One of Boris Johnson’s biggest lies was that in 2019 he’d finally ‘get Brexit done’. Plenty of people believed him, too, handing the Tories a landslide majority in the House of Commons. Of course, Brexit didn’t get done at all, as we now know following Rishi Sunak’s new Brexit deal with the EU and the reality is that it never will be. Most people now accept that there are no benefits to Brexit and instead there are plenty of downsides, but while Brexit isn’t really done the idea that it will be undone is dead in the water.
Somewhere in a very large centre ground there is a vast majority of people, Brexiters and Remainers both included, who have simply had enough of Brexit and just want to move on. As a card-carrying Remoaner, as the head-banging extremists of Leave EU called us, I count myself in that group. And it’s why I fully support Keir Starmer’s position that the next Labour government will not take us back into the EU. Rishi Sunak, of all people, has shown us the way.
Sunak has always been a Brexiter but even he realised that Boris Johnson’s Northern Ireland protocol was a disaster. Now, he proudly announces that the province is now within the UK trading framework and the EU Single Market, presenting the latter as a victory for Northern Ireland. The contradiction is enormous but partly because of people’s exhaustion with the endless division Brexit has caused and the need to move forward, he has gotten away with it. What he has done, in a very small way, is to show that he can make Brexit work.
In the coming months and years, UK governments will seek better relations with Europe by negotiating trade deals that will finally benefit UK business. We won’t rejoin the Single Market or the Customs Union, despite no Brexit supporter ever saying we would need to leave either or both if we left the EU. But I am sure there will be a form of words that will enable British business to trade more easily with our European neighbours. It won’t be a halfway house to rejoining the EU but it will be more practical. Only the likes of Farage and other assorted Brextremists will resist, I suggest at their peril because people are sick to the back teeth of Brexit.
Social media is still full of hardline rejoiners, some of whom say they will not vote Labour if Starmer does not endorse their position. A consequence of that position would be letting the Tories back in, probably forever. Let the NHS go to rack and ruin because rejoining purity is more important. Let the people eat turnips with a government including cretins like Therese Coffey. So called purity in the Labour Party gave us Jeremy Corbyn and a handsome Tory majority. I dislike many of the rejoiners almost as much as I dislike the crackpots of the ERG.
Perhaps one day Britain will rejoin the EU but that would only happen if those who still maintain their opposition to close relations with Europe don’t change their minds or they die, which given that the vast majority of Brexiters were and are older folk is a possibility. I don’t see it happening in my lifetime and I believe it is time to mend all the fences with Europe and do deals that make our lives better.
I repeat: Brexit isn’t done and never will be. For the foreseeable future, and probably the unforeseen future too, the debate of rejoin and leave should be put to bed. I still reserve the right to point out what a rubbish idea Brexit is but only the likes of Vladimir Putin and his assets on the British far left and far right want to keep banging on about it.
