Five years after we left the EU, a damning poll shows up one crazy Brexit prediction

“The easiest deal in human history.” “No downside, only a considerable upside.” “The broad, sunlit uplands that await us.” Five years after the UK officially left the European Union, which of the many stupid predictions about the greatness of Brexit now looks the worst?

With an uncelebrated anniversary in the offing on January 31, one prediction that stands out was made by current Reform MP Rupert Lowe on January 24, 2020, when he was a Brexit Party MEP and Britain was a week away from leaving.

Lowe wrote then: “Honestly believe in 5/10 years you will struggle to find anyone who admits to voting Remain. UK economy flying, Euro suffering, Free and independent UK. Will be impossible to argue against Brexit. Remainers will become an endangered species!”

Now we have arrived at Lowe’s first landmark, how’s all that working out? The UK economy is not flying, partly because most serious economists – including the independent body that advises the government – say Brexit is already causing or will cause a double-digit fall in trade and a reduction in potential productivity of between 4%-5% compared to if the UK had stayed in the EU.

The euro has stubbornly failed to collapse. Growth across the continent of Europe is sluggish, and while the UK is predicted to narrowly outperform some other troubled giants, including Germany and France, it is being outpaced by rising economies like Spain and Poland.

While the UK is free and independent, it must have been also so in 2016, when it voted to leave the EU. It is now freely and independently following the EU’s standards for product safety (without now having a say on what those standards should be) because failing to do so would mean UK goods could not be sold in our biggest and nearest market.

And what about Lowe’s view that “you will struggle to find anyone who admits to voting Remain… Remainers will become an endangered species”? Send a sentry out, and the report comes back: “Remainers, sir… millions of ’em.”

A five-year anniversary poll by YouGov shows only 30% of Britons now say it was right for the UK to leave the EU, the lowest proportion to back Brexit since pollsters began asking the question after the referendum. Some 55% think we should have stayed in, and that figure rises to 75% of 18- to 24-year-olds, who were denied a vote in 2016.

Even 18% of 2016 Leave voters, and 12% of those who call themselves Reform voters, say that leaving the EU was a mistake. Not quite a country where it “will be impossible to argue against Brexit”, then.

Though making predictions is a dangerous game (“I never predict anything, and I never will,” Paul Gascoigne once wisely said) it appears that one thing is certain. Whether it’s five, 10, 50 or 100 years into the future, January 31, 2020, will be remembered as a Lowe point in British history.