A quick note before we begin: as regular readers will have noticed, we’re now reserving more of our content for our paid subscribers who make our work possible. We now reach tens of millions of people every month through this newsletter and our social media. If you value our work, if you want to help our small team speak up for the silent majority, then please support us.
This weekend, I joined a debate about the future of British politics at the Cliveden Literary Festival, where I was asked a question that many people within the establishment stop asking. Should Britain rejoin the European Union?
The debate is back because of what’s happening in Westminster. In recent weeks, Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham refused to rule out rejoining the EU and blamed Brexit for our economic problems and inability to manage immigration.
Then, last night, The Times reported that Burnham is “leaving the door open” to rejoining the EU without even offering the British people a referendum — a move that opinion polls suggest would be opposed by nearly two-thirds of the country.
At Cliveden, Labour MP Jess Phillips and even our moderator, Emily Maitlis, made the case for rejoining. But my answer was different and direct.
No - we should not.
Rejoining makes little economic and political sense. Taking Britain back in would be another almighty betrayal of the British people that would further weaken our democracy, fuel mistrust, and break the social contract.
Something I’ve always found striking is the extent to which Rejoiners, who claim to be the most globally-minded and politically sophisticated, appear to be completely out-of-step with what is actually happening within the European Union today.
They remain stuck in a 2000s time warp. But anybody who has actually been watching events closely knows that the EU is not the same club that it was in 2016. Far from it. Their comforting image of a stable, united, prosperous, and politically left-leaning or centrist organisation simply no longer exists.
Somehow, the same Rejoiners who are seemingly horrified by the return of Nigel Farage and the direction of British politics have not noticed how, over the last decade, the EU has become even more more volatile, populist, and restless than Britain.
Openly nationalist and instinctively Eurosceptic parties are not just on the rise but leading many more EU member states than they were a decade ago. Today, they’re leading the polls in Germany, Austria, Italy, Romania, and Portugal, among others.
Politics is also moving rightwards in Spain, where recent scenes of border chaos in Ceuta were transmitted across Europe — including to voters in Britain who are far more sceptical of immigration today than they were in 2016. In France, similarly, it’s not just plausible but likely Marine Le Pen will be the next president, helped by the fact that nihilistic violence, stoked by left-wing parties, is now ravaging the country.
Wherever one looks — from the Alternative for Germany winning state elections to mass protests in Spain, chaos in France, and unrest spreading to Belgium — the social contract across the EU appears to be teetering on the verge of collapse. The EU does not look stable. It does not like secure. And it does not look particularly enticing. The EU that the likes of Emily Maitlis and Jess Phillips want to rejoin is in open revolt.
The legitimate concerns that fuelled Brexit a decade ago — over immigration, borders, sovereignty, identity, and a glaring lack of democratic accountability within the EU - are now rapidly spreading across the continent.
In 2016, Britain’s elite assumed Brexit would push the EU away from conservatism to rally round a liberal progressive, globalist utopia. But they were wrong. If anything, voters across the EU are moving towards the instincts that united Brexit voters.
Just look at immigration and identity.
While Britain’s dogmatic Rejoiners — think Emily Maitlis, Jess Phillips, Rory Stewart, Alastair Campbell — spend their time complaining about calls to restrict and reduce immigration, have they noticed what’s happening in Brussels and Strasbourg?
The EU just approved much tougher rules for immigration returns — including sending migrants who have no right to remain to processing hubs outside Europe.
At Cliveden, Rejoiners were spitting feathers about the Tory party’s ‘Rwanda plan’, which would have seen illegal migrants arriving in Britain processed in Africa.
Do they not know that Greece, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and Denmark are pressing ahead with plans to build deportation centres for rejected asylum-seekers in … Uganda and Rwanda? Arguments that were first made in Brexit Britain are now going mainstream across Europe. We were ahead of the curve, not behind it.
In several EU member states, furthermore, such as Austria, France, Germany, and Spain, right-wing parties that are topping the polls or close to doing so want to go even further by advocating a policy of ‘remigration’ — namely forcibly sending migrants back to their countries of origin.
And just last week, the European Parliament backed a motion to add Muslim Brotherhood to a list of banned terror groups, while openly warning about “Islamist entryism” and what is known as “double language”, whereby Muslims speak moderately in public debates but far more radically in mosques.
The political direction is unmistakeable. If one takes a long-term view it is clear the EU is moving away from the kind of globalist utopia Rejoiners want to see.
Nor is the EU an economic rescue boat.
Though you won’t hear it during BBC debates that are routinely packed with pro-EU voices …