The adults in the room
This week, in a characteristically elegantly written and argued piece, Janan Ganesh set out the case in the FT that while the public may be concluding that Brexit was a mistake, the time was unripe for politicians to say so and would not be ripe for some years to come. This has, so far as I have seen, met with near-universal agreement among the commentariat. I’m going to put myself outside the consensus.
Janan Ganesh’s argument, and it’s a good one so far as it goes, is that while many Leave voters may privately accept that Brexit was a mistake, they probably aren’t ready to be told that by politicians. The thought must be left to marinate in their noggins until the point where a politician stating it is a statement of the obvious, banal even.
I agree that Labour and the Lib Dems should not raise this till after the election — you can’t do anything from opposition and it’s not the topic to run an election on. That omerta, however, expires the day after the election.
My problem with the argument that rueful Leavers should be pandered to is threefold. First, this focuses on one particular group to the exclusion of all others. Let’s look at some polling on this. Fully 62% of the public think that Brexit has been more of a failure. Note, they were given a “neither” option, but only 20% chose this. The public really do think Brexit has been more of a failure. The voters who Mr Ganesh wishes to cosset are presumably the Leave voters who agree that it has been more of a failure (37% of Leavers). These comprise fewer than 1 in 5 voters (with the march of time, probably something more like 1 in 6).
Perhaps you prefer to look at the YouGov “Brexit right or wrong” question. In the same poll, 56% of the public think that Brexit was the wrong decision, including 22% of Leave voters. Those Leavers suffering buyers’ remorse comprise something like 1 in 10 voters.
Now on either of these tests, there is by any sensible description a consensus. We are approaching the point where those who consider Brexit to have been the wrong decision outnumber the continuing believers by 2:1. Only 9% of the public consider Brexit to have been more of a success. To set this in context, 9% of the public believe that they have communicated with the dead (one of them chaired the National Conservative conference last week).
When there is a consensus to this extent, it is wrong-headed not to act on it simply because it will cause psychological trauma to some. This hugely privileges the emotions of a fairly small minority of voters. It’s not as if it’s cost-free, as Janan Ganesh acknowledges. The direction of the country will be set in large part by how the Brexit settlement is to be managed. There’s a big difference between trying to seize imagined opportunities and mitigating perceived damage.
And this leads me to my second problem: it’s not practical because it ignores the feelings of a much larger group: Remain voters and younger voters who are convinced that Brexit was wrong and a failure. 89% of Remain voters think it was more of a failure. 67% of 18–24 year olds are of the same view. This is something over 40% of the electorate. The implicit message that Mr Ganesh seems to have for that huge slab of the electorate is that they should wait for Leave voters to come to peace with their mistake. In other words, they are to be the adults in the room.
To which the obvious answer is: why? Why are Remain voters not allowed to have feelings? Why are younger voters expected to see past mistakes ossify and continue to blight decision-making? Why is a national consensus not to be recognised and acted upon? The last few years have shown us that aggressive majoritarianism is a destructive force. Minoritarianism is worse still.
And it’s not as though all Remain supporters are desiccated calculating machines anyway. A lot of them remain absolutely furious, as a cursory inspection of #FBPE twitter accounts will display. They’re not going to sit back passively indefinitely. They’ll wait — most of them will, anyway — to the other side of a general election in order to get the Tories out (they mostly see Sir Keir Starmer as one of them), but they’re going to expect speedy action after that. And they have every right to do so.
So what are politicians going to offer these voters? If they’re not going to explicitly recognise Brexit was a mistake, they’re going to need to demonstrate to those voters very clearly by their actions that they know the score. There is going to need to be a dramatic change in tone after the election if these voters are going to be kept assuaged. Paradoxically, the less explicit the public recognition that Brexit was a mistake, the more obvious the measures that will need to be taken to keep these voters happy. Some modified form of freedom of movement, perhaps (benefiting students and artists, for example). Or a customs union. Or a clear-out of prominent Brexit supporters from public offices. Leave voters might be about to find out what taking back control really means.
My final problem with the idea that the failure of Brexit should not be confronted is that it is in part based on an implicit assumption that arguments are unhealthy. But when a political decision is widely perceived not to be working, it is unhealthy not to have that argument. Leavers have had their way for the last few years. The consensus is that it’s been a failure. The time is rapidly approaching for Leave voters to be required to take responsibility for their vote.