This week in Brexitland, May 16, 2024
What would a Rejoin campaign capable of winning actually look like?
I’m often accused with this Substack of focusing on the past and being overly negative. Sometimes I am told that if I think we should rejoin the EU, then perhaps I should talk a little about how that will take place, instead of just complaining about Brexit all the time. Well, here’s my best attempt at outlining what I think a successful campaign to get Britain back in the European Union would look like.
The first thing to say is that it has to be cross-party, non-partisan and unconcerned with other issues. This may sound like a statement of the obvious to some, but I think it’s far from clear in what passes for current pro-European campaigning in Britain. In fact, everything rejoin flavoured is in real danger of being sucked into the “Omnicause” - the left-wing nexus that tries to tell you that Free Palestine, saving the environment and anything else you want to throw in there is all one and the same thing.
Getting Britain back into the EU is not part of this equation and trying to place it there is where the cause goes to die. We’re going to need right of centre of people talking about rejoining the EU at some point. Some of them might very well be pro-Israel, gender critical and (God forbid) on the climate sceptic end of the spectrum. Suck it up - you need everyone in the tent. There is no other way it’s going to work. At some point, pro-EU campaigners in Britain have to figure out whether they like the Omnicause more than the idea of rejoining the EU. I think it will, sadly, be a tough choice for some.
The next thing I’d say is that the rejoin campaign needs an actual organisation to host it and that needs to become obvious as soon as possible. Many pro-Europeans look to the European Movement, which seems to me to be reluctant to take up this mantle. Either it does or it doesn’t, in the end it’s not important - what is important is that there is a cross-party organisation that seeks this end unambiguously and welcomes anyone who agrees with that cause, whatever else their politics contains. I don’t see this as existing at present and it needs to.
Okay, let’s say we get our rejoin organisation sorted out - what would they start saying? It needs to be a balance of carrot and stick - of Project Fear and a positive outlook for the future. Yes, the downsides of Brexit need to be talked about. But so too does what rejoin would look like and the massive upsides rejoining the EU would bring with it. Address the elephants in the room directly. Schengen. Single currency. Freedom of movement. You have to figure out what you’re going to say on these things. They aren’t going to go away - in fact, they will form the battleground of any future rejoin campaign.
And yes, I say it again and again, but we need a diversity of people talking about rejoining. Left, right, centre, a range of backgrounds. Farmers and fishermen, and indeed any other group noted for having voted Leave in 2016 need to be heavily courted. Tory MPs are another key group we need inside the tent whenever possible. Shunning Conservative voices in favour of the warm, cosy embrace of the Omnicause may feel nice - but it will not work in the long run. What will happen is that you will get to a referendum campaign and find out that you do not have an argument or the people to make it that will work for the majority of the country.
Thanks for reading. If you haven’t subscribed already, please do, and I’ll be back next week, talking about Brexit and how we get out of this mess.
The idea of a cross party approach has it's downsides. I recall there was a cross party approach to "NO" to Scottish separation and the SNP never stopped going on about Labour selling out by campaigning with the Tories. It must have had some traction. At the very least there will have to be a cross party approach that does not use party labels, since some or all of them are aversions to too many people. Then other non official, non officially funded campaigns can run alongside, such as parties targeting their own voters and supporters.
As to Schengen and the Euro, Poland is in nether and does not have to be. It's people have clearly decided they do not want to be in Euro and no EU body is going to force such a huge change onto a country, which would be impossible anyway, unless they fully co-operated. Denmark too has no intention of joining it. It would not be difficult to get the EU Commission, Parliament and Council leaders to say that the UK did not have to be in either facility unless it wanted to and that universal coverage by the Euro was just a long term aim. Then the issue would mainly go to bed except with a minority of conspiracy theorists.
There are a number of factors steadily increasing UK support for rejoining the EU.:
1) the largest group of Leave voters were elderly or one foot away from being so and they are increasingly pushing up the daisies, which alone, has likely pushed Remain over the line ;
2) millions of young people have come of age and the pro Remain to Leave ratio is about 6-1;
3) millions of voters have since realised all the down sides for leaving and that they were misled or duped and would reverse their previous vote. Either free money on a red bus, improvements to the NHS, increased worldwide trade, EU roaming charges not returning, imaginings on sovereignty or in expunging the swarthy, or even one foolish senior Green Party Official voting Leave for higher animal welfare standards, despite the EU having high minimum standards and there being no restrictions on increasing any standard;
4) the turnout for the Remain side was reportedly lower than it could have been because the less politically engaged assumed that Remain would win anyway, or that nothing negative would happen from leaving and this was reflected in huge numbers googling "what is the EU" in the following couple of days;
5) a pro EU minded leader of the Labour party to bring that body of support fully along, given that we did have the dreaded Corbyn leading, refusing to meet or correspond with the Remain side until it was too late and nurtured a bank of LEXIT people who alone would have made up the 1.89% each way that swung it to the stupids and their Pied Pipers.
The support for Leave will increasingly shrink back to the nativist minded 20 odd percent, or swollen where the a Remain Out side might be effective in pinning Schengen or the Euro on the Rejoin side, or helped a bit from clever slogans such as "we told them last time" with pictures suggesting arrogant establishment elite figures. But it won't be enough. Most people are not blind to the total mess Britain is in of which Brexit is probably the largest component, only rivalled by general Tory incompetence.
Couldn’t agree more with all this. Along with facing up to Schengen, Euro etc. I think there also needs to be a strand associated with public consent and what it should look like. For two reasons: firstly to neutralise all the bound-to-be very noisy Brexit ultras shouting about not respecting the 2016 result; second, general education about democratic consent, truth telling, safeguarding, thresholds, public information etc. and why it’s all so important. Would also drum it in what a crock of democratic shit the last ref was. By rights any future referendum to win should only need a minuscule majority to level it up with last one, and I even think it could just go in a party’s manifesto, but that would probably be a disaster long term. In any case you can bet the Brexit ultras will be screaming about thresholds, so let them have them.