The only people who want to talk about Brexit are the ones who cashed in on it, says Fleet Street Fox. Perhaps that’s why there are so few of them
Today is the fifth anniversary of Brexit, a day which the nation’s newspapers greeted with portentous predictions of the glories that would soon be manifest.
It was ‘A NEW DAWN FOR BRITAIN’ in the Daily Wail , on a picture of the White Cliffs. ‘OUR TIME HAS COME’ cried The Scum , over a shot of Big Ben. ‘THIS IS NOT AN END, BUT A BEGINNING’ declared the Wellygraph , with a picture of Boris Johnson failing to sit up straight. Only the Mirror had its finger on the nation’s pulse, with: ‘KILLER FLU: 150 BRITS IN QUARANTINE’.
If Brexit had been a wild and unqualified success, those newspapers would be trumpeting the proof of their brilliance. The heavies would go on the economic boom, the mid-markets would trail the real-world benefits of the sunlit uplands felt by families the length and breadth of Britain, and the downmarkets would be claiming it had even put lead in your pencil.
Instead there is so little mention of the entire saga that the only obvious conclusion that can be drawn by comparing then with now is that it was a bit like 1987’s It’s a Royal Knockout – a toe-curling international embarrassment that everyone pretends didn’t happen.
Brexit was about money and migration, and people who felt they had too much of one and not enough of the other. They were told the reason for both was greedy brown people: the fact they were told this by white millionaires did not draw the eye in the way it should have. Five years on, the rich are richer, the poor are poorer, migration is higher, and the core Brexit demographic is regularly in riot.
The easiest trade deal in history was a four-year s***show, handled at first by a man without a notebook and a Prime Minister without a plan, and then by a man without talent and a PM without a clue. The United Kingdom has not even managed a 100% Brexit, because that would involve putting up barbed wire across living rooms and petrol forecourts on the Northern Irish border.
Instead there are customs and trading posts in imaginary places and a multitude of loopholes which have made smuggling and fraud two of our fastest-growing industries. If you listen to Nigel Farage, that’s the fault of a) Tories and b) human rights, but then he’s got a neck made by Le Creuset. He told the EU they’d suffer economically more than us, and it’s turned out to be the opposite. He even thinks we should return all boat migrants to France, as though we didn’t have an actual legal right to do that as a member of the EU, which we gave up at HIS insistence.
Nigel has benefitted mightily from Brexit. He’s got 10 jobs, is on his third political party, drinks subsidised beer in Parliament while dodging votes and constituents, sells gold bullion as a side hustle, and has been publicly f***ed by the world’s richest man. And not a one of his voters realise he’s been screwing them all along.
Brexit showed voters that institutions could be torn down. It empowered them, Donald Trump and his political avatars all over the world now riding to power on promises of replacing a stagnant status quo with a lawless dystopia. Their next target is international human rights, on the grounds they stop you being horrible to other people, and if they get their way it would cause yet more financial ruin because every single one of our trade deals hinges on the fact workers, firms, and contracts all have a protected legal status in line with global standards. We’d be worse off in a hundred different ways, and they wouldn’t, because when was the last time a white, male millionaire got shafted?
We seem yet to learn that smashing the machinery does not build anything new. The business of engineering a better solution cannot begin, because Brexiters and Remainers alike are stood among the ruins making small talk like we didn’t do this to ourselves. Keir Starmer, the fifth PM since that vote asking politicians to do what couldn’t be done, once said ” of course” he would reopen freedom of movement with the EU. And, of course, he hasn’t, and he can’t, and he won’t, because Nigel would make a fuss and we need to let embarrassment turn into long-term shame and wilful amnesia before we can openly try to restore what was lost.
For example: the number of EU students is down. They paid higher fees, which subsidised UK students, so now British teenagers are in more debt for longer while our universities cutback staff and courses, which ultimately means Brits have fewer job choices, and worse pay. EU migrants, who could go home regularly to see their families, are down, while international migrants from further afield, who bring their families with them, are up. That means higher costs to the taxpayer, more people, and less tax revenue per head.
And that would be the same whoever was in charge of Brexit, and whether it was full-fat or semi-skimmed, Tory or Reform or Labour. You can’t lower immigration without killing the economy, and you can’t cut taxes, invest or grow unless you get in more people. Britain on its own is not enough – a truth patriots can’t stand, and realists currently can’t say.
Instead days like today are treated the same as the anniversary of when you dropped granny’s ashes, stood in dog s***, and traipsed the revolting blend all over your mum’s house. Everyone would just rather not discuss it.
