Brexit, the lost decade

As we approach the tenth anniversary of Brexit, look out for plenty of articles to mark the date. This one in The Guardian by Jonathan Friedland is a good start. Another, on Substack by a Finnish journalist, Mika Horelli, in Brussels is even better and also well worth a read. Both men focus on the lies that delivered Brexit and have cost this country dear for the last decade.  On the topic of political lies, I watched Question Time last week, which covered the Makerfield by-election. An audience member said voters wanted honesty. I nearly burst out laughing. This is the very last thing they want. They got honesty in 2016 but rejected it in favour of the comforting lies peddled by the leave campaign.

Mr Horelli points to the British Newspapers, led by Boris Johnson, that flooded the public mind with so-called euromyths for three decades before the referendum, pummelling the truth until it couldn't stand up. They did it because it sold newspapers. It was popular. The public demanded more of the lies. They certainly didn’t want honesty because facts were a bit too hard to grasp.

So, no, the voters didn’t want the truth then any more than they want it now. A politician who dared to be honest about the problems that we face and the difficult solutions required would never get elected, and they all know it.  This is the problem of our age. Everybody thinks they can have everything without effort or sacrifice, and that the government must provide it for free - and quickly.

The former EU Commission president and PM of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker, put it best: “We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get elected once we have done it."

So, Ministers blame Brussels for decisions that they and the national governments they represent have argued for strongly, supported in council and voted in favour of. The question is, why can't they take responsibility and be honest?

We know the answer. The decision (whatever it is) will be unpopular at home, but also (presumably) the political leaders believe that it's in the best interests of their country and their citizens. But, rather than make the difficult argument for it domestically, the easy choice is to blame it on Brussels.  It’s hard to develop quickly understood, convincing reasons for complex decisions, which are essential but unpopular or won’t bear fruit for decades.

So, just like the far-right ethno-nationalists blame immigrants, European politicians blame the Brussels bureaucrats because they are the ‘convenient villains’ as Mr Horelli says.  Until we learn to cope with the truth, we'll be fed lies.

Anyway, ten years on from the referendum, what have we learned?

Polling by Pew Research shows that far from Brexit precipitating an exodus of EU members, as many on the far-right hoped for and predicted, support for the EU has actually increased across Europe, including in this country. Nobody saw that coming.  The survey shows 62% of Europeans now hold a favourable view of the EU compared to 38% who don't. In 2017, it was 50%.  Moreover, the UK is at No 3 in the list with no less than 67% of voters holding a favourable opinion of the EU.

This is reinforced by polling at the end of May from the former Conservative Chairman, Lord Ashcroft. His polling company surveyed 5263 voters and found Rejoin on 53% and Stay Out at 30%. Removing the don't knows and the wouldn't votes gives 64% to 36%. A similar poll by More in Common from April was 65%/35%.  Note that the original 1975 referendum result was 67.2% to 32.8%.  We are nearly there.

Whatever the Brexiteers thought at the time, Brexit has not proved popular and least of all at home. June 2016 was a brief high-water mark, encouraged over the line by the egregious lies that the Leave campaigns resorted to. 

Support for their project has been falling steadily ever since, and it will continue to decline because it makes no economic, social, or geopolitical sense.  

Farage's Problem

Restore UK is led by Rupert Lowe. Lowe has 864,000 followers on X compared to Farage’s 2.2 million.  Restore is a one MP party created after Lowe quit Reform UK following a row with Farage in November 2024. He is a force in British politics and he's even further to the right than Reform.

Farage has about 25% of the vote right now having fallen from a peak of around 30%. But to increase that and guarantee becoming PM he needs to attract more voters. As all politicians know, getting support from beyond your core supporters gets increasingly tough. They will have to be of more moderate opinions and therefore much harder for the divisive, hard-line Farage to attract, unless he softens his rhetoric and approach. But if he tries to do that, he will lose support to Lowe’s Restore UK or to Ben Habib’s Advance UK.

This is Farage’s problem. His rivals are rich men that he has fallen out with. They leave him and set up their own parties. A leader should be able to keep his party together to build a broader and broader church, but he is simply incapable of doing it.