Brexit: Another Tiring Culture War

Gwydion Elliott states their support for rejoining the European Union

Touting his new ‘Windsor Framework’, a post-Brexit deal for Northern Ireland, which lets UK goods pass freely over the Irish sea, only facing EU checks and customs where they’re destined for the Republic, Rishi Sunak called Northern Ireland’s position 'unbelievably special'. His reason? The 'privileged access, not just to the UK home market, which is enormous, but also the European Union single market'. Essentially, Northern Ireland is 'special' because it gets to freely trade with the EU, as well as the rest of the UK. International companies will be 'queuing up to invest' becauseNorthern Ireland has held on to the exact rights and privileges that the rest of the UK once had, until it threw them away while pursuing Brexit.

It's a moment of irony that reveals how divorced from reality policy around Brexit has become. We have landed in a position where few if any politicians would openly support reversing Brexit, despite the benefits of such a move being clear, and the benefits of Brexit murky as ever. The issue is a battleground to wage a culture war rather than a sensible debate on economic policy.

The political world is increasingly out-of-step with the public on this issue – polling by The Independent shows that nearly two thirds of Britons support a second referendum, with less than a quarter opposing it.

But terrified of being branded elitist by the media and facing an attack from the loud-mouthed far right, Labour continues to insist Brexit was a sacred decision and is an absolutely done deal.

Of course, there might be something humiliating about suffering through the years long exit only to return, but its far less embarrassing than the fact that a campaign of lies, and xenophobia took such a grip of Britain that it voted to leave behind the cooperative EU and go on to pursue a politics of racism towards refugees, transphobia, and punishing classism in the form of rising bills and costs.

We’ve seen the far right within the EU too, but it’s hard to argue that our campaign of “taking back control” has nothing to do with the political project of the Tories today. Hopefully someday soon our politics can return to the realm of reality and we can put behind the tribalism of the late 20-teens, and see things for how they actually are. Our politics should be solving real people’s issues, with real solutions for all of us.