David Cameron has entered (or should I say re-entered) the Brexit debate. He told Mishal Husain at Bloomberg that Britain shouldn’t rejoin the EU and that reopening the question would be a “long and painful argument, and who knows where it might end up.” What a pity he didn't say that in 2015. He also claimed that our current economic problems haven’t got “anything to do with Brexit at all.” This is somewhat surprising to me, although perhaps it shouldn’t be. Cameron was never a fully committed European in the Heath mould; he was always slightly semi-detached. I think it demonstrates what a complete lightweight he was, more of a flashy PR man than a genuine political leader.
It rather confirms this version of Cameron before he became leader of the Conservative Party. I am inclined to think his entire political career has been about him, rather than us.
Even worse, he said that he supports Badenoch’s policy of leaving the ECHR. He also wants to have a closer relationship with the EU, short of rejoining. Read that again, and think how utterly unreal that combination of goals is. It would be stupid coming from anybody, but a former PM? Really! What does he think it would do to the Windsor Framework and the TCA?
He told Ms Husain we have to do “whatever it takes” to stop the boats, everything that is, short of the obvious solution staring him in the face.
I can see now why he was so reckless in 2016. He valued our EU membership very cheaply and was quite happy to gamble it away in a ridiculous plot to outflank UKIP and Nigel Farage for purely narrow party political reasons. He bet the nation’s future and scuttled away when he lost. Some pro-Brexit outlets have seized on his comments, but YouGov polling indicates the vast majority of people in this country think his opinions are irrelevant, and they are right.
However, his intervention comes as the debate begins to take shape and as many other British political figures show they are also prepared to change with the wind. I am thinking of Rachel Reeves and Kier Starmer but there are others like the Chancellor. Some have gone the opposite way. Chris Ward, the Labour MP who was closely involved in writing the ‘red lines’ into Labour’s 2024 manifesto, argues that these should now be dropped when the next manifesto comes to be written. Nick Thomas-Symonds, formerly the ‘Europe Minister’ under Starmer has said the same thing.
After the referendum, most leading politicians who campaigned for Remain chose to accept the verdict, bow to the democratic will of the people and get on with implementing the decision. They seemed to think their own deeply held convictions had to be suppressed. That was, in a way, understandable. If you want to keep your job, you sometimes have to do things you don’t necessarily agree with. We’ve all done it, or something similar, in our working lives.
But in politics, I think it’s important to hold to your values. Voters need to know what they’re likely to get if they vote for you. I’m not sure what any Labour front bencher really thinks about rejoining or staying out. You can’t 'lead' by waiting for public opinion to change decisively before making your own ‘views’ known, and you can't resist public opinion when it changes either. You either believe in the EU project or you don’t.
It’s little wonder Brussels is wary about the ever-shifting sands at the top of British politics.
In any case, the notion that Brexit has ‘nothing’ to do with Britain’s problems is simply not true. It may not be the only reason, but it’s far from not being one “at all.” It’s the one thing that makes many others measurably worse, the foundation stone of the economic growth that we need.
Cameron identifies our present difficulties as being, “we are overspending, over-borrowing, over-taxing, over-regulated, and far too much being spent on working age welfare.” In fact, as the Resolution Foundation point out we appear to have a high ratio between employment support and out-of-work benefits because we spend too little on helping people into jobs, not because we spend too much on welfare. By international comparators UK regulation, spending on labour market policies and working age benefits is actually very low.
The answer, of course, is to raise productivity, not cut everything in sight. We have been in a downward spiral of ever-tightening and ever-failing austerity for fifteen years. Cameron’s coalition cut a lot between 2010 and 2015, and they carried on without him after 2016 until the voters got sick of it all in 2024. No, that solution won’t work.
We are still going round in circles as far as Brexit is concerned. The present 'reset' will include joining the EU electricity market and signing an SPS agreement, which are regarded as being a little bit of icing to sweeten the TCA cake and once settled, we will have achieved our objectives. But that underplays the many other ongoing issues like Made in Europe, security, AI, and so on, where we may want to negotiate something else, or the fact that the single market itself is a dynamic, constantly changing entity.
Britain will be permanently negotiating with Europe one way or another forever.
Chris Grey’s blog, always required reading on the subject of Brexit, is this week titled: Why Brexit won’t go away. He says, “the EU exists, and will continue to exist, and the UK will be affected by it, and by what happens within its member states, anyway. Being out of the EU does not prevent that, but it does prevent having any influence at all on what happens to the EU as a result.”
