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For almost a decade now the UK has been paralysed by Brexit. From the moment 52% of Brits voted to leave the EU back in 2016, British politics has been caught up in a stultifying consensus which insists that this one vote must be “honoured”, no matter what the cost to the country at large.
The result was years of political stasis in Westminster, followed by the passing of a particularly damaging form of Brexit which, with the single stroke of Boris Johnson’s pen, cut the UK’s longstanding trading and political ties with its closest neighbours.
In the years that followed, all of the big promises made by pro-Brexit politicians turned out to have been false. Food prices went up, red tape increased and the economy flatlined. International trade, which we were told would be liberated by breaking our “chains” with the EU declined as companies relocated from the UK in order to avoid the new barriers put up with Europe. None of the new international trade deals struck in the years following Brexit came close to making up even a fraction of what the UK had lost from leaving the EU.
Meanwhile immigration, which the Leave campaign promised would be returned to the control of British politicians, soared to new record highs, as the last Conservative Government opened up new visa pathways to fill the post-Brexit gaps in the Labour market.
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As each big Brexit promise evaporated, so too did public support for it. With every year that followed the referendum, the numbers of Brits still believing Brexit had been the right decision declined. And in an era of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the case for Britain to club together again with its former European partners became easier and easier to sell.
Yet as voters shifted their positions, the political and media consensus in the UK remained remarkably rooted in the past. In the run up to the 2024 general election not a single major party backed the UK immediately rejoining the Single Market, or customs union, let alone the EU itself. Labour’s leader Keir Starmer, who had previously campaigned for a second referendum, instead insisted he would “make Brexit work” with his spokesman insisting that “we’re not going backwards when it comes to Brexit.”
Yet fast forward to this morning and going back looks to be exactly where we are going.
During a remarkably warm press conference in which the President of the European Comission Ursula von der Leyen repeatedly referred to the Prime Minister as “my dear Keir”, Starmer welcomed the “landmark” deal he had struck with the EU which he promised would forge a “new era” that would be a “win win” for both sides.
In what appears to have been a calculated inversion of the pro-Leave rhetoric about the referendum nine years ago, Starmer insisted that his new deal “delivers on what people voted for last year”.
The substance of the agreement may not entirely match up to the rhetoric. Independent analysis suggest that the new agreements on agriculture, trade, fishing and energy will only restore a small fraction of the economic growth the UK is forecast to have lost due to Brexit. Much of the biggest potential gains, like rejoining the customs union and single market, also continue to be ruled out by the UK.
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Yet if Brexit is a wall that has held Britain back for the past decade, then today’s agreement is the first big crack in that wall. Commitments for the UK and EU to align on energy, agricultural standards and cut red tape, lays the ground to undo at least some of the most damaging parts of Brexit. Meanwhile commitments to agree a new deal allowing young Brits and Europeans to travel and work either side of the Channel, while restoring the Erasmus scheme, offers hope to younger generations whose freedoms were robbed by a vote they played no part in. A commitment to allow Brits to use European e-gates at airports will also remove one of the most visible and frustrating barriers put up by Britain’s exit from the EU.
What has been agreed today will not undo the worst of the harm that Brexit caused and Starmer and his Government could arguably have gone much further.
Yet what it does do is break the suffocating political consensus that has smothered the debate around Brexit for the past decade. For the first time in nine years a British Government has taken steps to actually improve our relations with our European neighbours rather than make them worse.
Sensible improvements to that relationship, which for years were dismissed by a Conservative Goverment committing to “honour” the referendum at all costs, are now being sold as significant political wins. This is no small change.
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Not everyone will be happy about it. The Conservative party and its supporters in the press have already jumped on this deal as a “betrayal” of Brexit. In the press conference following the deal, the first question from the BBC accused Starmer of having “sold out the fishermen” and turned the UK into “rule takers” from Europe.
Yet while the political consensus in Westminster may take long time to catch up, the truth is that the British public at large moved on from these debates a very long time ago. According to the most recent polling, an overwhelming majority of voters now want closer relations with Europe, with even Reform voters backing ideas like the Youth Mobility Scheme.
This deal accepts this reality and goes at least some way to honouring what British voters want today, rather than what half of them said they wanted a decade ago.
For that alone it should be welcomed.