I bring it up because Labour, already exhausted, is rattling around in the back of the broom cupboard for the old biscuit tin labelled “closer ties with Europe”. We are told that its “youth mobility scheme” (free movement, but just for “youth”) will be controlled by an “emergency brake”. Rachel Reeves wants “closer alignment”. And Sir Keir Starmer is preparing his big “reset” summit next month.
A decade ago, stay or leave was the first big call I had to make as a columnist. I had just joined The Daily Telegraph and the careerist thing to do was to side with the paper’s readers and editorial line in voting out. But I had spent six years covering different parts of the corporate world and I didn’t see much hunger for an entrepreneurial restart of the British state from businesses I wrote about. Some finance types privately admitted that their “heart said out” but their “head said stay”.
They were all morbidly afraid of losing political access in Brussels, where Treasury officials tied everyone up in knots, supposedly in the national interest. I sat through an enactment of Brexit negotiations and concluded the EU would, to use the technical term, absolutely screw us. And there was a feeling of cultural affinity with European friends. So I opted for Remain. But I now think it was the wrong call.
I am sure that sounds deeply weird to most people. Even Brexit’s most ardent supporters wince when asked what it has achieved. But since 2016, Britain’s troubles have vindicated the essential argument: that autonomy and manoeuvrability matter more than scale or legal practice. Large economic zones or political configurations are neither inherently safer nor riche