Starmer will have to wait before breaking the Brexit omertà

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Alastair Campbell mentored Tony Blair in back-to-back landslide electoral victories in the UK. He believes that Labor should point to the failure of Brexit directly, not just elliptically.

Matthew Parris of The Times is the columnist I admire above all others. He urges the Lib Dems to stop covering up and present themselves as the anti-Brexit party.

Ford and other automakers bring valuable jobs to some of the most disadvantaged regions of the country. Once so terse on the subject of Brexit, some are now calling on the government to review the terms of Brexit.

It would be risky, not to say brazen, to call these august characters wrong. These august people are wrong. There will come a time when politicians can tell voters that Brexit was a stupid idea, that it makes Britain poorer than it needs to be, that it doesn’t even work as a immigration court withdraw from the world That time is not far off. But it is not now. Not quite. And timing is everything.

Polls show that the majority of voters, including, almost by definition, some who voted to leave, regret Brexit. But there’s a difference between knowing you’re wrong and being told you’re wrong. The first experience is not that difficult to handle. The second can feel like a violation. Perhaps, towards the end of this decade, voters won’t mind hearing from politicians that Brexit was a mistake. Until then, they should be left to suspect it in private. Vocalize the thought too soon, and people are likely to cower in a defensive position, never to come out.

The political class will not have several opportunities to get it right. An untimely gesture can become a point of reference and a recruiting cry for the other side. “Remember the great Brexit sabotage of 2023?”

A few years can make a difference. In 1974, Prime Minister ted heath sought a mandate to reduce union power. The voters denied it. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher issued more or less the same application and won. What was the difference? His Hegelian and world-historical greatness? Maybe, if you believe in such things. But also the accumulation of evidence from the real world (strike after strike, inflationary pay round after inflationary pay round) that something had to change. A problem that was chronic at the beginning of the decade became acute at the end. Things had to get worse to get better.

Politicians will have to give up the disturbing omertà over Brexit. But to do it now would be Heath-ish. Politics is largely the art of measuring time. Charles de Gaulle did not break the hearts of the pieds noirs at first He waited for the accumulation of evidence that a French Algeria it was unsustainable. Costs were allowed to rise.

So if not now, when? When should Labor stop walking on eggshells around the central issue of British politics? With the caveat that there can be no accuracy, this is my guess: not the next general election but, assuming a normal-length parliament, the next one. It should feel like a bow to the inevitable: almost an afterthought, in fact.

The wait is not free, I know. Britain gives up exports every day. Politicians of likely bad judgment escape scrutiny. In a just world, Rishi Sunak would not pose as a headstrong working man. Labor would frame him as the first prime minister to believe in Brexit doctrinally. (Theresa May and Liz Truss both voted to stay. Boris Johnson was a late convert and perhaps an opportunist.)

Sir Keir Starmer would stalk him from here to Santa Monica. What EU laws bind Britain, Prime Minister? Do you agree with the prosecutor watchdog about the costs of Brexit? How many hospitals has he set the nation back? Why can’t we all have Northern Ireland? “unbelievably special” access to the EU, Prime Minister? Sunak projects the overenthusiasm of a children’s television presenter. These questions can bring out underlying nervousness.

But, it’s surreal that this still needs to be said, Starmer is good at politics. He hasn’t reached the brink of the presidency by messing things up. He feels that much of Britain would interpret an attack on Brexit as an attack on itself. An electorate that knows it was wrong in 2016 still wants to be told.

That day is coming. It might be safe for a Labor intellectual to write a book called something like guilty men and women. It will tell of a nation pushed into its biggest unforced error since Suez by inept politicians, detail-averse, gullible journalists, out-of-reach hedgies, and the perennial college students of the world of libertarian think tanks. Publication date? Not before 2028.

janan.ganesh@ft.com