Minister says EU 'world away' from what people want as Burnham and Streeting hint at rejoining
https://www.itv.com/news/2026-05-17/nandy-says-eu-world-away-from-what-people-want-as-burnham-hints-at-rejoining
3 points · 2 comments · view on lemmy.world
2 Comments
tal@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 105d
I don't think that it's likely realistic from a policy standpoint, but my understanding from past reading is that a major reason for post-Brexit Con/Lab party support fragmentation is that Brexit became a new political issue and people restructured identities around it. Because Leave/Remain didn't align all that well with existing party lines, it caused disintegration as new fissures emerged, so making "Leave" or "Remain" a partisan issue might eliminate that fragmentation.
My understanding from a policy standpoint is that, among other issues, a major problem for a near-term Rejoin is that there's only majority British support for Rejoin if the UK gets its opt-outs back, and that it's expected that it would be quite unlikely for the EU to make an offer containing those opt-outs (like, EU members that got told "no, you can't have any opt-outs yourself, because we're done with offering those" would need to go and unanimously grant them to the UK after not being permitted them themselves, which would be quite difficult to sell politically in those countries).
mannycalavera@feddit.uk · 1 pts · 105d
Regarding opt outs: would EEA membership be a happy middle ground for people? Most people just want to use the EU EEA passport lines and they'll be happy. A smaller subset will actually make use of freedom of movement. EEA might solve a lot of these problems?