The National Rejoin March went ahead as planned on Saturday although I didn’t attend because I’m getting a bit too old for that kind of thing. I was there in spirit let’s say. This was the third year of what has now become an annual event. Only the organisers will know if the numbers are increasing or decreasing but the march didn’t receive any national coverage in the media as far as I could see. One report talked of “several hundred people” being in London on an anti-Brexit protest. This sparked a lot of mocking comments on social media from Brexiteers to the effect that Brexit was ‘over,’ as you might expect.
I’m not sure if this was the official estimate but it looked more to me. However, it was a long way from the hundreds of thousands we saw in 2018 and 2019 when we were trying to get a second vote while parliament was at an impasse. I saw a lot of images on my Twitter feed over the weekend and it looked (as usual) like most of the marchers were middle-aged and older.
So, what’s happened? Are people now resigned to Brexit?
I don’t believe for a second that they are. The polls are clear. A majority of at least 55% think it was a mistake, or want to join/rejoin, but they are pretty static and have been for some time. And they’re certainly showing the numbers are not as good as they once were. I’ve seen 62% in one Omnisis poll as recently as January this year.
We have to admit that while younger people are heavily pro-EU they aren’t sufficiently enthused to come out and protest. That is certainly one reason. We in this country are quite apathetic even about important issues and it takes a lot to get people off the sofa on a Saturday afternoon and into Parliament Square.
Another is that Starmer’s mantra of trying to “make Brexit work” is perhaps having more of an impact than we think. EU relations is still a complex topic and I can imagine many people will be hoping he can pull a rabbit out of the hat. Personally, and reading what those with real knowledge have to say, I don't think he will get very much out of Brussels, simply because they don't have much to offer without upsetting a lot of other countries. And the TCA is working reasonably well - for them. In comparison, we are either putting off implementing border checks or quietly aligning British standards with EU ones.
It's pretty clear that (a) the EU is getting along fine without us and (b) the Commission is not coming under pressure (AFAIK) from member states to 'tear down unnecessary trade barriers.' If anything, Britain's reliance on the EU single market for exports has increased as a percentage, mostly because our exports to the rest of the world have fallen, something that still puzzles the experts although I don't know why. We rely on EU supply chains to produce many of the finished goods we send overseas.
Starmer will no doubt come back with a few tit-bits, just like Harold Wilson did in 1975 but without single market and customs union membership they will have little impact on border checks and hence on the extra costs and delays that make us uncompetitive.
Moreover, I don't believe a lot of the UK population who voted to leave actually know how much better the standard of living in the EU is compared to here, especially in health care and quality of life issues and I think that will only become more noticeable as time goes on.
In the end, it will be economic matters that force Britain to start a new application process, just as it was in the early 1960s.
Don't forget that Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told a Tory party rally in 1957 that we had "never had it so good," yet just four years later in July 1961 he was applying to join the EEC because it had become obvious that they were growing more quickly and would soon become the dominant force in Europe.
Since then, the original six have grown to 27 with nine more in the queue, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey, Albania and North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Ukraine and Georgia. Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein are either in the single market or so close as to be indistinguishable from it.
That's forty European countries. The only nations outside the bloc are Belarus, Russia, and the UK. Strange bedfellows for the mother of parliaments.
Nobody will ever convince me this is a sustainable position for this country. So, no, it certainly isn’t over.
