political class. That fundamentally different state was the real test of Brexit\u2019s success. Boris Johnson understood this better than most. Levelling up was absolutely the right strategy, but it didn\u2019t go nearly far enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The problem with Keir Starmer\u2019s approach to Brexit is that it fundamentally misunderstands the country. It isn\u2019t that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,807,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-121120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-keir-starmer","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114548571742765807","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}