How long can we all have the same argument?
EVERY few days, Facebook’s Memories function sends me pictures of my kids when they were little and I get all nostalgic with memories of simpler times.
This week it sent me a picture of The Journal front page I helped design for the morning of the EU referendum, which carried the word “Remain” in big letters, with each letter accompanied by a reason to vote to stay in the EU. I’ll level with you, it didn’t inspire quite the same feelings of warmth.
Our 2016 front page didn’t get the result we’d hoped for, but such is life. The Journal was founded, 190 years ago, by a bunch of merchants opposed to Earl Grey’s Great Reform Act and I like to joke that we’ve been proudly on the wrong side of history ever since.
Six years on, I’d be happy to never type the word “Brexit” ever again, not least because I suspect the thousands of words I’ve written on the subject in the intervening years have done not one thing to change a single mind on this most polarising of topics. If you ran the referendum again tomorrow, you might end up with a different end result but my guess is that a good 90% of people would vote the same way they did in 2016. Minds have been set on Brexit years ago, and not many have changed.
There are, I think, some things about Brexit that we can probably agree on, if we really, really try.
Brexit, certainly in the short term, has been bad for the economy. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) last year said that leaving the EU would “reduce our long run GDP by around 4%”, which is almost twice the impact of the pandemic.
We can probably also agree that the 2019 deal to leave the EU was not really as “oven ready” as Boris Johnson promised it was, given that he has spent most of the time since then trying to alter a major part of it (the Northern Ireland protocol).
But everything else is, to a greater or lesser extent, up for grabs, a never-ending argument in which Remainers blame anything negative that happens to the UK on Brexit and Leavers refuse to accept that their pet project can be anything other than a singular triumph.
Most people, I suspect – whichever way they voted – would probably join me in consigning the word “Brexit” to the bin, if they had a choice. It has become the subject that defines our time but like most things that dominate the news agenda for years on end, eventually people become bored by it.
I certainly can understand why the Labour leadership is almost pathologically resistant to opening
My guess is that a good 90% of people would vote the same way they did in 2016. Minds have been set on Brexit years ago
up a debate that ripped apart some of its heartland constituencies and would rather focus on other issues.
But then there are people who hope Brexit never goes away, and is certainly never settled. There are very many senior politicians around right now whose have only got where they are because of Brexit. And if you are a political leader with no real answers to the challenges facing the country, having someone else to blame – foreigners – is a good fallback. As long as there are things we can pin on the EU, the Jacob ReesMoggs of this world will be there to do it (while dressed as the 19th century).
There isn’t a single business in the North East that wants a trade war with Europe right now but we are risking one because of the Government’s stance on the Northern Ireland protocol. Following elections in Northern Ireland saw that parties backing the protocol win a majority of seats, it is mildly deranged.
My big fear is that I will be wheeled into The Journal’s offices in 2067 in my bath chair to ponder the latest row in the Brexit debate and have to type those accursed six letters one more time. And that front page will pop up again on Facebook...
■ Graeme Whitfield is editor of The Journal