Will Britain Undo Brexit?

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]Could Britain undo Brexit? We are just shy of a decade since the UK voted to leave the European Union and just over six years since we actually left. It took a while. But could Britain be preparing itself for another big debate about its potential future membership again of the European Union? Ex- health secretary, Prime Minister Wannabe and Britain's oldest fetus, whereas streeting has suggested that it will be part of his platform and presumably the UK's under his leadership for Britain to rejoin the EU. But how likely is that to happen? Is it even possible within the EU's rules? And should the UK rejoin, or is there maybe something else going on here too? Alonzi which is like here we go but in French because Europe.

[00:00:50]So this story starts with its roots in the big story which occupied a lot of slow news day last week which is the unofficial but still absolutely very real race to replace K star as both leader of the Labour party and prime minister of the UK. Towards the end of last week, Wes Streeting, who previously was the health secretary, quit his job in the government, but then crucially didn't launch a leadership campaign against Star. It did appear that he tried to launch a leadership challenge against Kstarma. But in the end, it appeared that he simply didn't have enough support from other Labour MPs to do so. He would needed just over 80 Labor MPs to support him in his bid to oust Starmer. And while at some point he seemed to think that he did have that support, it turned out he didn't. By Saturday, however, streeting was back on the front foot at the annual conference of progress, a think tank/c campaign group on the right of the Labour Party, which broadly seeks to continue the legacy of Tony Blair. During his keynote address to the conference, Streing told the crowd not only that he would look to stand in any upcoming leadership election, but also that one of his policies would be for Britain to rejoin the EU. He described leaving the EU as quote a catastrophic mistake and said that the biggest economic opportunity we have is on our doorstep. We need a new special relationship with the EU because Britain's future lies with Europe and one day back in the European Union. All of which is contentious to say the least. Britain is still a very divided country, but it feels like Brexit itself hasn't been the thing that we've been divided over for quite some time now.

[00:02:25]you know, related stuff. Surely, immigration maybe, uh, globalization maybe, but not Brexit specifically. That the time where that was a kind of a red-hot issue seems to have passed a little bit. In fact, maybe the best sign that the moment that Brexit was kind of everything to British politics has passed, is that the New European changed its name just last year to the New World. The new European was this kind of slightly odd newspaper setup mostly I presume for an audience of like centrist dads just after Brexit happened which has now apparently decided that it needs to have a slightly broader scope on the world. Wes however apparently wants to bring the EU back to the four in British politics. The question is why? I mean, the most obvious answer, which, you know, we should give some credit to, is that Brexit has been a disaster, right?

[00:03:18]Estimates vary, but it said that the UK's GDP could be up to 8% lower than it would have been had the UK stayed in the block. Again, estimates on the exact number vary there. Some people suggest that actually CO is a big factor in that too, and that maybe the distinction from other countries isn't as great as some like absolute diehard uh rejoiners are.

[00:03:40]And you know, GDP isn't a perfect measure of a country's happiness, health, or prosperity. However, it's pretty certain that people's lives in the UK are less good than they would have been had we stayed in Europe. Even any possible benefits have faded, too.

[00:03:54]And there was this really interesting moment just after Trump had announced his tariffs on the rest of the world where the UK appeared to have managed to kind of find a bonus to Brexit which was that we ended up with a bit of a carve out from the tariffs applied to elsewhere and in particular to Europe.

[00:04:11]This was one of Karma's big wins when he went to Washington and came back.

