Brace yourself for a gleeful barrage of anti-Brexit bilge now Keir Starmer is in Number 10

The writing has long been on the wall. In fact, it has never not been there. The establishment has never really accepted the referendum result. As Lord Heseltine announced on 1 January 2021, the end of the transition period: "The battle starts again. With a chapter closed last night, a new chapter opens.”

The election ushered in a new government and perhaps the moment for the coup the grace. A gleeful barrage of anti-Brexit propaganda is trying to drive home the message once and for all: Brexit has not worked, is not working and it never will. We should all admit that every conceivable evil is due to Brexit from the cost of living crisis to the collapse of the NHS and the shortage of builders.

The new foreign secretary has gone to Germany to “reset” Britain’s relationship with the EU following Tony Blair’s advice. While insisting that the Labour government will not rejoin the single market or allow free movement, he announced that “I look forward to seeing Britain reconnect with our European neighbours in the years ahead.”

The European Union is “absolutely” open to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s plan for an overhaul of the United Kingdom’s post-Brexit trading relationship, responded the Irish government.

Good relations with European countries are highly desirable, but we should not forget that the warm goodwill displayed now by the EU was pointedly missing throughout the negotiations. We must ask what compromises the government’s optimistic “reset” may mean in practice?

One can’t help recalling Lord Thorneycroft’s famous quote: “No government dependent on a democratic vote could possibly agree in advance to the sacrifices which any adequate plan for the European Union must involve. The people must be led slowly and unconsciously into the abandonment of their traditional economic defences, not asked.” Would the new government voted in by one-third of the 60% of voters, who cared to vote, set out to reverse Brexit?

The main rejoiner argument is the economy. Some transitional problems were always expected, after all, it is impossible to end half a century of membership in any economic association without any rupture. However, to attribute the UK’s economic problems to Brexit is a distortion of reality.

Looking at real GDP growth from 2006 (before the financial crisis) to the first quarter of 2024, we find that the UK has not been an outlier amongst major European economies. Despite the doom and gloom forecasts, the economy did not collapse after the referendum.

Andrew Haldane, Bank of England chief economist at the time “admitted his profession is in crisis having failed to foresee the 2008 financial crash and having misjudged the impact of the Brexit vote.” This happened due to the “failure of economic models to cope with ‘irrational behaviour’ in the modern era”.

The EU’s economic reality is less than spectacular. The 2024 forecast is 1% for the EU and 0.8% for the eurozone. Various member states struggle with weak performance. Germany fell into recession in 2023, and France has just been downgraded by S&P due to budgetary issues. The EU’s overall participation in world trade is steadily decreasing.

Wishful propaganda fog dispersed, it becomes clear that the UK’s major economic problems are not due to Brexit, that Brexit has not been implemented so its overall impact can’t be judged, and most importantly, that Brexit is about a lot more than trade and economy.

Economy

The UK has not availed itself of the opportunities opened up by Brexit to implement economic policies tailored to local needs. Instead of blaming everything on Brexit, we should look at structural issues such as why manufacturing exports are falling, whether the economy should be so heavily skewed towards services, market concentration, food security, and the impact of mass immigration on living standards and social cohesion.

Instead of blaming Brexit for logistical problems, we should look at why simple technical issues such as border checks and administrative matters have not been sorted out since the referendum.

Brexit has not been carried through

The agreement was finally signed, Brexiteers sang the anthem and drank the champagne on 31 January 2021, but Brexit promises have not been kept. There has been no levelling up and definitely no border control. Net immigration, legal and illegal, has increased multifold.

We have witnessed what seems to be a policy of constant playing for time. Who knows, there may come a moment when people are so busy trying to merely survive that they care no more and allow themselves to be led back to the EU fold where they belong as Remainers have known all along.

Brexit is about freedom

As the European Union is primarily a political project, Brexit is primarily about sovereignty and real democracy. I attended the Brexit war games organized by Open Europe, a think tank, in December 2013, where politicians from EU countries sat around the table and simulated imaginary Brexit negotiations.

It was a most instructive experience, not least because it became obvious to anybody willing to understand rather than just hope for the best that the UK and the rest of the EU had ideologically very different approaches. Interestingly, only one UK negotiator, former Tory MP David Heathcoat-Amory mentioned the EU’s democracy deficit. Nobody on either side addressed this issue.

They should have. The EU is a political superstructure determined to pursue its mission of eliminating nation-states and building an empire. In its relentless drive to force ever-deeper integration, it meddles in member states’ internal affairs and cracks down on countries that refuse its orders.

A good example is the migrant pact forcing countries to accept migrants from the EU or pay punitive fees. Another example is the idea of a Savings and Investments Union as outlined in former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta’s report “Much more than a market”, a response to lagging EU competitiveness. This would pool member states’ private savings “aimed at mobilising these resources to support and fuel the EU's ambitions”.

Remainers may think that, as a member, the UK would be among the decision-makers when it comes to formulating those ambitions and distributing other people’s money. It may be true but alliances and their ambitions are exposed to a rapidly shifting geopolitical environment.

What would happen should the UK find itself facing an entity with different interests controlling UK savings? The Brexit negotiations gave a foretaste of how such conflicts might be handled. “Mr Barnier wants to achieve one thing…. So that’s his prime objective, he wants to punish Britain … so no other country gets this crazy idea” explained in 2018 MEP and former president of the Federation of German Industries, Mr. Hans-Olaf Henkel.

Brexit is ultimately the expression of deeply held beliefs. The fight is between nation-states and globalism, independence and dependence, and freedom and servitude.

Globalists welcome the expanding and ever-more autocratic European Union because it fits their aims and beliefs. Sovereignty supporters fight for their country, their freedom and real democracy. This is what Brexit is about.

The UK is lucky to have the choice, at least for now.