Brexit voters were aware of the economic consequences

Since the EU membership referendum and, more significantly, the 2019 general election, Remainers have twitted Leavers at every new economic setback resulting from our separation that the latter constantly said that they knew what they were voting for and they repudiate the charge of ignorance or stupidity and Remainers remain incredulous.

However, as a recent book reviewed on this week's Thinking Allowed suggests, voters in post-industrial Britain were well aware of the economic consequences of leaving the EU. They understood that there would be a loss of jobs and of income. It was just that it was the them who would suffer, not the us who were already at the bottom of the pile, thrown out of work as industry closed while the them thrived. There was also the background of a decline in the Labour vote, which the authors of the study link to the decline of the coal industry. They point out that in Durham in the general election the seats that shifted to the Tory party were in the west of the county where the coal mines had closed forty years ago. In the east, where the mines had operated until comparatively recently, traditional institutions linked to Labour and the union survived, and the Labour vote held up.

There was a hint of all this in the attacks on the Kinnock family even before the referendum. The Kinnocks as a whole were seen as doing very nicely out of the EU - Neil a Commissioner, Glenys MEP (now both retired on good pensions) and Stephen married to a prominent Danish politician. (One notes that the resentment did not extend to Aberavon voting Stephen out of the Commons at the 2019 election.)

I would like to have seen the international political argument put alongside the economic ones during the public debate about remaining in the EU. The original motivation for a cross-continent institution or institutions was to tie the nations of Europe so closely that another war would be unthinkable. The devastation wrought by two world wars, both started in Europe, was fresh in the memory of those, like Winston Churchill, who supported the European Coal and Steel Community, the germ of what was to become the European Common Market and eventually the EU. It worked. No member state was ever in conflict with another (not something one could say of NATO) and the joint membership of the UK and the Republic of Ireland was a significant factor in the end of the Troubles. One of the most visible demonstrations of the malign effect of Brexit was the outbreak of violence on the streets of Belfast. I accept that presenting a more complete picture of the Remain case would have made hardly any difference to the outcome of the election, but it would have improved the debate.

There is no point in the political class attempting to rejoin the Union unless we can take the majority of the people with us. That will not happen until we can restore trust in politicians and re-connect with the people who feel they have been left behind.