• Home
  • News
  • World
  • Politics
  • Money
  • Lifestyle
  • Entertainment
  • Health
  • Sports
  • Travel
  • More
    • Tech
    • Web Stories
    • Spotlight
    • Press Release
What's On

Boy ‘flung from roundabout’ to his death in second fatal incident at playground

31 August 2025

​People from ethnic minority backgrounds ‘almost twice as likely to face hunger’

31 August 2025

New pill costing just 4p shown to slash heart attack risk better than aspirin

31 August 2025

Government Council Tax update says some people don’t need to pay

31 August 2025

James Milner explains Diogo Jota gesture after Sky Sports commentators’ mistake

31 August 2025

Junior Andre praises mum Katie Price after she topped charts with 8 year old song

31 August 2025

All parents told to do two things before kids go back to school

31 August 2025
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
Trending
  • Boy ‘flung from roundabout’ to his death in second fatal incident at playground
  • ​People from ethnic minority backgrounds ‘almost twice as likely to face hunger’
  • New pill costing just 4p shown to slash heart attack risk better than aspirin
  • Government Council Tax update says some people don’t need to pay
  • James Milner explains Diogo Jota gesture after Sky Sports commentators’ mistake
  • Junior Andre praises mum Katie Price after she topped charts with 8 year old song
  • All parents told to do two things before kids go back to school
  • Omaze’s youngest ever winner sells £3million mansion for ‘sensible’ reason
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube
England TimesEngland Times
Demo
  • Home
  • News
  • World
  • Politics
  • Money
  • Lifestyle
  • Entertainment
  • Health
  • Sports
  • Travel
  • More
    • Tech
    • Web Stories
    • Spotlight
    • Press Release
England TimesEngland Times
Home » KEVIN MAGUIRE: ‘Brexit was a giant con by plastic patriots – we need a plan to get back in EU’
Politics

KEVIN MAGUIRE: ‘Brexit was a giant con by plastic patriots – we need a plan to get back in EU’

By staff10 August 2025No Comments7 Mins Read

The Mirror’s Kevin Maguire argues the only way for Britain to return to its former prosperity is with a plan to return to the EU after Brexit proved to be a giant con that only leaves us poorer and weaker

Kevin Maguire is Associate Editor of the Mirror and a politics columnist. He is a frequent contributor to Good Morning Britain and other TV shows. He also writes a column for the New Statesman and earlier in his career was chief reporter for The Guardian. He is a Sunderland AFC supporter.

An anti-Brexit campaigner wearing a "Rejoin" t-shirt
An anti-Brexit campaigner wearing a ‘Rejoin’ t-shirt(Image: Getty Images)

Brexit is a self-inflicted assault on the UK economy that will prove more than twice as expensive as abolishing slavery in the British Empire.

Ending the shameful, terrible, cruel bondage of Africa’s kidnapped men, women and children branded and clapped in irons to sweat on plantations in the West Indies and Americas was undoubtedly a noble cause.

Disastrously wrenching our country out of the European Union was a cranky obsession of relatively few plastic patriots who hoodwinked a minor majority subsequently regretting the giant con.

I’d also wager a disturbing number of Brextremist agitators, had they been shouting their mouths off at the end of the 18th and start of the 19th centuries, would’ve argued we couldn’t afford to free slaves earning a fortune for their owners.

READ MORE: Brexit is a ‘complete disaster’ and referendum ‘should have been repeated’READ MORE: Half of Brits want another EU referendum in five years – as Brexit support slumps

A 'Fishing For Leave' campaign group sign about Brexit on a boat in the harbour in Brixham, southern England on October 2018
A ‘Fishing For Leave’ campaign group sign about Brexit on a boat in the harbour in Brixham, southern England on October 2018 (Image: AFP via Getty Images)

Mercifully the moral Britons won back then and on holiday in Spain I read in Adam Hochchild’s ultimately inspiring Bury The Chains, the history of Britain’s struggle to axe slavery, that scholars estimate stopping the trade then ceasing slavery itself cost the nation 1.8% of national income over more than half a century.

The bill for Brexit will be 4% in less than half that time, calculates the Office for Budget Responsibility, and the extremists who masterminded the 2016 referendum heist are unable to claim any superiority.

Highlighting any Brexit benefits is nigh on impossible, which is why the likes of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Kemi Badenoch like to talk about almost anything else and shouldn’t be trusted on issues such as migration.

How many refugees, asylum seekers and migrants crossed the Channel in small boats before that referendum, a period when the UK could trigger the EU Dublin convention return arrangement? Zilch or virtually none.

The 40,000 or so annually arriving in small boats is, in one of those startling coincidences, around the number of seized slaves yearly transported in British ships to their dreadful fate across the Atlantic.

Union flag and EU flag
‘If we want Britain to be more prosperous and stronger on the global stage then we need a plan to be back in the EU…’(Image: PA)

Before anybody, including Keir Starmer, shouts about trade deals, those between Labour and the EU, India and US are mere pennies for lost pound – as were Tory agreements with Australia and New Zealand.

Even the 10% Trump tax on exports to the US isn’t worth much more than his 15% tariff slapped on the EU when we trade twice as much with Europe as we do Donaldland. Regular exchange rate fluctuations can wipe it out easily.

Deceiving Brexitremists pretended turning our backs on our EU neighbours was freedom.

