From a recovering Remainer – how we respond to Brexit

So the country has spoken, and it’s Leave. We are now being lashed with profound economic, political and constitutional uncertainty. We’ve fallen behind France to become the world’s sixth largest economy as the pound drops and jobs are already starting to move. That uncertainty will hit both working-class Leave voters who lashed out at a system they felt had failed them, unable to believe things could get worse, and heavily pro-Remain young people, who already felt similar precarity and now seethe with intergenerational angst. Our prime minister has resigned and a feral Tory right-UKIP axis will soon ascend to government, already signalling that they won’t keep pledges they made to Leave voters. Our Labour opposition remains in disarray, and is severely estranged from many of its traditional voters. The SNP hasn’t wasted time mounting a renewed bid for independence and the implications for Northern Ireland could be still more profound. I worry about how the world now sees us and I know many hardworking foreign nationals living here feel unwelcome. And all this is just on Brexit Day 2.

But despite that, I stand by what I wrote last week about what to do if it was Leave:

“The most immediate concern would be restraint and respect – accepting the public’s will and making the best of a bad situation, not scorning half our own country or retreating into the denialism and false consciousness tropes that all too humanly grabbed many Labourites in 2015”

I wrote that because I knew all too well the tendencies of many on the liberal-left, and we are seeing it again. I know the hurt - I feel it too and I’ve spent every week of the last few months campaigning hard for Remain, with no regrets. But speaking from that place, denial and arrogance aren’t the right response. The EU is a vital part of our constitutional framework and has changed over decades, so I felt a referendum was fair after 40 years without one. With the possible exception of if a new government renegotiates terms further (e.g. around free movement) and calls a second In/Out referendum, I won’t sign the petition for one. It can’t and won’t happen, certainly not on the terms of those of us who opposed the public’s Leave vote outright. And we’d do well to remember Winchester in 1997 as a damning precedent on how the British electorate might respond to an unwanted rerun that flies in the face of their innate sense of fairness. After a thorough recount, an ousted Tory MP contested a 2-vote margin of defeat in the courts and forced a by-election – Lib Dems tacitly campaigned on a message that 'when the umpire gives you out, you should walk’, and increased their majority to a whopping 21,566. Its true Farage had said that a 52% margin wouldn’t have been conclusive for Remain, but don’t pretend we wouldn’t have been outraged if we’d won and he’d charged ahead with that.

The social media echo chamber is now obsessing over anecdotes of Leave voters who didn’t really think we would Leave, but they may well be few and unrepresentative – we can't grasp at the straws of false hope. Leave won by 1.25 million votes and fundamentally, many who voted for it were motivated by frustrations about accountability, sovereignty and insecurity over the pace of change (yes, including immigration). Half our countrymen – most of England and Wales outside of London - are not all to be despised, just as we on the Remain side should refuse to be insulted as not “ordinary” or “decent” enough. Even campaigning in Islington and Hackney, the divides I ran into were occasionally stark – you couldn’t move for In signs in the windows of Barnsbury townhouses, but in the council housing blocks, more than once I had conversations with middle-aged men who bluntly told me they’d been through recessions before and were willing to risk Brexit to change things. And I am tempted to say it does suggest something about the current functioning of the EU as a political union that when one of its three biggest member states dramatically leaves, that country’s leader has to resign but no one senior in Brussels seems to be held similarly accountable.

Put simply, don’t die on this hill – don’t give Boris Johnson an excuse to reprise his cringey faux-populist riff about not needing “fancy constitutional experts to tell us what they were trying to say”. We all know already – it’s just whether we can try our best to adapt.

However, the Vote Leave campaign was hateful – powered by cynicism, soon-to-be-broken promises and regressive dogwhistles that cannot be forgiven or be allowed dictate the terms of Brexit we now get. That’s the battle now – that’s where all our anger and energy should be routed. We must work to marginalise the most economically libertarian and culturally nativist Brexiters alike.

Some version of EEA/EFTA membership seems to be a possible starting point for most Remainers and some Leavers, but it poses challenges too. The ‘fax democracy’ drawback Remainers have always pointed to is still there, and it involves retaining free movement and financial contributions, which most Leavers just voted against in spirit. Stephen Kinnock wasn’t wrong when he warned about having to choose between EEA’s constitutional fallout and the economic damage of any lesser Canada-style trade agreement. But EEA membership does allow us to retain many of the core economic benefits, while jettisoning some policy obligations (e.g. agriculture and fisheries) and many of the trappings of political union. Emotionally, that will matter to at least some Leave voters, potentially representing an uneasy majority consensus.

We should also do what many Labour politicians (and some moderate Tories like Sarah Wollaston) already seem to be doing, and get stuck in to holding the incoming Brexit government to account for its pledges on the economy, NHS funding, the replacement of EU grants and upholding rights at work. Some of the most disaffected and neglected voters in society who went Leave are about to be betrayed again. Labour has let these voters down for too long as well (we must acknowledge that this is one of many factors that brought us to this place), but this is potentially a chance to make things right and champion them in an hour of need.

If the Labour Party were stronger right now, this would otherwise also be an opportunity to take apart the Tory brand. In May 2015, voters sought stability and economic competence with the Conservatives, but the Tory Brexiteers have just detonated that and forced their own elected prime minister to resign. We have lost our AAA credit rating, the one we were told austerity was necessary to protect. Fiscal credibility can also be won back at their expense - Labour should actively suggest alternative pay-fors for as many of the magic money tree Tory Leave pledges as is fiscally viable (we shouldn’t discredit ourselves by matching promises we can’t keep either, but we should see how much we can cover with our review of corporate tax reliefs, non-dom abolition and other revenue-raisers). We are now hurtling towards a snap election, in which prosecuting these cases will be Labour’s only hope. But though I fear the party still seems to lack the will, a leadership change will be necessary to make it happen. Jeremy Corbyn does also bear some responsibility for this result, but in any case, the party needs someone more capable to lead us into an early election if we are to see off disaster, let alone mount a fightback.

And we also need to move to secure national unity. As Steve Reed MP has already suggested, London’s clearly very different political and economic outlook may justify increased devolution to the GLA, but this should be in tandem with English (and Welsh) regional devolution. London leaving the rest of the country behind is already a contributing factor to this crisis, but the financial crisis also showed us where any path that depends on London artificially propping up the country ultimately leads. Regions and communities in England and Wales must be empowered to make their own destinies with fresh powers, relocation of institutions away from London, investment in skills and community banking to seed start-ups. Labour worked on such a ‘One Nation’ agenda under Ed Miliband, but when it came to it, we failed to fight the 2015 election on a coherent vision around it.

Northern Ireland also needs urgent reassurance and cross-party unity – politicians on the mainland need to do all they can to facilitate that (Theresa Villiers was irresponsible to back Leave, as many warned, and should be replaced). And while I understand the Scottish reaction and the sympathy rUK Remainers are now showing for it – Better Together did make keeping EU membership an issue in 2014 and the political situation in England is now more of a push factor too – the oil price collapse has made independence less economically viable and I do hope Kezia Dugdale and Ruth Davidson make the case for them to stay. I'll understand if they go, but I don't want to see our United Kingdom shrink further, if we can at all manage.

Brexit is a hammer blow to our country and much that I hold dear. But we have to try to shape it for the best. As Jonathan Lindsell, a Remainer and former Civitas researcher who has studied Brexit scenarios in great depth, wrote – “it does not have to be a disaster for the country. I can’t see it being *good* for the country, but when the markets calmed down the overall process of exit could be quite mild, and even have some positives. That is only if it is handled well”. All that recovering Remainers have left to do is try to “take control” too.