Brexit didn't matter much

The disaster perspective is not the gloomiest

Last month, I stumbled across a new political compass test. The creator of the 2020s Political Compass argues that we are in an era of “post-materialism”, the old left-right split having shifted to “vibes-based politics”. Sixty-four questions hope to divvy things up anew, pitting chud against woke, techbro against neoluddite, hopepilled against doomer, and Davos against Dubai.

Both times I got Rishi Sunak, which at least means the test replicates. That landed me mostly on the chud side, middling between techbro and luddite, hopeful for the future, and more Davos than Dubai – though the World Economic Forum has unaccountably failed to invite me to their little freemasonry get-togethers in recent years.

I mention this quiz because one of the questions summarises an event that has just passed its tenth anniversary. Offering quizzers options from strongly agree to strongly disagree, the author puts this statement to them: “I would surrender my right to vote in exchange for a guaranteed high standard of living.”

Of course, this is no idle question. A decade ago this was the choice presented to Brits by each side of the Brexit campaign. While leavers said exiting the EU would free us from the Brussels yoke, remainers said the effort would bankrupt us. The then chancellor George Osborne even proposed a ‘punishment budget’ to fill the £30bn black hole that would drag us into the abyss if we voted to quit the bloc and end his political career.

You’ll recall the democracy enjoyers carried the day, to much consternation. But a decade on, the matter seems to have slipped into Osborne’s black hole, taking some of the British state’s finances with it. While a scattering of articles marked the anniversary of what critics call the dumbest thing a country has ever voted to do, mainstream politicians now pay it as much heed as Northern Ireland when the Ulstermen are not setting things on fire.

This might be put down to the small matter of the prime minister resigning, even if half of us suspect Andy Burnham will prove a continuity Keir Starmer with a northern accent and a more convincing interest in football. Hacks are currently fixated on the prospects of a snap general election, a proposal Sir Humphrey would describe as “bold”.

That’s despite public opinion drifting in a clear direction on Brexit. For some years, surveys have indicated we have Bregrets. Some of this is of course what euphemists call ‘generational churn’, but the fact is that most people think it was a mistake and would happily rejoin if we could retain the opt-outs we had before we left, such as the one that let us keep the pound.

It’s some vindication for the rump remain campaign, which can still muster Stop Brexit pest Steve Bray to play Ode to Joy loud enough to interrupt the prime minister’s resignation speech. They were right, they would say, that Brexit would hamper the economy, piss off our allies, and oblige people on skiing holidays to queue a little longer at passport control.

Frankly, I’d expected this much when I voted to leave the EU. Unlike the more buccaneering Brexiteers, I didn’t deny it would cost me money. My commitment to persuading people to join my side was weak enough that I forwarded an Economist PDF to my sister forecasting the bad things that would happen.

My old podcast The Right Dishonourable pivoted to capitalise on having a remainer and a leaver hosting, making us rather more distinct that the disagreeable agreers chewing the cud at Goalhanger Podcasts. But the commitment was always lopsided; Jazza remains a genuine Europhile, while my Euroscepticism is more muted.

This was partly because I was resigned to remain winning, and could happily have lived with it. My objection was always that the British had never been asked whether they supported the growing integration of the bloc. Had remain won, the Brits would have at least agreed to what had happened so far.

As for my own choice, I vacillated in the weeks heading to the vote. I’m still drawn to some aspects of European integration. In many respects I’d prefer a full-blown federation to the half-arsed government led by civil servants, in which national voters are liable to being asked a question until they give the right answer.

That sense of being dragooned was echoed in the referendum itself. The tone of the remain campaign was patronising, but the great graduate sulk that followed revealed the weight of anti-democratic sentiment felt by the haut towards the bas – a hissy fit sufficiently offensive that a few remain voters I know even regretted their choice.

To the extent I regret mine, it’s that it would have been more socially convenient to have reluctantly backed remain. Yes, the EU is contemptuous of democracy, I’ve never felt politically European, and the bloc is frequently sclerotic and inept. But how much easier to point out those things while having voted against deplorables like Nigel Farage?

In the end I concluded that Tony Benn was right: the EU failed the last of his five questions. At no point during Britain’s membership was it clear how we got rid of anybody actually making decisions on our behalf. The democratic deficit in Brussels remains, and not being subject to it is the only clear Brexit benefit.

Not that we’re running a surplus of democracy in Blighty, of course. The Brexit vote was primarily about immigration. But part of the reason immigration remains a sore point is that it continues to run high, whatever the colour of the prime minister’s rosette. Brexit didn’t change the governing class’s addiction to cheap foreign labour, nor how it flattered their cosmopolitan mores.

And it’s not the only thing that has stayed the same. Brexit hasn’t massively increased the housing stock in places where it is needed. Nobody has broken us out of our productivity stagnation, and AI may make our jobs market even more dysfunctional. Defence spending remains too low even when it’s clear that geopolitics is at its most dangerous since the end of the Cold War.

Without Brexit, the UK would have been richer. It might have had more migrants from Europe, and fewer from the Commonwealth. Osborne might have recently ended his second term in office. Farage might have begun his first. Perhaps I’d be political editor of the Times. A decade is a long time in politics.

But for all that, and looking at our European peers, it seems to me that if we’d remained we’d still be facing the same problems listed above, and with not a pol who knows how to fix them. People think that the most dismal perspective is that Brexit was a disaster. In fact, it’s that it didn’t matter much at all.

---

Currently reading: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut; The War of Wars by Robert Harvey

Recent listening: Frozen, mostly, but also Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane