The Brexit reset doesn’t really exist. But it could and should
Starmer has the chance to control of the post-Brexit narrative. He should take it
Ever since he took office, Keir Starmer has maintained that resetting relations with the EU is one of his top priorities. The PM has, however, discovered like all who preceded him that there’s no such thing as a popular policy on Europe.
The Brexit trap is real, and it looks something like this:
The government says it wants to improve relations with Europe. The government suggests a series of objectives to improve relations with Europe. Hardline Brexiteers scream their heads off that the government is selling out Brexit. Hardline Europhiles counter that the government is selling out the majority of Brits who now regret Brexit and want to rejoin the EU (or some variant thereof).
It’s not terribly complicated, but nearly a decade since the vote, it is still the loudest voices who set the tone of the debate on Brexit.
The truth of the matter is that even more Brexit voters now accept that closer ties with the EU are worth pursuing. How do we know this? Well, opinion poll after opinion polls tells us so. This week is was Ipsos telling us that a majority say Brexit has been a failure and was the wrong choice for Britain. Last week, YouGov told us that an overwhelming majority want a closer relationship.
What these polls don’t tell us, however, is exactly what that closer relationship should be. Nor do they explain what the trade offs would be for a closer relationship.
Taking the YouGov poll example, 55% say they want to rejoin the bloc in full. However, this question is hypothetical to the point of being useless. Rejoining might sound nice if it were as simple as signing a form and everything going back to how it was. But that simply isn’t how it would be – as I have written about extensively.
50% say they would support rejoining the Single Market. Again, this is considerably more complicated than most appreciate.
This isn’t a criticism of those who passionately want to achieve either of the above aims. It is just not articulated often enough exactly what the process to achieve those aims would be. In reality, Starmer’s slow and steady approach – doing things one step at a time – is the only credible way of getting there.
The reason for this is that to reset – or undo, dependent on your view – Brexit requires democratic consent. I’ve been panned on social media so many times for making this point, with people arguing that opinion polls like those described above provide all the democratic consent we need.
Flip that argument on its head. If we started implementing policy by opinion poll, what would we end up with? The death penalty? Mass deportations? It’s just not a good way to devise policy because it’s absent of the necessary context.
The one man who can provide that context is Keir Starmer, which is where we come back to the title of this post. In Brussels, officials say that the most significant victory in the Brexit reset thus far is Starmer convincing people it actually exists.
From an EU perspective, it is little more than a vague series of ambitions with no real political heft behind it. Starmer would do well to look at what the opinion polls actually tell us about public attitudes to Brexit. If he is willing to be totally honest with the public and say “look, it’s going to take a while, but here is my plan, here are its aims, and here are the bits you might not like – because there will be trade offs,” he might find that the majority of people think it’s credible and sensible.
He will have to stare down the loudest voices in the debate, sure. But what’s the point in a stonking majority if you’re not willing to throw your weight around a bit?