High time to revisit brexit? | thearticle

There’s a problem with referendums: when complex issues are boiled down to yes-or-no choices, the debate is on one hand simplified and on the other usurped by wider social and political

gripes. As the debate becomes more heated, bombast about broader grievances blows away discussion about the actual issue at hand. When the dust settles, the electorate finds that it hasn’t

got what was promised. It’s increasingly clear this is where we are with Brexit. Recent polling shows the public thinks Brexit isn’t working, with only 35 per cent who think it’s been good

for the country. 52 per cent of UK adults believe we were wrong to leave the EU, leaving the rest undecided. This isn’t an anti-Brexit movement with the marches and self-righteous disgust

seen in the aftermath of the referendum, but something more damning: a collective sigh of bemusement, asking: “What’s the bloody point?” Sooner or later, Brexiteers are going to have to take

responsibility for this and do something about it. If the project wasn’t doomed to failure from the start, then there needs to be an acceptance that there has been a lack of leadership and

vision needed for the project to work. One of the main casualties has been the Conservative Party, summed up by its four leaders and numerous collapses into open civil war since the

referendum. The only thing which has saved the Conservatives from complete destruction is a chaotic Labour Party, who over the last six years have been as poor in opposition as the Tories

have been in government. It would seem that Sir Keir Starmer is getting a grip now, but it’s a victory for the least worse and beige. The dog’s dinner the UK has made of Brexit has

contributed to the European Union now being on a fifteen year high in terms of its popularity. The idea of breaking up the EU, previously quite popular, has been almost killed off by Brexit

in mainstream politics within the EU. We were told we would be able to take back control of our borders. Now we’ve got a Home Secretary telling us there’s an immigrant invasion engulfing the

south of the country. We can’t even ship the invaders out to Rwanda, thanks to still being under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights. Brexit was meant to give the UK’s

regions the ability to roar back onto the manufacturing world stage and allow London to become the freewheeling money capital of the world. None of this has happened, or is likely to happen,

because the global free trade agreements promised during the referendum haven’t materialised, while we simultaneously locked ourselves out of the EU market. UK plc is counting the cost of

lack of access to talent, and a bureaucratically burdensome right to trade in any external market, including Northern Ireland. There seemed to be recent chink of light when it appeared

exports to the EU had started to move upward, but it turned out the UK was just acting as a middleman in getting large amounts of Liquified Gas into the EU from countries such as the US and

Qatar. The budget deficit between the UK and EU just gets wider and wider. Meanwhile, there’s a Brexit exhaustion in Westminster, with front benches happy to blame, criticise, and bemoan

anything but Brexit. The new political orthodoxy on the EU is an uneasy truce of silence, with neither of the main parties willing dig up the bodies which were buried during the 2019 Brexit

crisis. So what’s the answer? Another referendum? Go back on bended knee to the EU? We’re too far down the track to turn back, too much hatred will be spat out if we rerun the referendum –

Remoaners accused of hating their country, Brexiters accused of racism. And the circle of abuse continues. One thing which should be done straight away is to rip up the EU exit deal

negotiated by Boris Johnson and Lord Frost. There are two headline reason for this. First, the Northern Ireland protocol is not working, has never worked and will never work. We’re now in a

position where we either get rid of the internal border within the UK, by negotiating a new deal with the EU, or Northern Ireland will be co-ruled from Dublin and London, but God only knows

how this would work. But if this does happen, Scotland will leave the United Kingdom. Second, when the pound last took a similar, but not as sizeable, battering on Black Wednesday in

September 1992, the UK went on to experience an export-led boom. The result was a trade surplus with the EU by 1997. Recent sterling devaluations have had nothing like the same effect, with

the UK performing worst among G7 nations since the end of the transition period.  If the pound continues on its long-term downward trajectory, and the trade deficit continues to grow, the UK

will be on its knees asking for a bailout within a few years. It’s only by exporting that we will reinvigorate the economy, but to do this we need to have the same access to markets as our

nearest international competitors enjoy. We need to renegotiate true free trade access to the EU. Brexit has failed to deliver a payoff for the UK, the British electorate has lost patience

and the EU has got stronger. The post-2019 Brexit settlement has failed and politicians need to start seriously engaging with Brexit once more. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only

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