You can't blame Brexit

Rachel Reeves recently "outed" Brexit. At an investment summit in Birmingham she said “The Office for Budget Responsibility do the forecasts for the economy. When we left the European Union, or when we voted to leave, they made an estimate about the impact that would have. What they’ve done this summer is go back to all of their forecasts and look at what actually happened compared to what they forecast. What that shows – and what they will set out – is that the economy has been weaker and productivity has been weaker than they forecast, despite the fact that they forecast that the economy would be weaker because of leaving the EU."

So are you saying there's nothing we can do about it? That Brexit has made us worse off and we just have to suck it up?

That's dishonest. If you say - and believe - that a Brexit Britain is intrinsically poorer than a not-Brexit Britain, isn't the logical thing to do something about that? Isn't it possible that proposing reuniting with the EU, or some aspect of that such as re-joining the Customs Union, could completely change the prospects of a left of centre government/coalition defeating the forces of the right at the next election? Could Labour really be bold enough to say "it hasn't worked so we need to reverse the referendum decision" as the central plank of their 2029 election campaign? I recently posted about rolling referendums or at least some clarity on repeat referendums but I'm not proposing a referendum. My proposal would be that a single issue "unBrexit" election would have exactly the same decisive effect as the 2019 Brexit election: a sea change.

I'm not saying any of that would be easy and I'm not saying that I believe it is the right thing to do. I'm just saying that political thought at the moment in the UK is dominated by the populist agenda and there is no counter-insurgency. The "centre ground" has become muddied by the belief that you have to fight populism on its own turf; maybe switching to a proactive, visionary approach could be more effective.

Could it work? Would the EU even want us back? Who knows. But it would be a clear differentiator which voters could understand as a positive vision for the future of the country. It could be a "dead cat" moment [no offence to cats] which distracts voters from the "mess" they think the country is in. Politically for Labour, it would establish clear water between them and Reform/Tory and would go some way towards negating pressure from the LibDems/Greens/nationalists ("we are the only de-Brexit party who can actually make it happen").

Does Labour even have a Boris figure who could make it happen? Not sure. Suggestions?