We live next door to the world’s only regulatory superpower and our nearest, largest and richest overseas market. That would matter at the best of times, but as Professor Grey also points out, at the moment there is huge global instability and the EU - for all its problems- is a bulwark against it. The EU will always be there, and we will always be in negotiations with it, whatever position we are in. It is simply an inescapable fact of geopolitical reality.
We are far better off back in.
Stay Out Campaign Launches
I note that there is now a 'Stay Out' movement which is already putting out misleading stuff on social media.
“Stay Out” campaign launch. Michael Gove of vote leave is back in the fray— Matthew Holehouse (@matthewholehouse.bsky.social) 14 November 2026 at 09:04
They’re obviously scared, as they should be.
Note the figures they use are based on what the commission has asked for; it’s not agreed until January 2028 and may turn out to be less. The 1.26% of GNI is the gross figure; it also includes 0.11% to repay Covid loans (called the NGEU), which the UK would not be required to pay. Also, they don’t mention that 56% of the money sent to Brussels is spent jointly by the member state and the Commission. It’s not as if we send all the money and get nothing in return.
Britain's GDP is forecast to be £3.18 trillion this year. That's £3,180 billion. The EU contribution is a rounding error, but it would enable us to increase our GDP by perhaps 6-8%, around £220 billion, with £80-£90 billion in extra tax revenue. It's an investment which will easily pay for itself.
Burnham rightly says we have lost more than we have gained. Stay Out are simply setting out what we have gained without listing any of the losses. No business would survive if every investment decision took account only of the outlay, not the return.
EU funding goes to develop the single market, from which all members benefit, and because we have some of the poorest regions in Western Europe, we could benefit more than others. We will be paying money into EU coffers in any case, in or out, for Erasmus, electricity trading, the SPS agreement and so on. And some of the money will replace existing agricultural subsidies, the Shared Prosperity Fund, Towns Fund and Rural England Prosperity Fund. Plus, we can stop duplicating 'back-office' functions done by the EU and reduce our own civil service, which increased after Brexit.
The position is far, far more complicated than Michael Gove would have people believe.
Note also that they compare it with the £350 million a week that was pasted on the side of a bus and for which they were criticised by the ONS for misleading the public, which is precisely what they are doing again.
The Ukraine War
The FT has carried out an analysis of the data leak from the Russian statistical agency Rosstat regarding casualties in the Ukraine ‘Special Military Operation.’ Hackers from the groups Belarusian CyberPartisans and Silent Crow have claimed responsibility for the breach. The FT claims that by the end of this year the Russians will have lost 650,000 men (it is predominantly men) killed. This is the toll for taking less than 20% of Ukrainian territory in nearly five years.
The numbers are absolutely horrendous, in a conflict that Russia does not even see as a war.
Britain lost 384,000 military personnel in WW2. The slaughter in Ukraine is now approaching levels Britain suffered in WW1 when 750,000 were killed.
In traditional conventional warfare across the 20th century, a 2 or 3:1 wounded-to-killed ratio is considered normal depending on the level of medical care available. If this held for Russian forces in Ukraine, the total number of casualties by the end of 2026 will be perhaps somewhere between 2 and 2.5 million. This is about 3% of their adult male population, much more if you only consider males between, say, 18 and 50, and it’s even higher in the regions where most recruits are signed up.
The FT also suggest the rate of current losses is exceeding the replacement rate. Russian authorities are aiming to recruit 35,000 men per month, but often fall short of that number, while losses are currently approaching 3,000 per DAY! It’s obvious there is a serious manpower shortage. Russia is making zero progress at the front line and is facing a human resource and a financial crisis which will eventually grind them into a humiliating withdrawal. That moment is not far away, regardless of Putin’s braggadocio.
He wants the international community to think Russia is a superpower; in fact it’s an economic minnow with a GDP lower than ours and lower than California or Texas. It does have nuclear weapons but can’t maintain a conventional war very much longer.
The New York Times has seen the latest Russian ‘demands’ put forward in Abu Dhabi last week. They are the same ones they submitted in 2021 plus a few more added for good measure, including that Britain and France commit to not protecting European countries using nuclear weapons. And Russia would only ‘approve’ Ukraine’s membership of the European Union if Ukraine does not participate in the bloc’s common defence policy.
Putin often talks of security guarantees as if Russia is under threat, when the reality is Russia has never been threatened by anyone since 1941 and is always the aggressor.
If Ukraine continues to receive international support, sooner or later, Russia will break. We can make it sooner by increasing this support and showing Putin that victory is impossible for him.
