Mark Yale: Our attitude on Brexit needs to change

Mark Yale is a local Conservative campaigner.

The Conservative Party calling Labour’s EU-UK deal a betrayal and promising to reverse it at the first opportunity puts us at odds with the wider electorate and makes a return to government less likely.

Recent YouGov polling showed that a majority (55 per cent) of the British electorate think Brexit was wrong and when given different options in regards to Britain’s relationship with the EU, 66 per cent supported the option which was for a closer relationship.

So, the current approach we have adopted in response to the deal means we are going against the tide of public opinion and risks making us appear out of touch.

I am not advocating that we stand by and applaud the deal or suggesting we rejoin the EU. But if we want to win the keys to number 10 and get back into government, we must recognise that the public’s opinion on Brexit has changed and consequently as a party we must adapt and change as well.

We did not lose last year’s general election because the deal we got from the EU was not hardline enough or because we were not enough like Reform. We lost because we failed to deliver on people’s priorities, lost credibility and the public wanted a change. It could be argued these reasons came about because we spent a large amount of political capital and too much time arguing with each other over Brexit.

We must learn that we will never out Brexit Mr Farage and Reform. Every time we came up with a policy to appeal to the more hardline Brexit supporters to stop them voting Reform, Farage disavowed it and shifted the goal posts.

Farage will carry on doing this and we will never win the Brexit argument against him. Therefore, appearing tough on Brexit is not going to help win back voters from Reform as they are wedded to the party. This is born out in YouGov polling data which shows of those that voted Reform at last year’s general election over 90 per cent would vote Reform if there was another election (the highest loyalty of any party).

All we will achieve is to further lose our appeal with the moderate Brexit supporting and remain supporting voters who abandoned us and went to Labour and the Lib Dems without winning back voters lost to Reform.

Evidence of this and that a hardline approach to Brexit is not a winning strategy is found in the success of the proudly pro-European Liberal Democrat’s. In the 2024 general election they gained 63 seats, of these 31 were in constituencies that voted for Brexit.

This shows that people have moved on from Brexit and are looking to parties that they feel will deliver on the other priorities they now consider more important than Brexit and we need to recognise this and follow suit.

This is supported by polling data from both YouGov and Opinium which show a very low number (13 per cent YouGov, 7 per cent Opinium) of voters consider Brexit to be amongst the most important issue the country faces. The state of the UK’s health service and economy are the two biggest issues highlighted by those polls.

What should we do?

In regards to Labour’s EU deal we should look to build a nuanced argument about the short comings of it without ripping it to shreds and denouncing it outright. The latter option would only drag us in the opposite direction to the majority of the public’s current attitude.

There are areas we could justifiably criticise without calling for the complete scrapping of the deal and appearing to be zealots. For example, Labour has agreed to follow EU agriculture rules but did not get us a seat at the rule making table. Or the fact we still do not have guaranteed access for our world leading defence firms to the new EU defence fund.

This approach in my opinion would enable us to show that we remain pro Brexit whilst also showing we are in touch with the public who want a closer relationship with the EU.

But to remain relevant we must also focus on the non-Brexit issues which the public are highlighting as being important to them. Here Labour is giving us plenty of ammunition.

Unemployment is increasing largely thanks to raising national insurance and this will likely only get worse when they introduce their workers’ rights bill. The number of patients on waiting lists for NHS treatment went back up in March. Levels of poverty are predicted to rise including in the elderly after Labour took away the winter fuel allowance from most pensioners. They are also destroying our education policy which raised standards and improved students’ education.

Brexit is no longer the salient issue it once was and we should avoid looking obsessed by it. Instead, we should focus on holding Labour to account on the key issues and highlighting their failures in these areas whilst building a credible and deliverable alternative set of policies that the public can see the benefits of.