The freedom to be poorer and weaker? No thanks.

Brexit remains the elephant in the room, deliberately ignored by the Prime Minister and others.

If we want Britain to be more prosperous and stronger on the global stage then we need a plan to be back in the EU. At the moment, they’re not even making the argument.

More than one way to skin a Fat Cat

Rachel Reeves is justified in stressing hers was a dreadful economic inheritance when more than three-quarters, £111billion – which is 77% – of this financial year’s projected £143bn UK government borrowing covers interest on past debts – much of them Tory.

Labour’s Methodists want higher taxes on bookies and Marxists on banks (son of the manse and fairness champion Gordon Brown advocates both) to fund key public services and avoid breaking election promises to most workers and families.

Reeves
‘Just because Reeves is against a wealth tax on the few with more than £10million doesn’t mean she can’t help ordinary folk…’(Image: Getty Images)

The Chancellor of the Exchequer could do much worse than dust off advice from the likes of out-of-the-box thinkers like Tax Justice UK and Patriotic Millionaires, including 10 reforms to raise £60billion by, among other changes, limiting pension tax relief handouts for higher earners to those of average earners and stop the South’s richest paying less council tax than typical Northerners.

Just because Reeves is against a wealth tax on the few with more than £10million doesn’t mean she can’t help ordinary folk. There’s more than one way to skin a Fat Cat.

Let’s hear ‘up the workers!’ in classrooms

The massacre of seven people during a seafarers’ strike 200 years ago in Sunderland was unknown to me, and I’m from South Shields up the road.

Bicentennial commemoration lead organiser David Scott was right: we should never let these events be “lost from the history books” because we stand on the shoulders of giants – everyday men and women who challenged grave injustices.

The seven murdered by soldiers on North Sands, now Sunderland Uni’s St Peter’s campus, were resisting pay cuts (Hello P&O Ferries in Dover) and the slain included Mary Wilson, 76, in a crowd of more than 100, including women and kids, on the beach.

People’s history, our history, is what establishment lackeys fear most in prioritising the teaching in schools of the supposed greatness of oppressive warlord kings and queens… Let’s hear more “up the workers!” in classrooms.

Labour voters entitled to feel cheated

Labour Deputy PM Angela Rayner
Labour Deputy PM Angela Rayner(Image: PA)

Labour Deputy PM Angela Rayner’s landmark Renters’ Rights Bill coming into force next year bans, among other scams, landlords ending tenancies to sell properties then relisting them charging more, so now very ex-Housing Minister Rushamara Ali should’ve been sacked instead of allowed to resign.

Because the greedy extra £700 a month grab by the rentier class shamed MP for Bethnal Green and Stepney once again overshadows the great things a UK Labour government is doing and Rayner, as well as Starmer, down to every Labour member and voter, is entitled to feel cheated.

She wasn’t a distraction, as the self-serving MP claims. I’m afraid she was guilty as charged of grotesque hypocrisy.

Going up

Deporting most convicted foreign criminals immediately and barring re-entry into the UK is penny-wise Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood acting tough when it costs an average £54,000 a year to lock ‘em up with 12% of inmates in stuffed jails from abroad.

Going down

STUPID, nasty and inflammatory MP Rupert Lowe mistaking a charity rowing crew for migrants in a boat off the ex-Reformer’s Great Yarmouth constituency in Norfolk confirmed these dangerous Hard Right reactionaries speak first, think later when spreading their poison.

Speaker’s Corner

“I have to say that I really have become a good friend, and David has become a good friend of mine.”

Ugh! Pass the sick bag when fishy JD Vance slavering over David Lammy, and the UK Foreign Secretary drooling over the US Vice President, turns the stomach. Vance is as vile as Trump with added menace and brains. I hope Lammy’s anti-tetanus jab is up to date.

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Tumblr Email

Related News

​People from ethnic minority backgrounds ‘almost twice as likely to face hunger’

31 August 2025

UK’s top bishop’s two-child benefit limit demand as senior minister admits she’s ‘ashamed’

31 August 2025

Castle-owning peer who got £361-a-day to attend Lords failed to pay minimum wage

31 August 2025

Schools and parents urged to end ‘lifelong impact’ of kids missing class

31 August 2025

Donald Trump uses own death rumour to pressure supporters for cash in shameless email

30 August 2025

Boris Johnson ‘deeply upset’ Palace with one move and never apologised to Queen

30 August 2025
Latest News

​People from ethnic minority backgrounds ‘almost twice as likely to face hunger’

31 August 2025

New pill costing just 4p shown to slash heart attack risk better than aspirin

31 August 2025

Government Council Tax update says some people don’t need to pay

31 August 2025

James Milner explains Diogo Jota gesture after Sky Sports commentators’ mistake

31 August 2025
Stay In Touch
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Vimeo
Don't Miss
Entertainment

Junior Andre praises mum Katie Price after she topped charts with 8 year old song

By staff31 August 20250

Junior Andre was a proud son as he praised his mum, Katie Price, for her…

All parents told to do two things before kids go back to school

31 August 2025

Omaze’s youngest ever winner sells £3million mansion for ‘sensible’ reason

31 August 2025

Brit woman stabbed to death in Cambodia after she’s ‘caught up in love triangle’

31 August 2025
England Times
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
© 2025 England Times. All Rights Reserved.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

Go to mobile version