![\"Kevin](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/PROFILE-Kevin-Maguire.png\")
<\/p>\nThe Mirror’s Kevin Maguire argues the only way for Britain to return to its former prosperity is with a plan to return to the EU after Brexit proved to be a giant con that only leaves us poorer and weaker<\/p>\n
Kevin Maguire is Associate Editor of the Mirror and a politics columnist. He is a frequent contributor to Good Morning Britain and other TV shows. He also writes a column for the New Statesman and earlier in his career was chief reporter for The Guardian. He is a Sunderland AFC supporter.<\/p>\n
![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1_UK-Daily-Life-2025.jpg\")
An anti-Brexit campaigner wearing a ‘Rejoin’ t-shirt(Image: Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Brexit is a self-inflicted assault on the UK economy that will prove more than twice as expensive as abolishing slavery in the British Empire.<\/p>\n
Ending the shameful, terrible, cruel bondage of Africa\u2019s kidnapped men<\/a>, women and children branded and clapped in irons to sweat on plantations in the West Indies and Americas was undoubtedly a noble cause.<\/p>\n Disastrously wrenching our country out of the European Union <\/a>was a cranky obsession of relatively few plastic patriots who hoodwinked a minor majority subsequently regretting the giant con.<\/p>\n I\u2019d also wager a disturbing number of Brextremist agitators, had they been shouting their mouths off at the end of the 18th and start of the 19th centuries, would\u2019ve argued we couldn\u2019t afford to free slaves earning a fortune for their owners.<\/p>\n READ MORE: Brexit is a ‘complete disaster’ and referendum ‘should have been repeated’<\/a>READ MORE: Half of Brits want another EU referendum in five years – as Brexit support slumps<\/a> Mercifully the moral Britons won back then and on holiday in Spain I read in Adam Hochchild\u2019s ultimately inspiring Bury The Chains, the history of Britain\u2019s struggle to axe slavery, that scholars estimate stopping the trade then ceasing slavery itself cost the nation 1.8% of national income over more than half a century.<\/p>\n The bill for Brexit will be 4% in less than half that time, calculates the Office for Budget Responsibility, and the extremists who masterminded the 2016 referendum heist are unable to claim any superiority.<\/p>\n Highlighting any Brexit benefits is nigh on impossible, which is why the likes of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Kemi Badenoch like to talk about almost anything else and shouldn\u2019t be trusted on issues such as migration.<\/p>\n How many refugees, asylum seekers and migrants crossed the Channel in small boats before that referendum, a period when the UK could trigger the EU Dublin convention return arrangement? Zilch or virtually none.<\/p>\n The 40,000 or so annually arriving in small boats is, in one of those startling coincidences, around the number of seized slaves yearly transported in British ships to their dreadful fate across the Atlantic.<\/p>\n Before anybody, including Keir Starmer, shouts about trade deals, those between Labour and the EU, India and US are mere pennies for lost pound – as were Tory agreements with Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n Even the 10% Trump tax on exports to the US isn\u2019t worth much more than his 15% tariff slapped on the EU when we trade twice as much with Europe as we do Donaldland. Regular exchange rate fluctuations can wipe it out easily.<\/p>\n Deceiving Brexitremists pretended turning our backs on our EU neighbours was freedom.<\/p>\n The freedom to be poorer and weaker? No thanks.<\/p>\n Brexit remains the elephant in the room, deliberately ignored by the Prime Minister and others.<\/p>\n If we want Britain to be more prosperous and stronger on the global stage then we need a plan to be back in the EU. At the moment, they\u2019re not even making the argument.<\/p>\n More than one way to skin a Fat Cat<\/p>\n Rachel Reeves is justified in stressing hers was a dreadful economic inheritance when more than three-quarters, \u00a3111billion – which is 77% – of this financial year\u2019s projected \u00a3143bn UK government borrowing covers interest on past debts – much of them Tory.<\/p>\n Labour\u2019s Methodists want higher taxes on bookies and Marxists on banks (son of the manse and fairness champion Gordon Brown advocates both) to fund key public services and avoid breaking election promises to most workers and families.<\/p>\n The Chancellor of the Exchequer could do much worse than dust off advice from the likes of out-of-the-box thinkers like Tax Justice UK and Patriotic Millionaires, including 10 reforms to raise \u00a360billion by, among other changes, limiting pension tax relief handouts for higher earners to those of average earners and stop the South\u2019s richest paying less council tax than typical Northerners.