[00:04:16]Nevertheless, as relations have subsequently strained with America, the UK has kind of found itself a little bit a drift internationally. In an era of great powers, being a tiny little country on its own is likely a pretty weak place to be from from both a trade perspective as well as from a defense perspective and the rest of it. With Trump back in power in the US, it's also sort of clearer than ever that the values of most Brits are far more aligned with our continental European neighbors than those of contemporary America. And so yeah, Brexit has been a disaster and so there is like a logical reason to want to rejoin. However, from like basically the moment that referendum was announced, the success or failure of Brexit has kind of been by the by in terms of the political discussion around it. The numbers of it all haven't really mattered up to this point and probably won't for some time in the future. Even where there have been people who have changed their minds on the issue, it's continued to be one of those topics where people have built their political identity around it. So much so that any return to the topic is likely to just get people's backs up once again. Nigel Farage has, for obvious reasons, currently wanted to stay a bit quiet on the issue at the moment, but I don't doubt that he could quickly spin the issue to great effect if the Labour Party wanted to reopen the wound. Right? There is a whole argument, even if he didn't want to start making the argument that Brexit has been a massive success. There's a whole argument about democracy being overturned, about the Westminster bubble, the things that Westminster wants to impose on everyone else, which I could see being a really successful argument. The bigger challenge, however, is that even if the UK wanted to go back to the EU and rejoin, the EU would want pretty big reassurances.

[00:06:02]Kiss Armor has currently been pursuing a reset is the phrase that he's used with the EU in which the UK has been trying to realign itself with certain aspects of Europe sort of in the sense that Britain is under new leadership and therefore we can use that opportunity to uh have the conversations from a from a bit of a a fresh start and we have for example already rejoined the Arasmus scheme the Arasmus plus scheme I think it's called in which students at university can do a year abroad in Europe and European students can do a year abroad uh in the UK if if you know they like rain. However, during negotiations uh for a deal on agriculture, the EU apparently pushed for a supposed Farage clause which would financially punish the UK if it decided to pull out again. So, polling does seem to suggest that a majority of people in the UK would like to rejoin the EU. But even if that polling is just enough to win over a government or a potential prime minister like West Streeting, it's unlikely that support for rejoining would be enough to win over the EU themselves to let us back in. The reality is that we're probably not officially rejoining the EU for decades and decades. Even if greater alignment is something that we might see, it's just too likely that Europe is too skeptical of us potentially joining and then immediately pulling out again for that to happen. So why is Wes Streeting pushing for it? And I have a couple of theories here beyond, you know, the broad idea that it might be good for the UK to rejoin the EU. The first is that this is much more about internal campaigning within the Labour Party than it is about an actual policy that might get enacted. West Streeting currently needs support from Labour MPs to get nominated to be a candidate in any upcoming leadership election regardless of whether Kharma uh stands down uh by resigning himself or whether he kind of West Streeting manages to launch a challenge to his leadership. And the people that he needs votes from are both Labour MPs to get the nomination but then also Labour members to win any eventual leadership election. He currently has neither of those things.

[00:08:11]And his challenge is that the reason that the Labour Party is currently in crisis is that Karma is seen not to have been radical enough and also not good enough at communicating the positive policies that he has passed through. And that's difficult for Wes Streeting because he has been glued to Kier Starmmer this whole time. If the Star government is now considered a massive failure, Wedge Streeting is going to struggle to differentiate himself from it. He has just been there the whole time at the heart of it. More than this, if the criticism is that Kier Starma has not been radical enough, Wes Streeting is not a radical. He's probably less radical than K star by any objective measure. He is not the man who can answer the questions that the Labour Party currently needs to ask. That is unless he can make himself the EU guy.

[00:09:01]Ever since the EU referendum, if not slightly before, membership of the EU has kind of proven itself to be this really galvanizing force. particularly for British liberals and particularly in a way which gave substance to centism.

[00:09:16]Right? A political belief which is usually defined by its lack of substance. I mentioned a moment ago the newspaper the new European which was a real organ of remainerism in the years following the referendum. But remainerism also briefly had basically its own political party of sorts in change UK, the independent group for change in the UK or wherever its full title was, which was effectively a group of pro-EU MPs from both political parties who joined together to become a kind of third party, but also it wasn't the Lib Dems because they were different from the Lib Dems uh for reasons which are hard to tell, but um I'm sure we're there somewhere. But what was particularly notable about Change UK was that its members had really defected from the Labour Party and the Conservative Party because the Tories in the group didn't like Boris Johnson and the Labour MPs in the group didn't like Jeremy Corbyn. Um, and they sort of both came together as this sort of vague centrist grouping. The challenge was that that's a pretty weak source in terms of political ideology.

