Most people reading this who are familiar with Britain’s political culture and history will recognise that these challenges in reaching ‘a springboard to rejoin’ (and then rejoining) look eye-wateringly huge. This is why some commentators predict we will never rejoin, or say it is probably three or four decades away. I am one of these people.
What I would suggest is that UK politics leans into Brexit to some extent and takes time to tackle our domestic arrangements and shortcomings. In short, we need to ‘get our own house in order’ before applying to join again. There is a fair amount to reform, including the central-local government relationship and the First-Past-The-Post voting system. The latter may even lead to more European politics.
So by all means, make Rejoin an ultimate objective but it needs a heavy dose of realism, lots of time/patience, and dare I say it, some trade-offs along the journey.
Any less and I fear that Rejoiners are simply running towards a knock-out punch - the punch of a Cummings-esque Stay Out campaign that will say hourly that ‘we will have to join the euro’ and ‘we will lose all control over immigration again’. We are not ready for that and will lose.
Rejoin needs some serious realism. And after ten years, I still don’t see it.
