(RightWing.org) – There’s speculation that the United Kingdom might be getting ready to do a U-turn on its 2016 vote to leave the European Union. In the seven years since the vote, and three since the UK actually left, opponents of the decision have protested, demanding the vote be ignored. Now they hope Britain could soon be back in the union.
On September 19, Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party and His Majesty’s Opposition, met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. After the meeting, Starmer said if he wins next year’s general election he wants a “closer relationship” with the EU.
At the same time, EU officials discussed reforming the bloc to have different levels of membership, with the core Eurozone nations at the center and the UK as part of a looser network of “associate members” who would still have to pay into the EU’s funds and be under the jurisdiction of its court. These talks have motivated “remoaners,” who are now calling for Britain to go back into the political union it painfully dragged itself out of in 2020.
On the face of it, that’s now what most people want; EU fans have been heavily promoting a small poll that shows 59% of people now think it was a mistake to leave. However, what they gloss over is that all countries that join the EU now have to commit to replacing their own currency with the Euro — and when British people are told that, only 26% of them still want to rejoin.
Meanwhile, Starmer himself, despite having campaigned from 2016 to 2019 for the government to either ignore the vote or hold a second one to overturn it, now says he wants to rewrite the trade deal the UK negotiated with Brussels on its way out — but he insists Britain won’t be joining the EU itself, its single market or its customs union. Brexiteers might be disappointed that their government hasn’t taken advantage of the UK’s regained freedom yet, but it seems unlikely the country will actually rejoin.
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