David Eldridge: Do you think Brexit will ever be reversed? If so, what timescale and stages do you foresee in the process?

The logic of geography, economics and security, along with the depth of the relationships built up over our 45-year membership, will force a rapprochement with the EU – and as soon as 2025 when the Trade and Cooperation Agreement is reviewed and potentially renegotiated. Already some leading Brexiters are privately acknowledging that the alarming drop in UK exports to the EU (down £20 billion in 2021 compared to pre-pandemic, pre-Brexit 2019) cannot be compensated by the thin, asymmetrically unfair trade deals with Australasia, Japan and Mexico that do little for services, where the UK is strong. They concede that one way or another the UK has to have the same access to the single market as it did pre-2016.

The force of impending economic stagnation in 2023 and 2024 is not widely understood – a perfect storm of squeezed living standards, higher interest rates, disappointing investment growth, falling inward direct investment and ballooning trade deficit. The current Brexit deal is central to this story. The litany of industries suffering – from whisky to aviation, music and banking – will demand a reappraisal.

At the same time, it is obvious that Russia’s actions in Ukraine require a collective European response: Britain finds itself outside the crucial meetings in Brussels where everything from sanctions to military assistance is being discussed. Tories like Tom Tugendhat, Tobias Ellwood and Ben Wallace recognise this reality and want it changed. Equally Jacob Rees-Mogg’s desperate search for “opportunities” 6 years after Brexit, most of which involve expensive and trade limiting regulatory divergence, is self-evidently self-defeating and futile. He is one of the best adverts for the European cause we have.

So I am expecting the UK to attempt a bespoke EEA arrangement alongside stronger security collaboration in 2025. The open question is to what extent will the EU want to bargain with us? In many respects the UK’s loss is their gain. My hope is that with a different Prime Minister, the EU would negotiate in good faith – a massive boost for EU’s standing and internal cohesion.

Beyond that it is hard to say. I hope this improved relationship becomes the step to full rejoining – I will work for that. But this half in, half out settlement (in a way where we were pre 2016), although unstable, may prove semi-permanent – unless the mass of British people start to realise our vocation must be European, persuaded by economic stagnation and defence insecurity. We live in right-wing, nationalist times, but as that tide recedes as it is beginning to do, new opportunities arise. What is obvious, is that global Britain is a chimera. We are part of Europe. So never say never. Brexit will be partially reversed in the mid-2020s – and maybe fully reversed in the 2030s. Indeed, there is growing panic in Brexit ranks that this will happen.

Helen Johnston: Keir Starmer recently said there is no case for rejoining the EU – “we have to make Brexit work. We are out and we’re staying out”. Labour have also ruled out a return to the single market or customs union. Is this a wise strategy at this time?

The Labour party nearly collapsed in 2019 over Corbynism and Brexit, and then won its lowest number of MPs since 1935 in a general election. Its confidence is shattered, and unless it can regain seats in the Midlands and North it is finished as a competitor for government. Everything Starmer says has to be viewed through that prism.

Yes, we need braver leadership, but we also need voters’ readiness to listen to the pro EU case. They will be readier to do this in 2023 and 2024 – see my answer above – and as a result I expect Starmer to start talking about “fixing” Brexit with more vigour. I suspect he wants a renegotiated TCA along the lines I set out above. His comment should be read as him being ready afterwards to live with the resulting half in half out settlement – not that he thinks the current deal and relationship are stable. Voters outside university towns and our big cities remain very Eurosceptic, and any movement is glacially slow. I want better, but understand why he takes the stance he does. As opinion moves, so will he.

Ruth Woodhouse: I understand that you are a member of The Independent Commission on UK-EU relations. Could you explain the Commission’s purpose and what your particular personal focus is?

It is to make practical, evidence-based suggestions about how the TCA can be vastly improved, ready to arm the Opposition parties and Tory realists with key arguments and concrete proposals when they are needed – and in the process call out regulatory divergence as a wrong turning. We aim to make it harder for the government to think there are no costs in being fiercely Europhobe over everything from Horizon to Northern Ireland. Btw, if NI can stay in both the single market and UK market, it is likely to enjoy a small economic boom! 

My own interests are regulatory divergence and peoples’ freedom to move round Europe. If Bremainers in Spain would like to support our work financially, donations are very welcome.

Lisa Burton: What, or who do you see as the greatest threat to the cohesion and stability of the European Union in the near future. Is it Russia, China, or the populist forces within some of the individual countries themselves?

External threats tend to bring people together. I think the debacle of Brexit and the menace of Russia and China have persuaded European publics to see the value of the EU more – even within right-wing Poland and Hungary. Neither countries will want to hazard their membership at the moment! Equally, the EU covid recovery plan has shown the worth of the EU, so that in Italy Euroscepticism is in retreat. However, rising inflation will highlight the differences between price stability oriented Germany, Austria, Holland and Finland – and the rest in the eurozone. This is a major and rising concern.

Valerie Chaplin: Which is more dangerous, Johnson staying or Johnson going

Johnson is too gored and compromised to fight the next election: I expect him to be gone within a year. His successor will almost certainly be Rishi Sunak. It is fashionable to regard him as highly effective. My own hunch is that it won’t matter. The Tories are going to do badly at the next election, (for the reasons set out in my first answer), and my expectation is that we will have a minority Labour government supported by the LibDems on a supply and motion basis.

Steven Wilson: In all your years of political reporting, have you ever seen anything close to the endemic levels of corruption of the current administration?

No. It is a corruption born of arrogance – they feel unthreatened by Labour. It now runs very deep – appointments, seats in the Lords, public contracts, tax and regulation policy to favour donors. We have had some of this before – but not all simultaneously and at such scale.

Andy Hawker: We are seeing the consequences of Britain not having a written constitution and rulebook by which the country is run. As the Tory government have changed the landscape with widespread abuse and unaccountability, do you think now is the time for Britain to upgrade its democracy 1.0 with a written constitution as seen in other European nations?

Yes, and I think the triggers will be the death of the Queen and the introduction of a fairer voting system. Only Belarus (and to a degree Hungary) have first past the post voting systems.

Thank you all for your questions – I’ve run of time, so apologies for brevity towards the end. Be confident that Britain is inextricably part of the European family of nations. We will reclaim our place, probably in the 2030s. Hope to meet you all in person one day.

Best, Will

This month we asked 5 former MEPs, and previous contributors to Bremainers Ask, to give us their take on the current state of British politics and Brexit. This is what they had to say ……

Catherine Bearder – former LibDem MEP & leader of the LibDems in the EU

Now semi-retired, Catherine is active as a board member for the International Fund for Animal Welfare and

Unlock Democracy. She maintains strong connections to the Liberal Democrats, having recently been

elected Chair of the South Central region.

As MEPs many of us worked to stop or reverse Brexit. We would often say, “This is like a slow car crash. We can see the brick wall coming”. We tried so hard to stop it, but we lost and Brexit came about.

So, as Brexit unfolds two years on, I am changing my mind about it being a car crash. Not about Brexit, that will always be a disaster, but that it is actually not a car crash, more a nightmare journey.

Brexit feels to me much more like a lurch off the road onto an uncharted dirt track in what was once a smart, well-maintained car. We had all been journeying along together on the EU autobahn. We were sure of the road ahead and the benefits it would bring. So, our European colleagues and friends stayed on the sensible autobahn, they may have the odd near miss, but generally their direction is organised and safe, whilst we in Britain have turned off into the unknown. Our driver, Uncle Boris, shouts that he knows what’s best for us all, and that this is a great short cut to the sunlit uplands that he promised.

We all got caught in the storm of Covid, we Brits on our dirt track and the Europeans on the autobahn, just as we will be caught in the storm of climate change, but I’m pretty sure I know who will recover better and quicker and have a safer journey.

Little old UK will keep hitting potholes, the springs will break and the journey will become more and more unpleasant. Some of our passengers, Aunty Scotland and Cousin Ulster, may insist on getting out and running back to the EU autobahnto hitch a lift with others. But as long as Uncle Boris, Aunty Liz and their chums are controlling our car we will get slower and take longer to recover from Covid, and we will all be left hoping that the wheels won’t actually fall off, which will leave us stranded.

So, like so many others, I stopped being at the heart of Brexit at the point of Brexit. Like so many others I have been told to stay at home and stay safe.  I’ve felt so frustrated with only Twitter, Zoom and Netflix for company. I felt more and more powerless to help those that I know will be affected by Brexit, those Europeans who chose to live elsewhere and who still find their futures drastically affected, those young people whose opportunities have been reduced, those businesses who now find their costs skyrocketing due to the extra costs that Brexit has brought.

