Brexit: The ‘missing’ debate in UK election

A KEY paradox of this year’s UK general election campaign is the absence of discussion on Brexit, the issue that has done so much to dominate politics in the last decade.

This weekend marks the 8th anniversary of the UK’s 2016 referendum on its EU membership, one of the most important moments in the nation’s post-war history. Yet, the major UK parties are largely avoiding discussing this topic, albeit for different reasons.

For the Conservatives, while the issue continues to motivate some of its voter base, it no longer has the salience it did in 2019, which has very real claims to having been a Brexit general election. Another reason that the ruling party seems now to be pushing the issue onto the backburner is the fact that it is still widely perceived not to be “making Brexit work”.

This is not just the view of what some Conservatives disparagingly call “Remainiacs” (those strong supporters of EU membership who want to rejoin the EU), but also a growing number of Brexiteers themselves. Take the example of now-Reform Party leader Nigel Farage who sensationally declared last year that “Brexit has failed..we’ve not delivered”.

The argument of Farage, and a growing number of other Leavers here is that Conservative prime ministers since 2016 – namely Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak – have failed to take advantage of what they perceived as the significant freedoms of Brexit. Notably, this includes the opportunity to diverge economically from the EU, in areas such as taxation, to seek to drive competitive advantage for the United Kingdom.

Significant as this development is, however, the groundswell of discontent against Brexit is far broader. So much so that if the 2016 Brexit referendum had been held today, it is possible that the UK would vote to remain in the Brussels-based club.

One Ipsos poll in January found that such regret has reached record levels with only 13 per cent of the UK population now believing Brexit is more of a success than a failure. A clear majority of the population (57 per cent) consider Brexit more of a failure than a success with the UK Office for Budget Responsibility assessing that Brexit has reduced the UK’s productivity potential by around 4 per cent.

Paralleling the growing disdain for Brexit is a growing drive to secure UK re-entry into the EU. However, a key challenge for such UK advocates of EU membership today is that the terms of entry would be different from those on which the UK exited the club. Over time, London negotiated a series of opt-outs, including of the euro zone single currency; plus a sizeable budgetary rebate, that would no longer be collectively available.

It is far from clear that a majority could be secured for such new terms of membership in any referendum that might be required to ratify potential UK membership in the future. Growing support for the EU since 2016 is wide, but may be shallow in any further heated campaign.

With the next general election on July 4, and polls indicating that the Conservatives are almost certain to lose power, a key question therefore is how any incoming Labour team would address this huge issue. The party’s leader Keir Starmer has ruled out any government he leads seeking to re-join the EU.

This follows the party’s 2019 landslide defeat when then-prime minister Boris Johnson leveraged the issue. He won the largest parliamentary majority for the Conservatives since Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

Starmer is also reshaping the centre of debate away from “Brexit versus Remain” towards how best to try to make Brexit work in practice. A key, pragmatic reason for taking this stance is that no clear post-Brexit settlement has emerged under the Conservatives amid the political drift in recent years under successive governments of May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak.

With Labour having ruled out re-joining the EU, and the Conservatives now having very few pro-European legislators in their midst following purges under Johnson’s premiership, Labour’s focus is now on making Brexit work better for the UK given the inherent problems under the Conservatives.

Labour’s shadow finance minister Rachel Reeves said earlier this month that she would seek to break down EU trade barriers by revisiting parts of Johnson’s Brexit deal. This includes seeking closer alignment with EU rules in areas such as the chemicals industry.

Reeves also highlighted the possibility of greater mutual recognition of professional qualifications with the EU given the benefits this could have. This ranges from the financial services sector through to the veterinary profession.

Labour has also sought to promote a “making Brexit work” agenda that stresses that the nation must invest much more, post-Brexit, in the UK people and places to try to deliver on the country’s potential. At the same time, it will take advantage of new freedoms, such as the ability to cut tax on energy bills, that the Conservatives have failed to deliver on so far.

What is now becoming clearer is that Johnson’s Brexit deal created structural impediments to trade. This has been highlighted by national business groups such as the British Chambers of Commerce, which has made proposals for additional UK side deals with the EU to smooth out Johnson’s agreement.

The EU got much of what it wanted from that deal, including a zero tariff, zero quota deal for goods, in which it runs a surplus with the UK. Meanwhile, Brussels gave away little on services which is the UK’s strength. The longer the agreement remains unchanged, the more economic activity will therefore potentially migrate, given that the government put the UK at a disadvantage vis-a-vis competitors within the European single market.

It is in this context that there is growing support across the political spectrum, even within Sunak’s government, for a closer economic relationship with the EU. For some, such as the Scottish National Party, this means re-joining the Brussels-based club.

The two largest UK parties of Labour and the Conservatives, however, are more focused on closer ties, short of EU membership. Within the UK government for instance, Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt has admitted that Johnson’s deal has caused damaging trade barriers.

The stakes in play are therefore huge and historic, and this is why the absence of debate about Brexit in the 2024 election campaign is so striking. Post-election, a new, more constructive UK-EU partnership can hopefully bring benefits to both sides at a time of significant geopolitical flux, especially with a renewed leadership in Brussels too.

The writer is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics