This Week in Brexitland, February 16, 2023

How could Brexit be saved?

I can imagine most if not all of you reading this will be put off by that title, or at the very least confused. This newsletter is all about how Brexit is a disaster and how we might campaign to reverse that unfortunate mistake. It rests upon core Remoaner territory. Why would I even ask the question around saving Brexit? Who the hell would want to save it?

I do this partly as a public service to my Brexiter readers, of which there are a fair few. But also, I feel like this is completely painless as the leading Leavers are physically incapable of doing any of what I am about to suggest. They cannot help themselves - one of the main reasons Brexit is such a disaster is because of the negative proclivities of the Brexiters themselves.

So here we go, four ways that Brexit might be able to be saved or at the very least prolonged.

1. Stop talking about Brexit every five seconds

You might say this is hypocritical of me to suggest given I myself never shut up about Brexit. But I do so because I want to reverse Brexit and I have figured out that people endlessly talking about it is helpful to that cause. If I wanted to save Brexit, I would tell everyone who would listen to be quiet about it immediately. All talking about Brexit does is make people think about Brexit, which makes people think about what a disappointment it’s been. If you want something to be accepted as the settled state of affairs, stop talking about how it might not be after all.

This goes for the government as well. Stop trying to pick apart the Withdrawal Agreement and the trade deal and learnt to live with the settlement as it stands. When you keep trying to revise things, like with the NI Protocol, it reminds people that Brexit is an endless, tedious process that produces very little if any value.

2. Drop the antagonistic attitude towards Remainers

The whole “Remoaners” thing made some sense between 2016 and 2019, when Brexit was genuinely in the balance and it was an all out war to see if Brexit could get over the line. Now that it’s done, Brexiters need to win the peace, something they not only have not done, they have gone out of their way to avoid.

All these sneering articles everywhere about Remainers secretly plotting to reverse Brexit and how we’re the worst forms of life - I don’t see how this helps you bed down Brexit as a permanent state of affairs. Insulting people is perhaps the worst way to win them over to your side and that’s all Brexiters ever seem to do.

Again, you could say to me, ‘Nick, you insult Brexiters all the time’. Yes, because now, I’m the revolutionary. I’m trying to stir the pot in order to upend the status quo. That’s what you do when you’re a revolutionary. Brexit is the status quo now. If you want to preserve that state of affairs, you need to bring people along with you. One of the strangest things about Brexit is that the Brexiters still don’t seem able to understand this. It’s like they are still fighting the war of 2016.

3. Accept that parts of Brexit are inevitably going to be reversed and manage that process

I think the smarter Brexiters, like Michael Gove, have figured out that the current status quo is unsustainable already. If you care about the UK not being an EU member again for any reason, then you have to think strategically. Insisting that any Brexit isn’t a “real Brexit” unless it detaches Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the Earth’s crust is a long and even medium term road to nowhere. You’re just helping make Brexit a niche belief, shared by fewer and fewer people, instead of what you assumedly want, which is for people to stop questioning Brexit and accept it as permanent.

Being in the customs union, for example, should be somewhere the Brexiters aim for now. We wouldn’t be able to make trade deals, but all the trade deals we’ve made thus far are terrible anyhow, and there is nothing to suggest they are going to get any better. The CPTPP is a false dawn. We could join the CU and wouldn’t have to re-accept freedom of movement, yet a lot of Brexit’s downsides would be ameliorated immediately by doing so. It makes perfect sense as an attempt at a compromise that some chunk of those dissatisfied with Brexit at the moment might accept.

4. Start talking in practical terms and dial down the mystical shit

Move Brexit as far away from the religion that it is evolving into and work out how to make being outside of the EU functional in the real world. Stop inventing enemies and come to terms with the downsides of your project so that you can search for any upsides that might exist in earnest. If you want the UK to remain outside of the European Union for the rest of time, real thought needs to be put into how that is going to work. Blowing holes in UK law, endlessly fighting with the EU over Northern Ireland and shouting at the clouds are not ways to make Brexit work.

Again, many of you might be tempted to say to me at this stage, “Shhhh! Don’t give them any good advice!” Remainers, worry not. Like I said at the top, Brexiters are incapable of doing the list above because to do so would be to admit that Brexit isn’t holy and pure, but rather, just another piece of public policy like any other, one that has to be judged on how it works in reality - or does not work, as the case may be. Brexit rests on fantasies that no one who is a true believer will ever give up: the idea that being free of the EU will make Britain one of the world’s great superpowers again; that some day soon, the EU will fall apart and justify Brexit; that if we had a government who could just “grab hold” of the Brexit opportunities, everything would be amazing.

Labour might follow some of the advice detailed above. Having said that, I doubt it. The problem with Brexit as reality over fantasy is that it quickly becomes apparent it was an awful idea. Brexit without the unicorns is just a knackered horse with an upside-down funnel sellotaped to its forehead. And no one wants that.

Thanks for reading. If you aren’t a subscriber yet, please subscribe. If you’d like to become a paid subscriber, even better. This is all the extra stuff you get with a paid subscription:

1. A country by country report on how each of the remaining EU27 see post-Brexit Britain now, released piece by piece over the course of the next 18 months. I will interview key people in each EU country and try and present the most balanced view I can from each.

2. Sections from a book I partly wrote - and will complete for my paid subscribers over this year - entitled, How Brexit Gets Reversed. It is about what happened pre-referendum, during the referendum and then after it but pre-Brexit itself, with some inside stories about Farage, Vote Leave, and the Remain campaign, as well as what I think will happen in the coming decade(s) that leads to Brexit being slowly reversed - and most importantly, what pro-Europeans can do to help the process along.

3. I will provide a running technical explanation about elements of the Retained EU Law Bill, how EU law translated into UK law works and how it may affect you personally.

Thanks everyone and I’ll see you all again next week for the worst of Brexit.