Two years into the pandemic, we can look back on the first days of 2020 as a more innocent time. 31st January that year—two years ago today—was, after all, not simply the day we left the European Union, but also the day on which the first cases of Covid-19 were reported in the UK. Everything that has happened since has placed the preceding years of political argument in context. Brexit is not as grave as Covid, and as a human tragedy it pales in comparison.
And yet it is important to mark this second anniversary. Brexit has not only transformed our political and economic landscape, but sparked lasting changes to the way in which we think of ourselves. It is worth taking a step back and asking where the last two years—and four years before that—have brought us.
The first—and most pressing—place is Northern Ireland. Although the government has recently pulled back from threats to collapse the Northern Ireland Protocol, and eased its bellicose rhetoric, the province is now more divided than at any time since the Troubles. Unionist politicians remain enraged by what they see as betrayal by the government in Westminster. Nationalist leaders are angry that the government is still not fully committed to the agreement it signed.
Second is the economy. Aside from the visible effects—recent petrol shortages, unprecedented livestock slaughters and new miles of lorry queues at Dover with the implementation of checks on EU goods—Brexit is causing long-term harm to the economy. The chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast that Brexit will reduce potential GDP by 4 per cent, making it far more economically damaging than the pandemic. There was, of course, no extra £350m a week for the NHS—a fact starkly illustrated by the fact the government now needs to increase National Insurance in order to fund it.
How about trade deals? The recently announced Australia deal will, even on the most optimistic forecast, boost UK GDP by less than 0.1 per cent. An upcoming agreement with New Zealand will offer even less. Last week the government announced that talks had begun with Greenland, a nation whose annual trade with the UK amounts to £12m—less than a third of what Lancashire spent on road maintenance last year.
And so to the politics. Brexit is, in a sense, the original sin from which our present problems flow. There were lies, injustice and scandal long before, but our withdrawal from the EU licensed a specific form of corruption: lying to people’s faces about things they could see before their eyes. Brexit became so important that the end could justify any means. Institutions underpinning British democracy—the media, civil service, judiciary—became fair targets for government attack. In an endlessly repeating circle, anything could be sacrificed on the altar of Brexit and Brexit would make any of it justifiable.
The irony of all this is that, politically, the project is paralysed. The hard-right Conservatives who pressed for Brexit for 25 years lament that Britain has not yet bloomed into the oft-proselytised Singapore-on-Thames. Others, with an eye on the Red Wall, or left-leaning Brexit voters who loathe the libertarian outcome, note that the UK has not significantly raised any labour, agricultural or environmental standards since we left the bloc. Farmers and charities have already complained about watered-down food and animal welfare protections from the Australia deal, and one of last year’s biggest stories concerned MPs seemingly relaxed about water companies dumping raw sewage into rivers and seas.
For five years, political commentators (myself included) got one thing massively wrong. We predicted that as the rhetoric collided with reality, the public would see the lies for what they were, and revile the politicians who had repeatedly told them. That never happened. Unlike with, say, the Iraq War, whose initial majority support gave way to public horror and disgust, Brexit has never faced a moment of definitive public rejection; its cheerleaders have never faced a reckoning.
The reasons are manifold. Brexit quickly became a deeply emotional, even quasi-religious issue, which bound it to people’s political and indeed personal identity. All manner of political issues were reframed by the media not on the traditional grounds of left or right but on the tribal axis of Leaver and Remainer. That has been fuelled by a Conservative Party which has wholly captured the narrative, and whose interests depend on blaming anyone but itself for Brexit’s failure.
To this extent, it does not actually matter very much that a clear majority of voters consider Brexit to have been a mistake. It has been accepted as something that happened, even if, on reflection, people think that it should not have. That perspective is facilitated by former Remain politicians. The Labour Party is still cowed by the lose-lose choice it was forced into between its Leave-voting northern base and the Remainers in big cities. Labour leader Keir Starmer knows that mentioning Brexit will win him no additional votes, and that there is nobody on his Remain side seriously outflanking him. Neither the Liberal Democrats nor Greens are making Brexit a serious talking point or proposing imminent re-entry to the EU.
Of course it is in the interests of democracy and good governance that Labour holds the government to account over Brexit. On some issues, such as Northern Ireland and the government’s previous threats to breach the Withdrawal Agreement, the party has done so effectively. Shadow ministers have also proposed new agreements on veterinary standards and visas for touring artists and musicians. But there is no political space in which it can argue for major substantive changes to the current arrangements. A reference to the single market and customs union in the next Labour manifesto, say, would be a gift to a Tory party desperate to relitigate old battles with old smears. Even now, Boris Johnson accuses Labour of wishing to undo Brexit.
This sense of paralysis stretches even to pundits. As a former Remain campaigner and activist for a second referendum, I talked of little but Brexit for almost four years. These days I mention it rarely. This is a fusion of fatigue and disempowerment: the deed has been done badly, but it has nevertheless been done. The political momentum could never endure through Covid. And, of course, there is an element of repetition. Everything there is to say on Brexit has already been said many times, and none of it seemed to make any difference.
Yet we must not give up. Even the Brexit specialists may be exhausted, but that is precisely the reason to continue discussing it. Brexit was an act of sabotage directed against the British people by their own leaders. It has brought years of misery to individuals and businesses. There will never be any worthwhile gain from it. And so it doesn’t matter if the end goal of rejoining never comes to fruition. We must talk about Brexit because it is the right thing to do. Brexit was and remains a disaster.
