This week in Brexitland, June 13, 2024

What the Lib Dems pledging to take Britain back into the European single market means for the future of Brexit

The Liberal Democrats launched their manifesto this week, and in amongst a variety of very Lib Demy policies within its pages (the de rigueur pledge to legalise weed, for instance) there was one that you might think would fall into the Lib Demiest category going, yet is something the party has been silent on for a while now. The Lib Dems have pledged to take Britain back into the EU single market.

This is relevant for several reasons. One is that the Lib Dems look like they might do well in this election. While saying out loud “the Liberal Democrats might be the official opposition after polling day” still feels absurd, the hard data is telling us it is very possible. If we had an official opposition that was actively calling to rejoin the single market, that would put a Labour government under tremendous pressure on the subject. With Labour’s membership as pro-European as it is, how long could the party hold out in the face of the opposition arguing for SM re-entry?

Even if the Lib Dems do not form His Majesty’s official opposition, one of the great things about the Lib Dem announcement on single market re-entry is that they seem to have got a poll boost from it, albeit in one YouGov poll we haven’t seen replicated in other polls yet (although there seems to be a data collection timing point here). At the very least, putting this pledge in the manifesto didn’t hurt them in the polls. This bounce could turn out to be a phantom, but if lasts, the fact that the Lib Dems have been rewarded by taking a more vocally pro-EU position bodes well for Pro-Europeanism in the near future.

Besides all that, it is a huge thing that one of the national parties, even if it is the Lib Dems and they were always more likely to do it than anyone else, has made a commitment to rejoining the single market. It changes the politics around that idea - it makes it feel more real, more possible. So, even if the Lib Dems don’t do as well as some of the polling now suggests in terms of seat numbers, that at least the Lib Dems are calling for single market re-entry is a pretty big thing in and of itself.

The flip side to this is the thing hardly anyone is going to want to talk about in the national press - the Tories are being punished for Brexit. From two sides as well - by a large number of people who have realised that leaving the EU was a bad idea, and by a smaller group of people who still think it was a great idea but that the Tories screwed it up. In a way, those two positions are a lot closer together than they might appear to be at first glance - basically, the Tories promised to change Britain for the better by leaving the EU, and that has not happened. And most people in the country are fairly upset about this.

So, thank you to the Liberal Democrats for the pledge to rejoin the single market. It was a reasonably ballsy move that should be celebrated. And thank you for reading. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do, and I’ll be back next week, talking about this shitstorm of an election campaign.