<\/p>\n Just because Reeves is against a wealth tax on the few with more than \u00a310million doesn\u2019t mean she can\u2019t help ordinary folk. There\u2019s more than one way to skin a Fat Cat.<\/p>\n Let’s hear ‘up the workers!’ in classrooms<\/p>\n The massacre of seven people during a seafarers\u2019 strike 200 years ago in Sunderland was unknown to me, and I\u2019m from South Shields up the road.<\/p>\n Bicentennial commemoration lead organiser David Scott was right: we should never let these events be \u201clost from the history books\u201d because we stand on the shoulders of giants – everyday men and women who challenged grave injustices.<\/p>\n The seven murdered by soldiers on North Sands, now Sunderland Uni\u2019s St Peter\u2019s campus, were resisting pay cuts (Hello P&O Ferries in Dover) and the slain included Mary Wilson, 76, in a crowd of more than 100, including women and kids, on the beach.<\/p>\n People\u2019s history, our history, is what establishment lackeys fear most in prioritising the teaching in schools of the supposed greatness of oppressive warlord kings and queens… Let\u2019s hear more \u201cup the workers!\u201d in classrooms.<\/p>\n Labour voters entitled to feel cheated Labour Deputy PM Angela Rayner\u2019s landmark Renters\u2019 Rights Bill coming into force next year bans, among other scams, landlords ending tenancies to sell properties then relisting them charging more, so now very ex-Housing Minister Rushamara Ali should\u2019ve been sacked instead of allowed to resign.<\/p>\n Because the greedy extra \u00a3700 a month grab by the rentier class shamed MP for Bethnal Green and Stepney once again overshadows the great things a UK Labour government is doing and Rayner, as well as Starmer, down to every Labour member and voter, is entitled to feel cheated.<\/p>\n She wasn\u2019t a distraction, as the self-serving MP claims. I\u2019m afraid she was guilty as charged of grotesque hypocrisy.<\/p>\n Going up<\/p>\n Deporting most convicted foreign criminals immediately and barring re-entry into the UK is penny-wise Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood acting tough when it costs an average \u00a354,000 a year to lock \u2018em up with 12% of inmates in stuffed jails from abroad.<\/p>\n Going down<\/p>\n STUPID, nasty and inflammatory MP Rupert Lowe mistaking a charity rowing crew for migrants in a boat off the ex-Reformer\u2019s Great Yarmouth constituency in Norfolk confirmed these dangerous Hard Right reactionaries speak first, think later when spreading their poison.<\/p>\n Speaker’s Corner<\/p>\n \u201cI have to say that I really have become a good friend, and David has become a good friend of mine.\u201d<\/p>\n Ugh! Pass the sick bag when fishy JD Vance slavering over David Lammy, and the UK Foreign Secretary drooling over the US Vice President, turns the stomach. Vance is as vile as Trump with added menace and brains. I hope Lammy\u2019s anti-tetanus jab is up to date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mirror’s Kevin Maguire argues the only way for Britain to return to its former prosperity is with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,3070,527,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,528,285,37122,9891,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-333909","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-british-economy","11":"tag-conservative-party","12":"tag-eu","13":"tag-europe","14":"tag-european","15":"tag-european-union","16":"tag-great-britain","17":"tag-labour-party","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-public-services","20":"tag-referendum","21":"tag-uk","22":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115006160684883183","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333909","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=333909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0_BRITAIN-FRANCE-EU-BREXIT-FISHING.jpg\")
A ‘Fishing For Leave’ campaign group sign about Brexit on a boat in the harbour in Brixham, southern England on October 2018 (Image: AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n![\"Union](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0_Unionists-becoming-more-sceptical-about-Windsor-Framework.jpg\")
‘If we want Britain to be more prosperous and stronger on the global stage then we need a plan to be back in the EU…'(Image: PA)<\/p>\n![\"Reeves\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/4_Chancellor-Rachel-Reeves-Visits-A-Coal-Tip-In-Wales.jpg\")
‘Just because Reeves is against a wealth tax on the few with more than \u00a310million doesn\u2019t mean she can\u2019t help ordinary folk…'(Image: Getty Images)<\/p>\n![\"Labour](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1_Angela-Rayner-Unite-membership.jpg\")
Labour Deputy PM Angela Rayner(Image: PA)<\/p>\n