Recently, to mark ten years since the announcement of the Brexit referendum, the European Movement convened an online meeting of representatives from Hertfordshire, Suffolk, Norfolk and Bedfordshire to consider how Britain might move closer to the EU, and perhaps even consider rejoining. They were beginning to hope.
Even the right-wing press, once so wedded to the notion of Brexit and its inevitable success, is beginning to let slip that perhaps it hasn’t all gone as swimmingly as many suggested it would. It’s been a long and downhill road since the Brexit referendum.
Billy no-mates
The political chaos created in the United States, and the isolationist rhetoric coming from the White House, have nailed down the coffin of the ‘special relationship’. It’s clear that for now – and maybe for some time yet – the UK cannot rely on either defence protection or economic preferential treatment from across the Atlantic.
Dashed hopes in the late 2010s
Many different factors are blamed for the stagnant economic state of Britain. Yes, the 2008 crash didn’t help. Nor did austerity. Nor did Covid. But it’s no longer possible to pretend that Brexit has not played its part. The Office of Budget Responsibility’s prediction that Brexit would reduce the UK’s GDP by 4% has proved an underestimate, with Britain’s output down by perhaps £20 billion a year (equivalent to the annual budget of the Home Office). So we are in the doldrums, no longer able to rely on our American cousins, and … oh, we’ve cut ourselves off from Europe too.
After the 2016 referendum, Europhile groups around the country campaigned with increasing energy for a second referendum, the ‘People’s Vote’, on Brexit. In a widely circulated remark in the House of Commons in 2011, ultra-Brexiter Jacob Rees-Mogg had in fact advocated a second referendum to approve any deal that was negotiated. He was not allowed to forget the remark, and in the run-up to the 2019 election he admitted that a second referendum would indeed overturn the first.
Voters in referenda are sometimes described as treating them more as a no-confidence vote in the government than to address the issue at hand. And the Brexit issue was extremely complex and really not reducible to a yes/no answer. A People’s Vote on the negotiated deal would indeed have been better informed, and probably more relevant than the simple shot-in-the-dark Remain/Leave options in the 2016 referendum.
In the summer before the 2019 election, an almost unprecedented one million people took part in a march in London to demand a People’s Vote. The slogan ‘Get Brexit done’, however, won Boris Johnson the majority he needed. Like the ‘Take back control’ slogan used by the Leave campaign, it was open to the widest range of interpretations. Ten years on, there are many different ways in which those who wanted ‘Brexit’ are sure that they didn’t get the Brexit they voted for.
‘It felt like a bereavement’
Against an absurd deadline, Boris Johnson rushed through the necessary legislation for the UK to leave the EU at the end of January 2020. Across the land, the People’s Vote campaigners went into mourning. Until then, we had been in the ‘transition period’: the UK was still under EU rules, and things did not change a lot, giving Leave voters opportunity to point out that ‘Project fear’ was illusory. Informed Remain voters could see more clearly what lay ahead and didn’t stay quiet.
However, the country was sick of the word Brexit, so after 31 December 2020 there was little to be gained by hitting the bruise. Dispirited Remainers, isolated in repeated COVID-19 lockdowns, occupied themselves by observing and gathering evidence, as the UK experienced the reality of Brexit.
Holding onto hope: the European Movement
As we approach the 10th anniversary of the referendum, Project Fear has clearly become Project Reality, and it’s becoming acceptable to mention the elephant in the room. In her statement to the House of Commons on Tuesday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s response to Mel Stride explicitly stated that backing Brexit had been “wrong”.
The European Movement (EMUK), founded by Churchill in 1949 to promote European unity, it is a cross-party, single-issue organisation with 26,000 paid members and over a quarter of a million campaign supporters. It has spent the ten years since the Referendum gaining strength and has become a powerful lobbying voice helping to shift public discussion of Europe.
Recently, the turbulence in the US has prodded our government into entertaining closer collaboration with Europe, but only in small steps. To Europhiles, it feels agonisingly slow. But there is progress. Following much campaigning and lobbying by EMUK and its supporters, the youth mobility Erasmus+ scheme will once again be available to UK students, apprentices and learners from 2027.
The EU, however, may be understandably reluctant to make too deep a commitment while the polls still suggest that Reform could be anywhere near government. The worst possible outcome for everyone would be to spend five years negotiating our reentry, followed by another Brexit and another five years of exit.
East Anglian campaigning groups revive
Two of the region’s groups, Suffolk for Europe and Cambridge for Europe, have continued to meet and campaign since 2019, documenting the increasing disillusion in the region with the outcome of Brexit in various ways, including ‘Brexitometers’ at street stalls around the region.
Norfolk for Europe went dormant apart from its social media presence, while other groups, such as North Herts for Europe, East Herts for Europe, Ely for Europe and Essex for Europe, have stayed out of view.
‘National Rejoin March’ to mark 10 years
In 2023, 2024 and 2025, the Rejoin spirit was kept alive in national marches in London, though numbers were well below the pre-2020 People’s Vote marches. The National Rejoin March website, however, has kept up its campaigning: on its home page a counter keeps a running tally of the economic losses due to Brexit so far. It’s over £1 trillion, and counting.
There’s now rising excitement about the 2026 National Rejoin March, scheduled for 20 June to mark the 10th anniversary of the referendum on 23 June. Following the recent EMUK meeting, you can expect to meet pro-EU groups at county shows in Suffolk and Norfolk, and at festivals and fairs and street stalls in towns around the region. Hope is rising – come and join us! There may be a coach you can join – sign up for the march to find out and for regular updates.
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