This week in Brexitland, May 9, 2024

How to overcome the difficult politics of rejoining the EU

Rejoining the EU will be difficult. Yet not impossible, as some insist. Understanding the politics involved and how pro-Europeans can navigate them is an important first step.

The immediate problem for rejoining the EU is that neither Labour nor the Tories are in any way advocating rejoin and in fact, they both have an official position that Brexit is irreversible and has to be “taken advantage of” somehow, although they never seem able to say exactly how that can be achieved.

However, this position looks untenable long-term, when properly examined. Labour’s support for Brexit feels skin deep, born out of political expedience. That does not mean, however, that shifting Labour’s position on this will be easy. The political scars of the Brexit wars run deep in the Labour Party, mostly because they were punished so heavily electorally for being perceived as trying to stop it from happening. Having said that, Labour’s current position on Brexit will be difficult to maintain once they are in power for two big reasons.

One is the increasing unpopularity of Brexit, particularly amongst Labour’s natural support base. The Labour leader’s office (to become Number 10 in due course) will be increasingly conscious of both the bad polling numbers for Brexit, alongside increasing pressure from people within the Labour ecosphere who will push Labour for a closer and closer relationship with the European Union. They will push and push until rejoin starts to feel like the only option for Labour. It is certainly true that pro-Europeans on the left of politics should do what they can here to help this along, once Labour are in power.

The second reason Labour will find it hard to maintain support for Brexit once in government is that the practicalities of “make Brexit work” will be a nightmare. There is a difference between being seen by the public to be making a valiant effort to turn Brexit around - and Brexit destroying Labour’s popularity as it becomes increasingly unpopular amongst the electorate, much as it has done to the Tories’ popularity. Brexit destroys governments - we’re watching it happen right now. There is probably a pinch point at which Labour will have to say that it has done everything in its power to make Brexit work but that it turns out it is mission impossible.

What’s more interesting to me than any of this is how the Conservative party might change in regard to Brexit over the coming years.

The assumption at present, and it is probably correct, is that if the Tories lose the next election, they will swing even further to the right. Probably just go full on UKIP, only this time latter-day UKIP, when it started to go a little scary, even to people who are fairly right-wing. They will thus lean even more heavily into Brexit and talk endlessly about how Labour aren’t doing enough to “make it work”.

Only thing is, I don’t think this phase will last very long. The people who really run the Conservative party are a relatively small pool of extremely wealthy individuals who just want a Tory government in place. They want the lowest tax burden possible and think that, whatever is said by any politician on either side of the aisle, the Tories will always be more likely to give it to them.

This group of people do not give the tiniest toss about small boats coming across the Channel, or how many genders anyone thinks might exist, or whether critical race theory is taught in British state schools at some point (none of their children are in state school, for a start). They are rowing in behind the Tories pursuing the current culture war strategy because they are constantly being told it will help the Conservative party win. If this fails to happen and then a populist Conservative party continues to lag behind a Labour government in the polls, there will be a change of direction, sooner rather than later.

Brexit has tied itself to the rightest right-wing end of the culture war, which more than any other factor, dooms it to the dustbin of history. When the relevance of that starts to fade, the emotions around Brexit will fade too. When that happens, I think the Tories will have to pivot to a much more pro-European position. This could be accelerated by the appearance of a Blair-like figure who the money types might see as the Tories’ way back into government in short order. If this figure feels like single market membership is a key goal for a future Tory government, this could change the culture within the Conservative party drastically inside of a year.

I know some of this sounds outrageous but recall that Brexit doesn’t make a lot of sense from an old school Conservative vantage point. And that’s Brexit in theory, forget about the fact that it hasn’t worked in practice. A Tory party no longer chasing the UKIP vote and in fact wanting to run away from it, seeing it now as toxic, could easily make a centre-right pitch for rejoining the EU.

A pro-European Conservative party would force Labour into a more pro-European position. And then, suddenly, instead of having two major parties in a two party system who are pro-Brexit, both of them are anti-Brexit. It feels far away now, I realise, but this is closer than most realise. The logic of it is so powerful, in fact, that it would be stranger if things didn’t unfold this way rather than the other way round.

Thanks for reading. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do, and I’ll be back next week with the worst of Brexit.