Just when we thought we had heard the last of it… (Picture: Getty)
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Iron your mini Union Jack and get practicing your robot dance moves to Abba – we’re heading back to the good old days of Brexit.
It turns out three and a half years wasn’t enough time to spend debating the details of the UK’s relationship with the European Union.
These constitutional questions have been in hibernation for a while since we officially left the bloc in January 2020,but in recent weeks we’ve seen them starting to stir once again.
All that culminated in a House of Commons vote this week,in which MPs backed joining a customs union with the EU.
Yeah,that genuinely happened on Tuesday afternoon. But we’ll revisit the vote in a bit,because context is important.
The current chat about potentially rejoining the customs union appears to have whipped up by a line in a post-Budget article in the Observer,which said Sir Keir Starmer’s economic adviser Minouche Shafik had suggested the idea as an effective way to generate growth.
(As a quick reminder for those who have successfully suppressed the Brexit years: joining the EU Customs Union would mean all barriers to trade are removed,while other restrictions like movement would remain.)
Ed Davey has been pushing the government over trade with the EU in recent weeks. (Picture: Parliament TV)
Adding fuel to the fire,Deputy PM David Lammy heavily implied he backed a customs union in an interview with the News Agents podcast last week.
He said it was ‘self-evident’ that countries like Turkiye benefitted economically from having that deal with the EU,but added it was ‘not currently our policy’. You’ll note the word ‘currently’ standing out like a scoop of ice cream on your Christmas dinner.
All this gave the pro-EU Liberal Democrats an idea – they could force a vote in Parliament,giving Labour MPs who like the idea of a customs union the chance to put their view on record.
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And it’s unlikely to happen any time soon,since the 2024 Labour manifesto promises ‘no return to the single market,the customs union,or freedom of movement’.
But further into the future? Who knows.
A widely shared YouGov poll from this week suggests around 63% of Brits would back rejoining the EU in a new referendum,after taking into account new voters and those who have died since 2016.
So for those of you nostalgic for the interminable politics of the late 2010s,fear not – more Brexit might just be on the horizon.
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