Five years after Get Brexit Done, Labour are starting to Get Brexit Gone

Where were you on the night of December 12, 2019, as polls closed in the “get Brexit done” general election? Five years ago, certain that the worst would happen, I’d given up on the sofa and the swingometers and was watching a favourite band at a long-scheduled and now sadly ill-timed pre-Christmas gig.

The Neutrinos – excellent, look them up – played as if nothing else mattered. There was dancing, drinking, cheering. Then they took a break just before the exit poll, and when they came back, the mood had changed. A sparser, quieter crowd. People with their heads down, absorbing the disaster through the glow of their phones. A woman in front of me was in tears.

Boris Johnson’s landslide brought about the end of the Brexit wars, and half a decade on from that night, with another prime minister pledging no return to the single market, to the customs union or to freedom of movement – let alone to the European Union – it is tempting to say that nothing has changed. But everything has.

Johnson is finished, a discredited liar who squandered it all. The political careers of many of those who bowed the head and banged the table for him on the morning of December 13 are finished too: Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, Dominic Raab, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Gove, Gavin Williamson, Matt Hancock, Kwasi Kwarteng, Thérèse Coffey, Andrea Leadsom, Lord Frost.

Some were felled by scandals, gaffes and acts of hubris, but what has left each of them buried and grassed over is Brexit. It is the God that failed, the cure-all that didn’t stop the NHS getting sicker, the border booster that didn’t stop migration ticking upwards. Between 4-5% of GDP lost, tens of billions in tax and trade down the pan, tourists and small traders wrapped up in red tape – and for what?

Brexit disappointment did not feature high in any of the exit poll surveys on July 4, but it is something voters feel in their hearts. Why else would the European Council on Foreign Relations survey released on Thursday morning show only 11% of UK voters saying leaving the EU had been a good thing? Why else would it show 59% of Red Wall voters, 54% of 2016 Leave voters and even 44% of 2024 Reform voters saying they would accept the reciprocal free movement of EU citizens in return for special access to the EU27 market? 

Johnson and his cronies promised to get Brexit done, but instead Brexit has done for all of them. Now all that remains is to get Brexit gone. 

The pace of that is frustratingly slow, but it is coming. This week, European affairs minister Nick Thomas-Symonds signalled that a reciprocal youth mobility scheme with the EU is no longer regarded as toxic, an important first step towards unlocking future wins like a red tape-cutting Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) agreement, smoother mobility for touring artists and the mutual recognition of professional qualifications. 

It is estimated that the above would add only a maximum of 0.7% to GDP – still nowhere near what has been thrown away. But it is a start, and it could be close to happening. Five years ago, when the EU seemed a million miles away, you would have taken that in a heartbeat.

Where will we all be, and where will Brexit be, in five years’ time? We can’t know. But in a couple of weeks, I’ll be going to see the Neutrinos again. And this time with hope.