At last, a high-profile politician has had the guts to unequivocally call out Brexit. Unfortunately, it was a French politician. President Macron, in a very formal, three-day state visit, made a speech at a banquet held at London’s Guildhall on Wednesday. His comment that the EU was stronger with Britain in, and Britain was stronger inside the EU, was met with a round of applause from the assembled dignitaries and diplomats. It was incredible to hear a clear and obvious truth about Brexit spoken so openly. We have grown so accustomed to our leader’s dissembling, distortions, and verbal gymnastics in an attempt to defy logic that Macron's blurting out the truth came as quite a shock.
Here's the clip from the Mansion House speech:
At a joint press conference alongside Kier Starmer the following day, Macron blamed Brexit for the small boats crisis and said the British people had been “sold a lie.” Starmer didn’t even seem to acknowledge it and simply carried on as if nothing had happened.
To be clear, he was talking about the greatest foreign policy mistake since Suez. It has had a disastrous impact on the lives of millions across Europe, as well as blowing a hole in the public finances that the government is struggling to repair, all sold to us on a lie. But the UK prime minister didn't bat an eyelid.
Worse, the man who ‘sold the lie’ is currently topping the polls and is seriously being spoken of as potentially the next prime minister! This is what Nigel Farage tweeted in response to the announcement of an agreement to begin returning migrants to France in a one-in, one-out policy:
This agreement is a humiliation for Brexit Britain. We have acted today as an EU member and bowed down to an arrogant French President.
— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) July 10, 2025
Macron said the lie the British people had been sold was that leaving the EU would “make it possible to fight more effectively against illegal immigration”. Since when, not only has legal migration from the rest of the world soared to unprecedented levels, the number of small boats crossing the Channel has skyrocketed and become the biggest single political issue facing the Home Office, although the actual numbers (circa 45,000) are just a tiny fraction of total immigration to the UK.
He drew attention to the fact that the UK had “no migratory deal” with the EU after Brexit. Mr Macron said: “It creates an incentive to make the crossing, the precise opposite of what Brexit had promised.”
Farage's solution is, as is usual for populist demagogues everywhere, to reach for the sledgehammer to force an unworkable policy into place. He wants to use the Royal Navy and turn the boats back mid-channel. Presumably, when that fails, he will build a wall down the middle of the world's busiest shipping lane. It is all quite insane.
The odd thing about Macron's plain speaking is that he's not popular at home. We have a strange contrast with the situation in France, where Macron’s rival Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally, has had to shut up about France leaving the EU, for fear of losing political support. She is of course, banned from standing for the presidency in 2027, after being found guilty of embezzlement. A decision Le Pen is now challenging in the courts.
So, here in the UK, the government is forced into a self-imposed Omertà about rejoining the EU while in France, the opposition can’t openly talk about leaving. Does this tell us something? I think perhaps it does.
EU membership has been used by all political parties and leaders to deflect from internal problems when it suits them. It also reveals the innate dishonesty of politicians. We all know what they want to do in office, but they often think they have to pretend the opposite to gather or maintain support.
Trump for example, denied having any connection with Project 2025, but is now implementing the whole thing, even though it's wildly unpopular. If Le Pen is elected in 2027, she will begin the process that she hopes will end in Frexit, ignoring the majority who do not want to quit the EU. There's no doubt about that in my own mind.
Starmer is the odd one out. And it is a puzzle. What he would like to do is rejoin the EU. It would not only be extremely popular, as every poll shows, but would also rejuvenate an ailing economy, boost tax revenues, solve the immigration issue, and increase our security against Russian aggression. But he steadfastly refuses to do it. While trying to avoid hemorrhaging support to the right, he is losing pro-EU voters on the left, and it will cost him the next election.
It might be possible to understand the motives of Trump and Le Pen, but Starmer's position is way beyond inexplicable.
I see Jake Berry, briefly a former Tory chairman, has now defected to Reform UK. This is no surprise. There are a lot of senior Tory politicians who were always more suited to Reform, but were temporarily drawn to the Conservatives as the only route to power. As the party sinks (one recent poll puts them on 16%) they are starting to switch behind Farage.
The right in Britain have always understood the importance of a charismatic leader capable of extraordinary dishonesty to disguise their true intentions, which is why they went for Boris Johnson in 2019.
Farage is the logical next step.
