Brexit - Time for Reset
Dec 12 2024 The Guardian - Updated Dec 29 2024 The BBC
It is December 2024, and I can’t believe that I am still writing about Brexit. This was supposed to be done years ago and an independent glorious future should have arrived already.
Majority of Brexit voters ‘would accept free movement’ to access single market
But no, reality got in the way, and it is time for an ‘ambitious reset’ in the UK-EU relations. At least that is what the EU and UK public thinks. Politicians not so much, but this would not be the first time in history when politicians were out of step or lacked the necessary backbone to make obvious decisions.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, the election of Trump in the US, not to mention the compounding effects of Brexit to the UK trade and economy, have, like it says in the piece, “fundamentally changed the context” of EU-UK relations.
A few quotes from the piece, (added emphasis is mine)
A majority of Britons who voted to leave the EU would now accept a return to free movement in exchange for access to the single market.
Perhaps the most striking finding was that 54% of Britons who voted leave, including 59% of voters in “red wall seats”, said in exchange for single market access they would now accept full free movement for EU and UK citizens to travel, live and work across borders.
“It is important to recognise that Brexit and the UK-EU future relationship matters more to UK respondents than to citizens of other states. But there is broad permission from European publics to recast relations.”
“There might be scepticism about special terms for the UK among EU officials and governments, but our poll suggests that public opinion is more pragmatic.”
Both UK and EU citizens … “are open to a much more ambitious and far-reaching reset than their governments have been envisaging”.
“The Brexit-era divisions have faded and both European and British citizens realise that they need each other to get safer. Governments now need to catch up with public opinion and offer an ambitious reset.”
Now is not a time to be a politician (with a small p), i.e. just worry about the results of the next election, the world has changed.
This is a time to be a Statesman, which means not focusing on the future of the party, but making bold decisions that secure the future of the country, and Europe and the World in general.
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The update on Dec 29…
UK and EU look to 2025 for reset, but with little room for trade-offs
Basically the same message, with more in depth look at the issues and negotiations. A quote from the piece worth mentioning here, emphasis is mine:
“Voters moving faster than their governments
Whatever the developments in EU-UK relations in 2025 and beyond, they are likely to happen slowly because of political concerns and because negotiations have a habit of getting bogged down in detail.
In direct contrast, a recent poll by YouGov and Datapraxis for the European Council of Foreign Relations suggests voters in the EU and UK are far more gung-ho than leaders in Brussels and London about jumping over previous political taboos to strengthen ties.”
