Is Rejoin happening anytime soon?

Ten years ago this day I remember cycling to my then village polling station. It wasn’t quite as hot as today, but it was 4pm, and I regretted not wearing lighter clothes. The polling station, housed in a sort of new-build log cabin, was an oven. The poll clerks, hunched over their tables, were red faced.

And they were astounded at what they were seeing — turnout was going to be huge. Polling station staff were texting polling station staff. One of the older clerks said it looked to be something from a byegone election. 1992, even.

And it was. A huge turnout on what so many thought rightly was a consequential vote, or more pertinently one in which you could finally hit “them” where it hurt. Take Back Control was the order of the day.

I remember the night (complete with massive calzone) in front of the computer on a call with friends and running the Britain Elects tweets. Gibraltar first. Emphatic. But Newcastle-upon-Tyne was the first real indicator. It was too close for comfort for the Remain campaign. On a high turnout Leave was still competitive. Northern yes. But university city. Assumptions, per the rise of Ukip, that the radical right was a loud minority and that their messaging may only win on poor engagement from the electors, was being blown out of the water. People’s priors were dying in the dust.

And then came the scale in Sunderland. Then Broxbourne. And Hartlepool. These were already modelled for Leave. But not by that much. (A cheat sheet I had to hand at the time expected Sunderland to go Leave by 55 per cent. It went Leave by 61.)

Throughout the night Remain writers and activists sought to reassure themselves. Of course these areas will vote Leave. And London and Scotland aren’t in yet. London and Scotland can save us. Turnout was huge in Islington today. If turnout in Hartlepool is like that, then surely turnout in London will be gargantuan.

London did turn out. It turned out in huge numbers. But not, I note, by as much as the Midlands. Whereas the East Midlands and East of England turned out at a rate of 74 per cent, London’s was only 70.

It was not to be.

Every Scottish borough went Remain, though the Moray and Buchan coast went for In by only the slimmest of margins, underappreciated I think to this day.

It was when Birmingham went for Brexit that I thought Leave had cemented it. Diverse and not quite starved of investment, the country’s largest metropolitan borough had bucked the trend and voted, by the slimmest of margins, for Leave.

David Dimbleby followed soon enough, declaring to the world at 4am that the modellers were sure of their projections, and that the result was thus: “we’re Out.”

And I remember the world waking up. Raw reactions. Impulse reactions. Scottish friends who had voted No in 2014 suddenly declaring themselves for indy. They wanted nothing to do with a vote — a country — they now saw as regressive and reactionary. (And the polls in Scotland reflected it, at least for a few weeks.) Old school mates (living in an area that had voted resoundingly for Leave) announcing on Facebook they were about to mass delete anyone who had backed Brexit (”I don’t know a single person who supports this.”) And then the vox-pops — that one Leave voter who had regretted his decision, amplified by any and all as emblomatic of the Leave psyche: that they (Leavers) don’t know what they’ve done.

Will Britain return? Certainly not this decade. A closer relationship is all but guaranteed. Even Leave voters in the plurality believe in closer ties. But prompt for conditions of Single Currency membership and Schengen and support drifts.

Rejoin is a surface-level sentiment. What’s happening right-now is two-fold. The first is that “Rejoin” is the preference of the median Briton. In part owing to an overwhelming belief that Brexit has been turned out badly for Britain. But in part also to the fact those that voted Leave are thoroughly apathetic about it. Loudest voice wins. And right now it’s only those hankering for Rejoin who have set out their stall.

For the foreseeable, Rejoin won’t be a hot potato election issue beyond the column inches of the New European for reasons I’ve written about in the New Statesman:

“Rejoin may be the preference of the median Briton. But it’s not the priority of the median Briton. An effective campaign understands when to go in hard on its comfort issues. Rejoin is a comfort issue. This is no time for comfort issues.”

Sans any improvement in the cost of living, Rejoin won’t be an election issue anytime soon. Voters do not see it as a priority right now. Voters are not making the link campaigners want them to make between EU membership and the cost of living. Simply put, there is no space for it. And until that changes, no leader, be it Burnham or Streeting, will make the next election about it.