Brexit's alive and kicking

I attended a superb event with Peter Foster, FT journalist, where he examined Labour's outlook on the Brexit question. The summary of Peter's talk might be called "much ado about nothing". In other words, Peter perfectly pointed out that Keir Starmer is indulging in a lot of dialogue about a series of low grade adjustments to the Brexit deal, rather than confronting the Brexit elephant in the room and facing down the few Remaining Brexit culture carriers. We agreed that what I call "logical incrementalism" adds nothing to our ailing economy. Rather than leadership from Starmer, this is management by focus groups or "driving through the rear view mirror".

Peter reminded us that Brexit was not considered to be a General Election issue. That's true as I stood a cat for election in my area. The B word was not uttered much, but this was due to several factors:

• Cowardice on the part of politicians.
• A vow of silence across most of the political parties due to the toxicity of the B word.
• Brexit fatigue on the part of voters who now wish it would go away ...

... except it won't.

Whilst Brexit was not mentioned on the doorstep much by voters in the 2024 GE, all the 'offspring of Brexit' were: Cost of living, food inflation, NHS, social care, energy costs, UK stagnation, immigration etc. To fix the ills of society, we must talk about Brexit. Our 'Brexit Iceberg' sums up the connections of front of the mind issues in Britain with Brexit as a major causative factor and not COVID or Russia for the most part.

Peter reminded us that he is an FT journalist on public policy and Brexit and not an activist or politician. As such, it is not his job to pontificate about what should be and so on. He is there to objectively report the facts as he sees them at this time. I don't have such restrictions and that's why a group of around 60 of us have produced an 80 page white paper which proposes an early (that's NOW btw) application to Join EU Anew, to target politicians, influencers and, ultimately, the public at large. To read a copy of the paper, please mail me at [email protected]

What disappointed me most about the event was not Peter Foster's excellent assessment of where we are now, but the reactions of the so-called Rejoiners, mostly members of the European Movement and Grassroots groups who have been bludgeoned to death by the likes of Lord Adonis and other apologists with their fallacious 'step by step' arguments aka cakeism. They asked questions about having even more of the increments that Peter Foster had suggested were fairly worthless and to which we might be accused of cakeism once again. If they were in a therapy group, I'd say to them that they have Catholic (or any other brand of religious) guilt since they 'lost' to Vote Leave and therefore they feel that "we don't deserve better". If they did, Nigel Farage and his thugs would "get them". It's what I call "learned helplessness" in Reboot Britain and is a systemic condition amongst many snowflakes. Remainers and Rejoiners must have higher expectations of themselves rather than being content with crumbs from the table.

The only good Brexit is a dead Brexit. 2/3 of the public know it. We must help the politicians to catch up. The obstacle to progress remains parliamentary paralysis. We must break that. To read our wide ranging case across all the STEEPLE factors, mail me [email protected]