{"id":381015,"date":"2025-08-28T21:48:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T21:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/381015\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T21:48:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T21:48:12","slug":"the-reform-voters-who-think-brexit-has-failed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/381015\/","title":{"rendered":"The Reform voters who think Brexit has failed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cHang on a minute, lads, I\u2019ve got a great idea.\u201d Only four months after watching Reform take the lead in opinion polls and a mere four years since Rejoin began to take convincing leads over Stay Out, Labour have finally had their Michael Caine moment.<\/p>\n

As Keir Starmer\u2019s coach balances precariously on the edge of a cliff, the party has finally decided to attack Nigel Farage on Brexit. Nick Thomas-Symonds, the minister for EU relations, is right that Farage\u2019s plan to rip up the Brexit reset would \u201ctake Britain backwards\u201d by inflicting renewed misery on British business. This is welcome,\u00a0but long overdue<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 especially when the more sensible pollsters suggest Reform has built up a consistent lead of around eight points.<\/p>\n

Evidence of the scale of the challenge can be seen in a report from the More In Common think tank, just released but compiling work done with focus groups earlier in the year. Here are quotes from four different people who took part:<\/p>\n

\u201cI ordered a pair of trainers from, I think it was a place in Italy, and I thought I\u2019d got a really good price on it, but now we have to pay customs excise on them\u2026 I ended up having to pay \u00a380 to get them to the country. So I lost out on my saving completely. And that\u2019s happening with lots of different goods from lots of different countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are the poor relations of Europe now, in my opinion. And I don\u2019t think that can be repaired anytime soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBrexit had an impact on food, the price\u2026 in normal day-to-day living, our food\u2019s gone up because of this trade. All things that we buy from European countries, you know, everything\u2019s gone up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we were still in Europe\u2026 we\u2019d have a stronger voice against America. We\u2019re not in a club, we\u2019re out of Europe now. We\u2019ve lost a lot of that power from that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Remarkably, all of those people say that even though Brexit has plainly not worked, they would vote for pro-Brexit parties next time. Three of them would back Farage, Mr Brexit and the architect of some of their pain, as prime minister. You can\u2019t help thinking that this is what happens when you are unwilling to tie your biggest opponent to the biggest self-inflicted economic disaster in decades.<\/p>\n

So Nick Thomas-Symonds should only be the start. Attach Brexit to Nigel Farage\u2019s neck like a cone of shame. Make sure people know that when their trainers cost \u00a380 more, when their food prices go up, when they feel that Britain\u2019s power in the world is diminished, that he\u2019s the one to blame.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the right way to right the wobbling coach \u2013 and send the EU\u2019s gold stars, like Charlie Croker\u2019s gold bars, sliding back towards us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHang on a minute, lads, I\u2019ve got a great idea.\u201d Only four months after watching Reform take the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,384,386,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-381015","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-nigel-farage","16":"tag-reform-uk","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115108597224592102","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381015","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=381015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}