LONDON, Jan 29 (IPS) – Good news! For two years now every single UK poll has shown a majority now want to return to the EU. Of course they do, since every reliable source shows the continuing damage done by Brexit in almost every sphere. Those promised ‘Brexit benefits’ are nowhere to be seen.
As for regained sovereignty? You can’t see it, touch it or eat it, but loss of influence across both the channel and the Atlantic is hard even for Brexiters to ignore. Immigration, underlying cause for that vote, has risen, losing Europeans but increasing migrants from distant countries. Did they mean that?
Despite Britain’s ferociously pro-Brexit media, few voters can avoid hearing at least some of the true effects of what they voted for: £27 billion has been lost in EU trade in the first two years. British goods exports have lost 6.4 per cent a year, and 40 000 finance jobs have departed for the EU from the City.
British food exports to the EU have fallen by £3 billion a year according to the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy. Brexit costs the UK £1 million an hour says the Office for National Statistics. The Office of Budget Responsibility says GDP would be 5 per cent higher had we stayed in the EU.
Those who don’t read economic news may have noticed that Brexit trade barriers cost each household £210 extra for food. And they will certainly have noticed queuing at European borders while EU citizens sail through the lane we used to use.
Now that we have a government and House of Commons overwhelmingly filled with pro-EU MPs, surely it’s time to start rowing back towards Calais? How perverse it seems that Britain’s passionately pro-EU prime minister adamantly refuses any hint of re-joining — not the EU, the customs union nor the single market, and not even EFTA. Why?
The worst kind of democracy
Because wise British politicians no longer trust our volatile and fickle voters. They have learned the hard lesson, wary of the optimism bias that makes pro-Europeans seize with delight on every hopeful opinion poll.
That same optimism bias led David Cameron to call the disastrous Brexit referendum, believing that as prime minister he could ensure ‘remain’ would win against those ‘leave’ supporters he arrogantly dismissed as ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists’.
If there was another referendum to overturn the last, the same claque of right-wing Brexit media barons, such as Rupert Murdoch, owner of 40 per cent of the British press readership, would kick-start their mendacity machines again. This time joining conditions would be harsher: Britain has lost its lucrative EU rebate and other favours it had negotiated.
This time the UK would have to abandon sterling to join the euro, and no doubt many other conditions that would be presented by Brexiters as slavery to Brussels’ diktat. No-one wise would trust public opinion to stay solid. Referendums are the very worst kind of democracy, encouraging the basest political instincts. Let’s not do that again, ever.
