Colm McCarthy: Brexit - buyer's remorse

Post-Brexit, the United Kingdom was always headed for a bout of buyer's remorse. Public and political opinion has shifted and there is growing support for a normalisation of relations with Europe.

Since Boris Johnson agreed the terms of exit three years ago, the pretence that nothing would change to Britain’s detriment has slowly been abandoned and recent opinion polls show a majority feel that Brexit was a mistake.

Every non-member state in this part of the world has fashioned, from the outside, a better trading relationship with the EU’s single market and customs union. The UK chose not to do so and enshrined that decision in binding treaties, freely entered into.

Exit on the disadvantageous terms chosen was not on the ballot paper in June 2016 and were the referendum to be held anew, the pollsters now say Brexit would not be endorsed.

Deed is done

Of course, it will not be held anew, the deed is done and unfavourable terms of exit were agreed by Boris Johnson’s government.

A better arrangement was on offer from the EU, but was unacceptable to the Brexiteers in the Conservative party. They brought down Theresa May’s administration, choosing Boris Johnson’s promise to "get Brexit done".

Johnson won a strong majority at the general election of December 2019 and proceeded to execute a hard Brexit, departing both the single market and customs union, with the Brexiteers nonetheless insisting that the UK would continue to enjoy ‘frictionless’ trade with its largest market.

That this was impossible has now been conceded, by a majority of the electorate if not by the government. The new prime minister Rishi Sunak campaigned for a leave vote in 2016, but appears to accept that continual carping about the iniquity of Brussels is an attitude, not a policy.

New policy manifestation

It remains to be seen what shape a new policy might take, but its only manifestation is an attempt to improve the working of the Northern Ireland protocol.

Northern Ireland has retained the privileges of access to both the single market and customs union via an open frontier with the Republic and hence with the European Union.

But since the EU must have a third-country frontier somewhere, there are border checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, which have antagonised Unionist opinion and created costs and hassle for business, even though there has been only partial implementation on the UK side.

There is no appetite for a rerun

While all of this was foreseeable and was foreseen, there has been a reluctance to revive the leave/remain debate, an issue which split the country and has contributed to the fall of four Conservative prime ministers.

There is no appetite for a rerun, despite the growing acknowledgement, including from the agricultural interest, that the outcome has been bad for Britain.

The opposition Labour party, whose current leadership consists largely of people who took the remain side in 2016 and who saw the merits of a softer Brexit, has declined to campaign for a new accommodation for the UK as a whole with either the single market or the customs union.

Its leader Keir Starmer has urged the new prime minister to resist the "Brexit purity cult", but only in the context of reworking the Northern Ireland protocol.

He has studiously avoided any commitment to a comprehensive renegotiation of the withdrawal treaty and the subsequent trade and co-operation agreement, which have cast in stone the hard Brexit conceded by Johnson to the cult which Starmer disparages.

Europhilia

Even if a Labour government assumes office two years from now, the UK will not seek a new deal with Europe along the lines of the attachment of Norway and Switzerland to the single market or Turkey to the customs union.

The Labour party, in Starmer’s judgement, should not frighten its leave-supporting voters in the midlands and north with any display of Europhilia.

Those who would campaign for another referendum can point to opinion polls suggesting that the 48% who voted remain in 2016 now number 56% or more.

This rather assumes that rejoining the European Union is a unilateral choice open to the recently departed and it is inconceivable that the EU will see it that way.

There may be modifications to the Northern Ireland protocol, but Britain is out of the EU for keeps

Should a future British government ever contemplate such a course, they will be invited to join the queue alongside the long list of applicant states and there will be no sweetheart deals on offer.

Terms would include joining the euro, free movement and the Schengen no-passports rules, no budget rebate and no opt-outs from uncongenial bits of the social chapter.

Terms inferior to those which the UK enjoyed during its 45 years in the EU, terms designed to be rejected.

There may be modifications to the Northern Ireland protocol, but Britain is out of the EU for keeps and out of the single market and customs union for the foreseeable future.