New voters and changed minds: The road to rejoining Europe

Opinion

Could Labour campaign to overturn Brexit at the next election? The numbers add up and the UK press can be influential, explains Ray Snoddy.

A bitter battle is about to break out in the media over the future of the UK, Brexit and the increasing attempts, at the very least, to take the country back into the customs union – if not the single market.

In fact, those who have been watching carefully will have detected that the initial skirmishes in the debate are already underway.

They range from The Telegraph denouncing Brexit as “an unmitigated economic disaster” for the UK to Bloomberg analysis arguing that the UK has lost 6-8% of gross domestic product (GDP) because of Brexit, equivalent to more than £200bn a year.

Then there is deputy PM, David Lammy, talking up the merits of the customs union despite his leader, Sir Keir Starmer, being against such a thing, while Lord Danny Finkelstein has warned in The Times that Labour’s only chance of winning the next election could come by reversing Brexit.

Just wait for the right-wing media to get a whiff of what is going on, and the hysterical cries of “betrayal” will be a wonder to behold.

But first, in an area of high emotions and deeply entrenched positions, some up-to-the-minute facts.

And where better to get them from than from Peter Kellner, the former political journalist, polling expert and former chairman of YouGov, the serious pollsters.

In a Substack article published this week, Kellner notes that suddenly the talk in Westminster is of the Government wanting a closer relationship with Europe, and the numbers explain why it should be so.

Death, changed opinions and new cohorts of young voters

Since the Brexit referendum nine years ago, six million Britons have died, and Kellner explains that turnout by older voters was higher than the average and that they backed Brexit by 64-36 per cent.

Kellner assumes that five million of the six million who have died voted in the referendum, and he estimates that 3.2m who voted Leave have died as against 1.8m who voted Remain.

“This means that among people who are alive today and who voted in the 2016 referendum, remainers exceed leavers by 14.3-14.2m,” Kellner suggests.

There are two other factors in the argument. Six million have also reached voting age since the referendum, and they back rejoining the EU by five to one, although they are less likely to vote than parents and grandparents.

Then there are those who have changed their minds.

According to YouGov, 8% of those who voted Remain would now vote to stay out, but 29% of Leave voters want to rejoin.

The tally of demographic trends and changed minds adds up to a devastating number – although by definition it can only ever be an educated estimate.

It is that the 1.3 million majority for leaving the EU has turned into an 8.1 million majority for rejoining.

Kellner does not extrapolate his estimated numbers into the future, but the logic is that the potent mixture of deaths, new voters and changed minds can only increase the potential size of a rejoin majority.

What of The Daily Telegraph turning its back so dramatically on Brexit?

It hasn’t, of course, but the trenchant arguments of the paper’s economics editor and assistant editor, Jeremy Warner, are significant all the same.

Warner, who has been critical of Brexit in the past, concludes that “from an economic perspective at least, Brexit has so far proved close to disastrous. If leaving the EU was supposed to be a moment of national economic renewal, it has comprehensively failed to deliver as it was supposed to.”

A nine-year study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), an American private, not-for-profit body, inspired his opinion piece.

NBER concluded that the UK’s gross domestic product has fallen by as much as 8% from where it should have been since 2016, and that investment in the UK could have dropped by as much as 12-18%.

According to Warner, the “great act of liberation” has turned out to be nothing more than a harmful act of self-sabotage.

What does all this mean, given that the Labour Government is, unsurprisingly, in the circumstances, finding it hard to realise its stated objective – to grow the economy while rejoining the EU amounts to a huge Starmer red line?

The answer is surprisingly clear, according to Lord Finkelstein, Conservative peer and The Times columnist.

“At the next election, Labour will campaign to overturn Brexit. The political and economic logic of this is overwhelming. The only thing that might foil this prediction is the party leadership’s ability to defy overwhelming logic,” Lord Finkelstein argued in his Times piece last week.

Above all, Labour has to find a way of funding their European social model, and the only way to do that is with a return to “the single market and customs union either inside or outside the European Union.

As an electoral ploy, Finkelstein argues Labour could campaign on the need for change – even after five years in power- and there are many more voters out there who think that Brexit has been a failure rather than think it a success.

This would be a bold change of direction for Labour and, although Finkelstein does not go so far, such a plan may require a change of Labour leadership.

But Lord Finkelstein is convinced that his basic argument is compelling, although the party may, in the end, lack the necessary courage.

“But look at them now. They are at 20% in the polls. Do they really think there is a solution that doesn’t involve being bold?” Lord Finkelstein asked.

The implications of the different perspectives and ideas of Kellner, Warner and Finkelstein all suggest that a new debate on a much closer UK relationship with the EU is both necessary and urgent.

Such a debate will increasingly be fought out in the media and is likely to intensify if, as expected, Labour rides to disaster in May’s local elections.

Sir Keir may actually have little to lose. Supporters of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK are unlikely to vote for Labour anyway, but a “progressive” pro-EU coalition, complete with vigorous tactical voting, could manage to see off Reform.

Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays — bookmark his column here.