Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne has recanted his previous support for Brexit in a devastating article. A passionate Brexiter in 2016, Oborne suggests there are many other Leave voters who feel the same way but haven’t wanted to speak out.
His 4,000 word article for Open Democracy is uncompromising: “Brexit has paralysed the system. It has turned Britain into a laughing stock. And it is certain to make us poorer and to lead to lower incomes and lost jobs.”
Not only is it right for Brexiters to change their minds and at the very least support a delay to Brexit, “it’s past time we did. We need to acknowledge, too, that we will never be forgiven if and when Brexit goes wrong”.
In the most powerful section of his piece, Oborne takes apart the economic case for Brexit. “Investment-led growth has collapsed,” he says and lists some of the company decisions that have seen jobs lost since Brexit at Nissan, Sony, Honda and a host of financial businesses. He notes how even British backers of the Leave campaign, like James Dyson and Jim Ratcliffe, have announced they are moving their assets abroad.
He shoots down the claim that the UK would get better trade deals outside the EU and points out that the easy EU trade deal promised in 2016 has never materialised and that few of the 40 trade agreements that Liam Fox vowed to sign by March 2019 have been agreed.
Three things are particularly important about Oborne’s article.
First, that it should be such a wide ranging and frankly devastating critique of the key arguments used by Brexit supporters. Such intellectual underpinning as lay beneath the argument for Brexit has been demolished, brick by brick, in Oborne’s analysis.
Secondly, it matters because Oborne is a leading conservative (and Conservative) thinker and a writer. Love him or hate him, people who read his column in the Daily Mail take him seriously and his opinions often influence their own. Those who listen to him include many rightwing Conservative MPs.
Thirdly, that he should be so critical of Brexit-supporting MPs. It has been obvious for some time that the tactics used by Brexit supporters have been strikingly inept. Having unexpectedly won in 2016, they have pursued the implementation of that result with a mixture of arrogance and incompetence. Despite this, the Tory press has been reluctant to criticise Brexiter MPs.
Of course Oborne is not the first Leave voter from 2016 to have changed his mind. The Remainer Now movement has been giving a voice since 2017 to the thousands who have changed their minds. Not only has staying in the EU been leading the opinion polls since the spring of last year, in recent months that lead has become decisive as a significant number of former Leave voters have switched to Remain. That trend has been particularly striking amongst women voters, with 56% of them now wanting to stay.
It is a brave for any of us to admit that we have got a big decision wrong; to do so publicly takes particular courage. That is one of the many reasons why we should put the decision back to the people so that in the quiet of the polling booth, away from all sound and fury, people are free to change their minds and stop the disaster of Brexit.