by It often feels that, in Britain, we specialize in losing: our own minds, the good bits of our history, and especially our winning ideas, which we seem happy to let others steal and sell, or destroy with a terrible following. – through. We did it with Blair’s noble impulse to help unseat Saddam Hussein, the monster of the Middle East, and now we’re doing it with Brexit.
I was a Remain voter, but the arguments for Brexit got strong, especially those related to sovereignty. I didn’t see why it was such a sniggering joke, or I assumed it was just a cover for “xenophobia and racism”. After all, as the World Values Survey found in 2023, Britain is one of the least racist countries in the world.
For a while, I began to suspect that those who mocked the minority’s desire for “supremacy” were actually using it as a cover to exercise their own bigotry against the white working class. But maybe they really don’t care if they have any idea who controls them or not.
After all, eight years on from the Brexit vote, Remoaners will not let go of their hysterical continentalism. And now that Labor has shaken its “Lexit” contingent free, or at least the will to ignore it, it is quickly returning to type. The Party’s mood seems to be coalescing around a comfortable desire to be back in the warm, undemocratic embrace of an increasingly authoritarian EU.
Sir Keir Starmer, our likely next prime minister, seems to be preparing hard to undo as much of Brexit as possible. He was not very secretive about this goal: speaking in Montreal last September, he set out a simple position on Europe: “We don’t want to break up, we don’t want to lower standards, we don’t. rip off environmental standards, standards for people who work, food standards and all the rest.”
Meanwhile, Labour’s top brass have begun to confirm that Starmer will rejoin the EU. Starmer has insisted he will not rejoin the customs union, the single market, or open Britain’s borders. “The red lines will be in the manifesto and they won’t change,” the FT quoted one Labor figure as saying. “But are we ambitious behind those red lines? Of course we are. We want to deepen the relationship.”
The “but” could be a lot. The FT reports that former EU trade commissioner Lord Mandelson told a private meeting last month that Labor could take steps towards dynamic alignment, or give the European Court of Justice jurisdiction over Britain.
There are now signs that Britain is moving in this direction. The other day, a Labor spokesman declared that the Party was interested in “seeking a veterinary agreement to tackle trade barriers”, and “mutual recognition of professional qualifications”. Other reports have suggested that the Party might try to do something that looks suspiciously like a customs union with a more voter-friendly name.
And it seems that Brussels is listening. The European Union is getting rid of a citizenship offer under Labour’s nose: a free movement-style measure for those aged 18-30, where young people could cross the road for up to four years, working, traveling and studying.
Britain has certainly suffered from the expulsion of European waiters, baristas and au pairs, so it’s hard not to salivate at this one, especially given the reciprocal freedoms for young Brits. We have similar programs with Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan and Iceland, so it would not be unprecedented. But when it comes to Europe, there’s a catch: with each closer recapture comes more ties that bind.
Few doubted the benefits of EU membership. The issue was that a large part of the electorate, including many who benefited from them, decided that these facilities were no more than the basic principle of maintaining control over our own laws and trade agreements, and that specifically our control over those who do them. The democratic deficit outweighed the economic gains.
And even now, we get the occasional rude reminder of why it is so important for that democracy, in the short and long term, to keep the EU’s power structures clear.
It is becoming increasingly clear that beneath the surface of the bloc there is a set of controlling tendencies that are smugly skewed and ideologically skewed towards the worst bits of the establishment – the rabid greenism, the distrust of hard work, and the “anti-racism” that encourages large migration. communities to mock Western laws and values.
These trends mean that rule makers in the service of the EU are often ill at ease with legal free speech when they are right wing. Look at the debacle that happened in Brussels last week.
I have little time for the agenda of the National Conservatives, who held, or attempted to hold, their annual conference in that city. But like everyone else, I was shocked to watch the police swarm the venue during a speech by Nigel Farage, after he instructed me to shut down the event for fear of “provocative” comments and discriminatory” who were “considered to be homophobic, who were not respected. people and minorities”.
Seriously? This was hardly “far right”, as any European should know. Natcon’s actual crime is to be critical of the bloc, a desire for the nation, and other standard hallmarks of the traditional (not “hard”) right – family, kin, religion and community.
Do we really want to rejoin a “closer union” that can’t tell the difference between a neo-Nazi rally and a harmless convention? Freedom of trade and fast airport queues are all very tempting, but the British people chose freedom instead. Labor forgets what is at stake.