But I’m not defeated, as campaigning slowly starts to happen face-to-face again. I know we need to keep fighting to regain our place in the EU, and that’s what I will do. I believe we will do this in stages. By rejoining Erasmus and, gradually, the multitude of agencies, finally the Customs Union and Single Market, and by reforming our own democracy, till eventually we can ask, very, very nicely, if we can return.

There is a slipway back onto that safer, sensible EU road a way down this dirt track, we just need to watch for the signs and make sure that we have a different driver who has the sense to take us all back onto that EU road.

After nearly four years of fighting Brexit, I came back to the UK utterly exhausted and incredibly sad. Ever since the referendum result, I have been wondering how the lies would unravel and what the damage would be to our politics. The past few years have demonstrated that clearly.

I have to confess that having been completely focused on my work as an MEP and making really important changes in terms of policy on climate, sustainable finance and other issues dear to my heart, it was very difficult to think of the best way to work in the interests of my country.

I chose to join the European Movement as the organisation most likely to lead us back into EU membership. But as many of us have found over the years, it is an organisation that has not lived up to its past glories and has been in urgent need of change. I’m proud to say I’m part of that change now, having been elected as vice chair shortly before Christmas.

I was also asked by the chair, Andrew Adonis, to conduct a diversity review to make sure that the European Movement truly represents the society that we will be when we re-join the EU. We have changed our constitution so that we have guaranteed that women and people of colour will be fairly represented in the organisation, and we are now expanding to become the mass movement we need to be to campaign for rejoin.

Brexit was such a painful process for the UK that many people have buried the memory and don’t want to think about it anymore, even though surveys show that more and more people recognise that they have not seen the benefits they were promised. Others, like the fisherman and farmers I represented in the South West, have seen the destruction to their livelihoods that the Remain campaign said was an inevitable consequence of leaving the single market.

The collapse of the Johnson regime under the weight of its own lies changes the rules of the game with regard to Brexit. First as a journalist and then as a politician, Johnson used lies about the EU as his stock in trade. The Brexiteers would not have won the referendum without Johnson as liar-in-chief. Now that he is revealed as a charlatan and a liar, it is time to reopen the question of whether the decision to leave the EU was the right one for the country.

Richard Corbett – former Labour Party MEP & leader of the Labour Party in the EU

Richard is currently representing the European Parliament in the secretariat of the Conference on the Future of Europe.

Historically, British public opinion has sometimes shifted radically against something of great national importance that initially it supported: think of the 1938 Munich Agreement, the 1956 Suez fiasco or the 2003 intervention in Iraq.

What they have in common is that the assurances that were given – that they were the best course of action, relatively easy, and without negative consequences for Britain – proved to be completely wrong, with the public constantly and visibly reminded of that as subsequent events unfolded.

Might that happen with Brexit? After all, there is a similar gradual realisation that the promised sunlit uplands are not appearing, with new evidence and examples emerging every month to rub it in. On top of that, it is perhaps even clearer in the case of Brexit than in the aforementioned cases that its advocates were deliberately misleading the public – indeed blatantly lying to them.

Already, public opinion has not done what many had expected, namely, to rally behind the decision to leave the EU. Both following the referendum result (when many Remainer politicians, including the entire leadership of both main parties, declared that the result had to be accepted, despite its narrowness and questions about how it was secured) and again following actual departure from the EU, opinion has not rallied behind the decision but edged the other way. It has done so despite no prominent serving politician (in England at least) arguing the case anymore and despite the overwhelmingly pro-Brexit media.

The demographics of public support are also favourable, with younger generations being particularly unconvinced by Brexit.

As the drip, drip, drip of negative impacts continues, it is likely that opinion will continue to shift in that direction. And if prominent opposition politicians decide that there is mileage in this and start actually making the case that Brexit was a national error, then there is every chance that it will become the received wisdom.

When that happens, it will make things easier for a future Prime Minister to set Britain on a course to rebuild our fractured relations with our neighbours, repair the damage of Brexit and ultimately take back our lost seat in the EU.

Happy New Year! It seems astonishing that two years have already passed since that fateful day when Britain finally, and much for the worse, left the EU. I will never forget the days of grim inevitability in between the General Election of 2019 and the final exit date, as the cadre of pro-EU British MEPs attempted to carry on their function of scrutinising European legislation whilst simultaneously trying to manage the fact that our entire worldview – indeed our very professional purpose – had just collapsed.

I will also never forget the huge warmth and solidarity from the many, many colleagues from the other 27 member states and from across the political spectrum. We might have just been made redundant by the electorate but we had never been made to feel more welcome by our friends.

