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Three years ago, on 31 January 2020, Britain “left” Europe. Strictly speaking, what happened on that day was that the UK signed new treaties with the European Union that would govern the

future relationship. In the past, most international treaties which have the force of domestic law were with other nation-states. To everyone’s surprise, on Brexit the 27 cantankerous, often

divided herd of cats called the European Union sank or parked their differences. If Boris Johnson believed that he had “got Brexit done”, no-one else does yet. His chief negotiator, the

mid-rank diplomat David (now Lord) Frost, writes regularly in the pro-Brexit press, deploring the very treaty he negotiated. What we are seeing is the erosion of the majorities for Brexit in

the 2016 referendum or in the 2019 general election — though that was more a plebiscite on Labour’s arrogant folly in offering the unelectable Jeremy Corbyn for a second time in two years

as Prime Minister. Today the Bregret camp is now in a clear majority. According to a survey of 10,000 voters carried out for UnHerd, a majority now think the 2016 vote was a mistake. As of

January 2023, 54 percent of people in Great Britain thought that it was wrong to leave the European Union, compared with 34 percent who thought it was the right decision. 11-14% were in the

Don’t Know category. Brexit is so toxic.  The Tories know it is doing damage to their economic base and beginning to really irritate travellers waiting much much longer to go through airport

passport checks. About a quarter of businesses have just stopped trading with Europe. We have the lowest automobile production since 1956. We are short of skilled and unskilled workers,

especially health care professionals to alleviate very long queues for any kind of medical treatment. Yet the people believe they took a mystical decision in 2016 – the people not the

political class. People in their 20s who were too young to vote in 2016 may tell pollsters it was a wrong decision, but there are millions who don’t want to be told they were stupid or

fooled by the Murdoch press or Putin’s money into voting the wrong way. Finding the right response, the discourse out of this cut-de-sac is very hard. There are simply no new fresh voices or

faces changing the narrative. Guy Verhofstadt is often on UK media saying the EU would welcome Britain back as a member. With all affection and respect for Guy, he is talking nonsense. Most

European elected politicians simply don’t want to think about bringing back a divided Britain whose politicians have been using Europe as a political football since the 1950s. Everyone in

the UK seems to want to talk about Brexit. Across the Channel no one does. The Brexit warriors – Leavers and Remainers — repeat their chants of the last decade and no-one is listening. The

population is bored, irritated with Brexit but finding no-one to inspire them and offer a new narrative. Welcome as the opinion polls of regret may be to anti-isolationists, no professional 

in Labour politics wants to risk re-fighting the trench warfare of the last three decades since the Treaty of Maastricht was agreed. David Cameron held a referendum which was guaranteed to

produce a vote against immigrants, refugees, the collapse of apprenticeships since the Thatcher era and the sense of control in a nation which won’t even consider ID cards in order to know

who is in the country. Nobody in Sir Keir Starmer’s party wants to revisit that. Business and economic actors dare not challenge a Tory government elected on a Brexit manifesto. More than

ever, business needs help from ministers for grants, investment, planning and other permissions or de-regulation. Any CEO who criticises the Brexit ideology loses all access to ministers.

No-one is willing yet to grasp the philosophical question: what does the UK need to do to stop its otherwise inevitable decline? For Leavers on the hard Right of the Conservative Party and

the residue of UKIP and other mini-parties that still exist to proclaim the anti-European cause that goes back to Enoch Powell or Hugh Gaitskell, the answer is even more rupture of commerce

and open borders and access to the Continent. Labour under Starmer just wants to avoid the issue. It proclaims no examination of Brexit, no criticism of the economic damage, no looking at

the Swiss or Norwegian models of partial engagement to get access to the world’s biggest market. Nor does it make the case for benefiting from the skilled doctors, nurses, professionals,

craftspersons who work in the wider European Labour market. Instead the UK looks to recruit unskilled workers from Nepal or Pakistan. Labour is taking away from the Tories any hope they can

make Brexit a major issue at the election next year. This is good tactical politics, but if Europe is not to be part of the future political and strategic thinking in Britain, what is the

replacement? The answer to the Brexit question will have to wait many years to be found. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We

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