What if remain had won?

By Pete North - June 24, 2021

Looking back at my Facebook posts, I full expected to lose the referendum. Leave had run a pretty odious campaign and I don’t think Vote Leave ever managed to cut through with a slam dunk message. What won it, I think, was a determination to send a message of defiance to an out of touch establishment. The vote was less a verdict on the EU as a verdict on the status quo. An indictment of our political class.

Looking back, I’m not surprised it turned out the way it did, with Brexiteers being steadfastly uncompromising to the last, and greatly impatient. We all knew the morning after the referendum that we would have to fight to ensure it was honoured. Everyone who campaigned for leave knew damn well they’d try to worm their way out of it or in some way sabotage it. Trust in politics has been massively eroded.

It was that complete absence of trust that tainted everything going forward – and made it next to impossible to argue for a softer Brexit. The failure to win that argument is reflection of the pent up resentment among leavers – who simply didn’t believe their vote would count. We had, after all, been bounced into Lisbon without a referendum.

It’s worth lodging that as a political artefact when exploring what would have happened in the alternate universe. There’s no reason to believe that Brexiteers would have taken a loss any better than remainers have. Irregularities in the remain campaign’s accounting would have been subject to the same level of scrutiny but they’d have been largely ignored by the legacy media, feeding that sense of resentment.

The referendum conduct would also be in question being that every branch of civil society which really ought to have remained neutral backed remain. What’s more, the exclusion of Farage and Ukip from the main campaign would have been viewed as a Tory stitch-up and Vote Leave would have been branded a Tory plot to sabotage Brexit. (I’m still not entirely sure that it wasn’t – though for different reasons).

No doubt a remain win would have given David Cameron a shot in the arm, and his proposed “reforms” would have been waved under our noses as a consolation prize, but the promise to end “ever closer union” was not going to be sufficient and was not binding on any future government. We could, therefore, reasonably assume that the Farage party would have swept the boards at the Euro elections, and continue to disrupt the Tories. The notion that the matter would be settled and things would settle back to the usual routine is fanciful. The Tories would still be stalked by euroscepticism and growing immigration anxiety.

I’ve often remarked that the main difference between the leave and remain camps is that where remain takes to the street in protest, leavers take to the ballot box. You seldom ever see a large right wing demonstration. Leave would have plotted and schemed to threaten the Tories in their most vulnerable seats, scaring Cameron’s Tories with the prospect of a Corbyn government. He would have to go back to Brussels to get something more concrete.

That could have opened up a new treaty process which would then see leave gearing up for a ratification referendum – one which Cameron would more than likely lose. From there you can speculate all manner of scenarios, but with the UK being a permanent blocker to further integration, I think it would only be a matter of time before there’s be a re-run referendum on membership. With Cameron out of road, it could then be the government leading the charge for leave. There is a high probability we’d be leaving come what may.

But then, considering the alternative, remain might be glad of it. Right now the remainers are wailing because nothing is going their way. They’re getting a taste of what it was like to be a Eurosceptic for decades. But one dreads to think what happens to a country when half the population never gets to influence the course of politics and we’d continued on the road to Euroblivion.

As we have so often remarked, the referendum of 2016 did not cause the division. It exposed it. But what happens when that division is left to grow and fester with no political recognition of it. There would be no discussions about levelling up or the “left behind”. There would be no meaningful attempt to slow immigration (there’s precious little now). Without something like Brexit to neuter the growing insurgency on the right, it could very easily start winning seats in Westminster, possibly even pushing the Tories into coalition, then demands to invoke Article 50 purely on the basis of a parliamentary vote. Come to think of it, I struggle to imagine any scenario where we don’t end up leaving the EU.

There seems to be an assumption that a remain vote would have secured our place in Europe and killed off Ukip, but if anything, it would only have made the Brits even more obnoxious in the EU, disrupting, delaying wherever possible. In much the same way the SNP have made many English wholly indifferent on the matter of Scottish Independence, it is highly likely that Brussels would eventually urge us to leave. In those conditions, in the same way that remainers blame everything bad that happens on Brexit, every subsequent problem would be blamed on the EU. More so than before.

In the meantime, it is highly unlikely remaining in the EU would improve the attitude of remainers. It is not unfair to say that they have been condescending, out of touch and crass. Irrespective of Brexit, there would still be a culture war raging, that would spawn more extreme politics. We’d still be in the same political deadlock and would still be a deeply divided nation with no obvious end to it.

Britain has a way to go before it is again at ease with itself, and it’s going to take a lot more than Brexit. Until we see meaningful democratic reform, addressing the bankruptcy of our party political system, I don’t see us finding a renewed peace. Johnson was only momentarily popular and is losing support by the day, and may yet lose more if lockdown easements are delayed again. Leavers are already feeling mugged by Johnson, and when he’s gone I don’t see them sticking with the Tories.

We have long asserted that Brexit was less the problem with British politics as a symptom of it. Brexit has initiated a political sea change, but one that is far from complete. It has wiped the left off the board, creating a vacuum for a new opposing force in politics. Nobody knows what form that will take but it’s not going to be a progressive alliance and it’s not going to be populist right. What we’re all looking for right now is credible, competent leadership and some acknowledgements of reality. The left presently absent themselves by catastrophising at every turn, losing every single argument.

In another five years things could again look very different to now. Brexvid could just as easily smash the Tories in the same way Brexit killed the left, begging the question of what fills the void. That is something for real politics to address, bringing about a new era in our democracy that we wouldn’t have got to otherwise. It’s not going to be quick. It’s not going to be easy. But it is very, very necessary.