WHY HAVE THE REMAINERS NOT re-invented themselves as the Rejoiners? Why have the tens of thousands of clever people who were passionate about the imperative for the United Kingdom to stay in the European Union not become the tens of thousands of clever people who are passionate about the consequent need that the UK resume its EU membership?
It is now more than five years since the Brexit referendum on 23 June 2016; it is also more than two years since the UK formally left the EU at 11pm on 31 January 2020; and it is more than a year from the end of the transition period when many (although not all) practical details were resolved. Before the referendum a conventional wisdom was shared among global policy-making elites and the policy-influencing media. This was that Brexit was a kind of herd populist madness, a mistake that would lead in short order to recession, impoverishment and geopolitical marginalisation.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington and the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) articulated the warnings, in much the same terms as the BBC and the . The barrage of words had its effects. The 48.1 per cent Remain minority in the referendum contained more than 60 per cent of the UK’s