[00:10:18]remainderism while also being something that those MPs genuinely believed in thus became a kind of political substance which centrists could wrap themselves around. Right? Many readers of the new European were as motivated by a kind of position of being liberals but being anti-Jeremy Corbyn as they were by wanting to rejoin the EU. It's that rejoining the EU kind of became this particular um substance to kind of give a real shape to sort of centism which is a lot more vague as a political position. It was also on top of this something which made those people feel radical even though the thing which actually united them was a complete lack of radicalness. Look, it could be worse.

[00:11:03]There were a whole other bunch of people who sort of became turfs because they didn't like Jeremy Corbyn and that was their way of feeling radical. So, you know, become a remainer. That's that's that's the better option. One wonders then to what extent wedge treating's new rejoinerism is a way of presenting himself as a kind of radical, right?

[00:11:21]Even if his domestic politics are either basically Kstarmas or something of a step to the right from Karma, he can push this as being his kind of boldness, which is a change up from what we've had under K star. It's also importantly a position which is likely to be disproportionately popular amongst Labour MPs and some of the Labour party's remaining members uh more so than it is amongst the general public even if it doesn't particularly spark the passions of enough people in the rest of the country. Wr Street's more mischievous reason for wanting to put the EU at the top of his agenda however is to scupper the chances of Andy Bernham. W shooting has made a really big deal out of framing his uh decision not to launch a leadership election last week. Whether we believe that was a decision or whether he just couldn't get the votes is another thing, but he's tried to frame this decision as being as a result of wanting to ensure that Andy Burnham can also stand in any Labor leadership contest which might take place. And yet Andy Bernham's chances of managing to win his current bi-election to become an MP are on an absolute knife edge. uh the seat that he's standing in, Makerfield, voted very heavily reform in the recent local elections. Over 50% I believe uh of uh voters voted reform in those local elections and some of the polling suggests that Andy Burnham standing rather than another Labour candidate would make a big difference.

[00:12:48]However, it is going to be very close.

[00:12:51]Of course, if Andy Bernham wins is a fantastic proof of concept for his potential leadership of the Labour Party, uh because he can say, "Look, if I can beat reform there, I can beat reform across the rest of the country."

[00:13:03]It would also be a fantastic headwind or tailwind, whatever the good one is in terms of the media of being able to shape that narrative. However, if he loses, he can't stand to be the leader of the Labour Party and prime minister, which would make things a whole lot easier for Wes Streeting. It wouldn't only mean that Andy Burnham isn't there to stand, but it would mean that someone from the Labour Party's right like Wes Streeting can make the argument that the left-wing arguments or relatively leftwing arguments of Andy Burnham can't win over the electorate. And thus, what we need is Tony Blair Mark 2. And yet the fact that Andy Burnham is standing in a seat which previously had voted heavily for the Reform Party means that by bringing things back to Brexit where Streeting has just made Andy Bernham's job a whole lot harder in terms of trying to win that seat as he will have to now just spend ages answering questions about Brexit when probably what he'd rather do is gloss over it a little bit and not talk about Brexit more than he talks about structural issues and Thatcher and all that kind of stuff. So, will the UK undo Brexit?

[00:14:12]Almost certainly not. But its usefulness as a signifier in domestic politics means that it's likely to be something which we're going to have to hear debated for a whole whole lot longer. And if you want to find out a little bit more about the oddness of Andy Burnham being given this particular um constituency to stand to try and run as an MP in um and whether or not the right-wing of the Labour Party, who are currently sort of his uh his his enemies of a type, might be trying to trip Andy Burnham up before he can get back to parliament, you'll want to check out the whole 20inut piece that I made for Slow Newsuesday about that topic towards the end of last week. To watch that, however, you will have to head over to Nebula, where, as many of you know by now, I release an extra two episodes of Slow Newsuesday every week. That's right. On Nebula, there are four installments of whatever this nonsense is every single week. There's a whole biography of Andy Burnham. Uh, yesterday, I made a whole piece about how vapes just keep exploding in bins.

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