Support for Brexit continues to slowly ebb away. The latest poll of polls (the average of the last six polls) asking the question about rejoining or staying out of the EU shows a 60/40 majority for rejoining and it is being kept low by a DeltaPoll survey taken between 14-17 July with a 56/44 split. When this drops out we'll see 61/39 for sure. I think we can safely say the whole idea of Brexit has become so tarnished among an increasing number of voters that it cannot now recover. Of course, we are never going to get to 100% or even 80% but we are edging closer to the 67% that we had in 1975 and I don't believe a future government will be able to ignore it.
The latest Omnisis poll is at 62/38, the
It's beginning to seem a lot like Rejoin. 🎶Two-thirds majority is not that far off at all now. Labour's stance gets more and more wrong by the day. https://t.co/mYSjw05mwq— Edwin Hayward (@edwinhayward) July 29, 2023
An article by Denis McShane in The Globalist: Regretting Brexit: Has the UK Seen the Error of Its Ways? is however a cautionary one. He acknowledges the huge shift in public opinion but warns remainers not to hold their breath for anything happening quickly, and I would add, easily as well.
He does say that "soon Britain will have to start thinking seriously about reconnecting to Europe and putting right the misjudgement of Brexit. How that is done and who does it and what language is used will be of high importance."
The National Rejoin march on 10 September organised by The Rejoin Party should be well attended and will and should perhaps become an annual event. But marches alone won't do the trick or persuade our European allies that we have turned a corner.
I think there are a lot of obstacles to rejoining - all of which will be overcome, eventually.
First, both major parties need to become pro-EU or we need to switch to a PR voting system, preferably both. At the moment these things look impossible and in the short term, they are. But I don't believe the EU member states will think it's in their interests to begin negotiating with Labour (for example) if, in a few years, a Eurosceptic Tory party is back in power.
I think Brussels want to see stability before they would contemplate even preliminary talks.
Labour isn't ideologically opposed to the EU and the membership has a big majority who would like to rejoin. I think we can safely say at some point Starmer will be forced to adopt a pro-join policy. But, how likely is it that the Tories will change?
That may seem remote now when the party is in the grip of the ERG and the nationalist right but next year many anti-EU MPs will be swept away and the Conservatives will eventually be forced to look at themselves seriously. The entire narrative will change after the next election. A Labour government looking for closer trading ties will have to make the case for aligning with EU rules, a prerequisite for rejoining.
The voice of the government will have to become pro-EU and a lot of the negative impacts of Brexit, well known in Whitehall but hidden by ministers for the past seven years, will be revealed. All of which will increase support for rejoining. And the polls will show this.
What are the Tories to do? Continue to press for a policy the electorate has firmly rejected? Imagine John Major in 1992 going into the campaign advocating the poll tax. He would have lost by a mile. Now think of the Tories in 2028-29 gearing up for the election with the central plank of their manifesto being to launch the opening salvos of another divisive Brexit war.
They might do it, they are certainly crazy enough, but they would lose I am certain and they wouldn't repeat the error in the election after that. Wiser heads should prevail, but if Starmer can't get a consensus about rejoining the single market, then proportional representation is the way to go, to avoid extremists in either of the two main parties ever having the whip hand over policy ever again.
And this is just the start. The next obstacle would be in getting all 27 member states onside and that will also be difficult given the trouble we have caused over the last decade or so. The price of getting back in may be very expensive, but not as expensive as staying out.
What is certain is that the UK will rejoin and Brexiteers will have achieved precisely the reverse of their objective in 2016.
