Alastair Campbell mentored Tony Blair through the United Kingdom’s successive landslide electoral victories. He believes Labor should point to the failure of Brexit squarely, not just in an elliptical fashion.
Matthew Barris of The Times is the columnist I admire most. He urges the Liberal Democrats to stop hedging and stand as an anti-Brexit party.
Ford and other automakers provide valuable jobs to some of the country’s least favored regions. Once very terse on the subject of Brexit, some are now calling on the government to revise its terms.
It would be risky, not to mention rude, to call these interested people wrong. These imposing people are wrong. There will come a time when politicians can tell voters that Brexit was a turkey idea, that it makes Britain poorer than it needs to be, and that it doesn’t even act as a house that cuts off immigration from the world. This time is not far off. But it is not now. not exactly. And timing is everything.
Polls show that most voters – including, almost by definition, some who voted to leave – regret Brexit. But there is a difference between knowing that you made a mistake and being told that you made a mistake. The first experience is not difficult to handle. The second can feel like an infringement. Perhaps at the end of this decade, voters will not mind politicians hearing that Brexit was a mistake. Until then, they should be left to figure it out in private. Talk about the idea too early, and people will become prone to defensive bending, never coming out.
The political class will not have many chances to get this right. One wrong gesture can become a reference point and recruit tears for the other. “Do you remember the great disruption of Brexit in 2023?”
A few years can make a big difference. In 1974, Prime Minister Ted Heath sought a mandate to reduce the power of trade unions. Voters rejected him. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher made almost the same request and won. what the difference? Its Hegelian and world historical greatness? Perhaps, if you believe in such things. But also the accumulating factual evidence – strike after strike, wage inflationary round after wage inflationary round – that something has to change. A problem that was chronic at the beginning of the decade was acute at the end. Things had to get worse in order to get better.
Politicians will have to abandon the dreaded omerta about Brexit. But doing it now would be hoth-ish. Politics is very much the art of timing. Charles de Gaulle never broke hearts Blackfoot in the beginning. He waited for evidence to accumulate that French Algeria was indefensible. Costs were allowed to mount.
So, if not now, then when? When should Labor stop walking on eggshells on the central issue of British politics? Provided there can be no subtlety, here is my conjecture: not the next general election but, supposing a Parliament of normal length, one thereafter. It must feel like a stoop to the inevitable: almost an afterthought, in fact.
I know waiting is not without cost. Britain is giving up on exports every day. Politicians with bad governance escape scrutiny. In a just world, Rishi Sunak wouldn’t be able to come across as a tough-minded guy. The Labor Party would portray him as the first ideologically Brexiteer prime minister. (Theresa May and Liz Truss voted to remain. Boris Johnson was late and perhaps opportunistic.)
Sir Keir Starmer was following him from here to Santa Monica. Which EU laws restrict Britain, PM? Do you agree Financial sergeant About the costs of Brexit? How many hospitals have set the nation back? Why don’t we all enjoy Northern Ireland’s “incredibly special” access to the EU, PM? Sunak displays the overzealous enthusiasm of a children’s TV presenter. These questions may bring out the underlying audacity.
But – it’s surreal that this still needs to be said – Starmer is good at politics. He didn’t come to the brink of the premiership by accidentally timing things. He feels that a large part of Britain will interpret the attack on Brexit as an attack on itself. An electorate that knows it took a wrong turn in 2016 is still working its stomach to be told so.
That day is coming. Perhaps it would be safe for a Labor intellectual to write a book called something like Guilty men and women. He will tell of a nation exposed to the greatest unforced error since Suez by incompetent politicians, detail-averse journalists, naive, insubstantial hedgehogs, and eternal college students in the world of the libertarian think tank. date of publication? Not before 2028.
janan.ganesh@ft.com