28 February 2023

UK and Changing EU's Usherwood: Five reasons why rejoining the EU is a difficult path to follow

The growing unpopularity of Brexit has given new hope to those who advocate rejoining the EU. Turning the ‘will of the people’ back on Leavers, ‘rejoiners’ argue that, if people have changed their minds, then so can the government.

There is, for those who regret the decision to leave the EU, a certain seductive appeal to ‘just rejoining’: a simple solution to a complicated problem. But like ‘taking back control’ before it, simple solutions don’t really stand up to closer inspection.

Indeed, there are at least five major reasons why it’s anything but simple.

Public opinion

Since polling has given rise to much of this discussion, it’s worth considering what people actually think.

Certainly, 60% of people think that Brexit was a bad idea and that if asked the same question as in the 2016 referendum they would now vote to remain, a marked increase since the broadly even split which lasted until 2021. This majority for ‘Remain’ that has existed since late 2021 across a poll of polls has now widened to 56%.

But doing something different back then is not the same as wanting to undo things now. Polling on what should happen now is much more ambivalent: when given more than a simple ‘in/out’ choice, people think positively about having a closer relationship, but the appetite for returning to EU membership is much more of a push.

Of course, part of the picture is that views on Brexit are tied to views of a struggling economy, the cost-of-living and the (unpopular) government of the day, suggesting that opinions on Brexit are not that deeply held. Given that fewer than 10% of people rank it as an important issue, it does not shape the public debate in the same way it did in 2019, for example.

Party political leadership

Which runs neatly into the second problem: why should any party invest a major amount of political capital into something that is neither a priority for most people and which is likely to inflame a significant minority?

Even if economic modelling suggests that EU membership would remove some long-term costs to the UK, those would only come after another period of uncertainty about whether the whole project would come off, followed by transition and adjustment. Other policy options such as major investment in rebalancing regional inequalities or a programme of housebuilding might produce quicker and less politically painful effects.

In that context, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Labour’s new ‘missions’ make no mention of the EU. Starmer has been able to build a very significant lead for his party in the polls with hardly any mention of Brexit, so why risk rocking that boat?

Even the cheerleaders of Remain/rejoin, the Liberal Democrats, have gone rather quiet on the subject as they focus on securing by-election wins through hyper-local campaigning: their main news page includes only one piece that makes (indirect) reference to Brexit this year.

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It’s possible to conceive of a party pushing the rejoin agenda and winning an election. If that happened, it would provide the necessary parliamentary majority for all relevant legal decisions to submit a formal application under Article 49 TEU and ratify membership of the EU....

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