Why there is one number more than any other that tells us how soon we can rejoin the EU
A YouGov poll out this week made bleak reading for those still invested in the Brexit project. Only nine percent of people said that leaving the EU has been a success so far, with 62% saying it’s been failure. Those are brutal numbers for Brexit. But what do they really tell us?
One thing they tell us is that Brexit has failed and I don’t think anyone can say otherwise now (although several will try). Even Nigel Farage admits it. The strange thing about these polling figures is that they exist in a Britain where both major nationwide parties are pro-Brexit. Even the Lib Dems don’t like talking about it much. No frontline politicians - in England at least - are arguing that Brexit was a mistake. And yet, that’s what the people already believe.
However, some of these figures should be taken with a grain of salt. It’s worth digging a little deeper and thinking about what the numbers might be telling us about how long Brexit is going to last.
To start with, as you’d expect, Remain voters overwhelmingly think Brexit has been a failure (although 3% think it’s been success - I’d love to speak to those people). Meanwhile, 37% of Leave voters think it has been a failure, with only 20% thinking it’s been a success (35% say it’s been neither). If I was a leading Brexiter, it’s those Leave voter numbers I’d be worried about. Only 20% of Leave voters thinking Brexit has been a success is a disaster for the project, at least long term.
There’s a weird set of numbers in the polling I want to highlight: 75% of Leavers think that “Brexit had the potential to be a success but the implementation of it by this and/or previous governments made it a fail” - meaning that 14% of Leave voters agree with the statement, “Brexit was always going to be a failure, and there was nothing any government could do to make it a success.” That’s interesting to me. As is the fact that the inverse appears to be true: 16% of Remain voters agree that Brexit had some potential, but the Tories screwed it up.
What this means is that around 33% of the electorate think that Brexit can still possibly be saved in some way. This is the main number I think Rejoiners should pay attention to. It suggests that there is a significant chunk of the population, mostly made up of people who voted Leave in 2016 but not exclusively, who want to give Brexit another chance. This is the number to watch over the next two years - it should slowly go down as people from this cohort give up on Brexit ever coming good. How quickly it does will probably tell us more about how soon we are going to be able to rejoin the European Union than any other single factor.
This is because when we have the next referendum on the European question, I think it has to be an absolute no-brainer. The number of people who think that Brexit could be made a success of with the right government in place - currently now 1 out of every 3 voters - would have to be less than 10%. The vast majority of the population has to be in no doubt about Brexit’s failure, its inability to be a success no matter what happens. This is something we’re still a ways away from as it stands.
There are two things I would take out of these numbers if I was a Tory strategist. One is that clinging onto Brexit is going to be a politically silly move for them to continue making sometime in the near future. In fact, at some point soon, they are going to have to figure out a way to have Brexit not be their fault. It isn’t clear how they are going to pull that one off, particularly as I’m sure no one at CCHQ is even trying yet.
The other thing to note for the Tories is that the 9% of people who think Brexit has been a success figure probably indicates the size of the GB News watching National Conservative crowd. I don’t think it’s much larger than this, despite many on the right’s delusions that they represent more than half of the country. If the Conservatives lose the next election, which seems likely, they might want to consider whether wasting at least part of the next parliament farting around with Suella Braverman as leader and leaning into this 9% cohort, further alienating large chunks of potential supporters, is a good idea. It’s certainly not for me to tell them what to do, but for once I would suggest they listen to Nigel Farage. As he says, Brexit has failed. If the Tories want to avoid existential wipeout a la the Liberal Party, they better start thinking seriously about some of this stuff.
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I am not sure if the number of people who think Brexit could have worked if done right will ever fall to or below 10%.
It is an extremely easy excuse for Leave voters who might not like where things have gone but aren't ready to admit that their vote caused or helped cause it.
Additionally, it is without question that the Brexit process had been handled very badly.
Every step got rushed, nothing got prepared, repeatedly extremist positions were preferred over more moderate ones.
And "could have been handled better" can easily be reinterpreted as "could have been done right" or even a "can still be made right" (or "make Brexit work" as Labour currently puts it).
Connected with the inherent "absolution" for Leave voters, this will remain a strong proposition for a very long time.
I have been thinking for a couple of years that we probably will rejoin the EU, and probably within the next 20 years. However, it will be a Conservative government that takes us back in. Labour, at least for the next 10 years, won't and can't go near that. Firstly, they will have too much else to do (some of which will involve closer and more cordial relations with the EU), and secondly, the remaining (and evolving?) Tory media landscape would tear them to pieces. People today forget how the Sun supported Blair. People will eventually forget the frenzied right wing media of 2015-2024 and back a future Conservative government taking us back into the EU "to repair Labour's mistakes". It might not be any time soon, but I'm convinced it will happen. Tory re-invention has a long, and generally successful, history.