Since then, everything has changed, but so too has nothing. Everything in the sense that all of our worlds have been turned upside down. Like everyone else we have been largely confined to our homes to keep the pandemic at bay. It’s quite a contrast from travelling twice a week to and from Brussels and Strasbourg. I was lucky in that I managed to have the foresight to book a long holiday just after we left. Little did I know it was to be my last long journey for a while!

But in many ways, nothing has changed at all. The government is still pretending it signed a completely different deal to the one we all fought very hard. They continue to deny the impact of Brexit on the UK’s place in the world, its economy, or its citizens. Their new tactic appears to be to not even mention it, in the hope that the raft of problems it throws up can be blamed on something else entirely. This is our biggest contemporary political challenge.

I’m looking forward to a new chapter in my life. I will shortly become the new Deputy Mayor of London for Transport; a role which I am honoured to be asked to fulfil. I still believe London to be the best place in the world, and I want to do all I can to keep it that way.

In whatever path we choose for ourselves, pro-Europeans must keep the pressure up in the UK and across the EU. We are only scratching the surface of Brexit’s impact on peoples’ lives and, once the effects of the pandemic become less immediate, the impact of Brexit will hit harder. If the Brexiters’ plan to ignore it succeeds, we will have no explanation for people as to why life is getting harder, and we will have no concrete solutions to offer them.

There is nothing inevitable about Britain staying out of the EU, just as there was nothing inevitable about Britain staying in. If we are serious about finding proper solutions to real problems then we will have no choice but to confront the reality of Brexit. I’m frustrated by the apparent lack of willingness to do that in the UK, but I also believe in the inherent unsustainability of nonsense. Sure, it might seem superficially attractive at first. But anything built on lies and subterfuge will – like a house of cards – come tumbling down eventually.

Julie Ward – former Labour Party MEP

Over the past two years, Julie has continued to support pro-EU groups at home and abroad, and campaigns for electoral reform. She is on the board of Culture Action Europe and is Arts Lead on an education project for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.  She is also a director of the UK’s national festival of sustainability, the Festival of Thrift. Julie is actively involved in climate change campaigns, such as Culture Declares Emergency, and is co-founder of a campaign to close down a abhorrent detention centre for female asylum seekers in County Durham.

The effects of a hard-right Tory Brexit have been largely masked by Covid. However, the Office for Budget Responsibility stated that Brexit will be responsible for a 4% reduction in GDP with the pandemic adding a further 2% to this sorry statistic. As usual, the poorest will pay the greatest price, with household costs set to rise astronomically in the coming months.

Roaming charges are being reinstated by most mobile phone providers and supply chains have been affected by the introduction of new customs checks. Meanwhile young people are denied the freedom to live, work and study across the EU, with the loss of Erasmus+ being perhaps the meanest act of betrayal by Boris Johnson’s government. The Turing Scheme is a miserable replacement which fails to deliver an equivalent breadth of benefits. In true Tory style the contract for managing Turing has just been outsourced to private company Capita, who were responsible for huge defence, education, health and benefits administration failures, including the cervical cancer screening scandal.

‘Get Brexit Done’ was a simplistic, populist slogan that appealed to a weary citizenry but Brexit is far from done, and ongoing spats between the UK and EU regarding the Northern Ireland protocol demonstrate the limits for wiggle room in a rules-based world. I knew it would all come down to dead meat, and the so-called ‘sausage wars’ were a point in case. However, the EU is an honest if pedantic broker, whereas successive UK Brexit ministers have all played fast and loose with the law. Lord Frost couldn’t be bothered to turn up to parliamentary committee meetings to give an account of his (lack of) progress regarding touring visas for musicians, and Liz Truss seems to have conveniently forgotten all the reasons why she backed the Remain campaign.

We are in a sorry state and have become the laughing stock of the world. Far from being ‘world leading’, we are verging on becoming a failed state. Our PM is an acknowledged serial liar funded by Russian oligarchs and climate-change deniers, now at war with his own party. By the time you read this we may know the results of Sue Gray’s enquiry into Downing Street parties. Johnson might even be forced to give up the premiership but, as Jonathan Freedland recently wrote in the Guardian, the Conservative Party is infected by a virus called Brexit.

Despite this catalogue of disasters, I remain hopeful that the next generation will rise to the challenge of rehabilitating our once-great country, using campaigning skills learned from #FridaysForFuture and taking us back to the heart of Europe where we belong.