Five years on, we finally know what Brexit means: a worse deal for everyone

Five years ago today, in the early hours, Britain discovered what it had done – and what had been done to it by the liars, charlatans and rogues who mis-sold Brexit as “taking back control”. The wound is as fresh as ever. Breaking apart political parties and reversing erstwhile red or blue wall seats is a minor matter, but Brexit’s explosive division of the country by social class, geography and a deep sense of personal identity is a lasting injury.

Few have changed their mind: though polls put remain (or return) ahead by a nose, no one wants to be put through that hell again. Brexit is done for the foreseeable future, though a government thriving on national disunity strives to keep it alive with infantile culture wars and “anti-woke” phoney patriotism. Polls give the Conservatives a 14-point lead, as they head into next week’s Batley and Spen byelection. No surprise, for what party in power could dream of a better boast than this: the vaccines are genuinely bestowing the gift of staying alive on every single citizen. And Britain is out ahead of other European countries: pollsters tell me voters sincerely (though unjustly) believe that had we remained in the EU, we couldn’t have had our own programme. Despite EU vaccinators catching up, and the UK having more people dead and more debt than they do, Covid is still a convenient cover.

Yet barely a day goes by without further proofs of Brexit’s damage, some of it now forcing its way into the Tory press. This week, pigeon fanciers are barred from having their birds participate in cross-Channel races by new rules. Less niche is the alarming 17% rise in food prices: Ian Wright, of the Food and Drink Federation, tells me Brexit costs and obstructions have sent commodity prices soaring, and those are now working their way on to the shelves. The unexpected £2bn fall in UK food and drink exports to the EU in just the first quarter of this year is, Wright tells me, “no teething problem, but very real and sustained. Smaller firms have stopped exporting”, overwhelmed by the new obstacles. The government may turn a permanent blind eye to import checks starting next week: “But that soon gets dangerous. When no one checks, who knows if imported food is what it says on the tin, and not, say, horse meat?”

Financial services are migrating to the EU: by March, Brexit had already driven away an estimated £1.3 tn of assets and jobs. By April, more than 440 finance firms had fled, taking 10% of the UK’s financial sector assets, worth a staggering £900bn, while foreign investment subsides.

Boris Johnson’s hastily botched EU trade deal left out finance, responsible for 80% of our exports by value. It nearly stalled over fishing, a sector with just 12,000 jobs, yet even that industry is wrecked – and the Express says so: “‘They’ve sold us down the f*****g river!’ British fishermen hit out on Brexit anniversary.” Wherever you look, expect the same story. The assault on the arts, music and broadcasting is lethal for a sector where Britain excels. This week, the music industry has been begging for an end to the deadlock over EU touring, vital for its viability. Another thunderbolt struck this week with a report showing the EU is likely to enforce its rules limiting non-EU content in its broadcasting: nothing new here, the EU is always strict on cultural protection against the US. That strips millions from financing for drama and other programmes, on top of BBC cuts and the possible privatisation of Channel 4.

Look at almost any industry and you find too much damage done to fit in this space: vanishing EU workers, no EU arrest warrant or crime data sharing, the loss of Erasmus, EU visitors handcuffed at our airports, and EU citizens here in peril of being failed by the Home Office, in a manner redolent of the Windrush scandal – a poisonous message that will deter EU tourism.

As the Brexiters’ reckless unreadiness unfolds, the government emerges devoid of basic policy. Is it for protecting our farmers, manufacturers, steel or wind turbine makers, or is it for wild free trade, with the cheapest food and products imported, regardless of home industries? The Australia deal sold out farmers, with 60 times more beef imported next year for a puny 0.02% GDP increase over 15 years.

Yesterday the sausages were kicked down the road, but this will only delay the Northern Ireland protocol crisis beyond the tense marching season. There’s an easy answer to food export dilemmas if a pig-headed prime minister hadn’t appointed the mulish Lord Frost to block it: only ideology stops them agreeing to EU food standards, as we have agreed to EU employment and environment norms. That should alarm most voters who may not relish an inalienable right to lower food quality.

It’s high time Labour broke its silence on these calamities, and it should start right there with food standards. It would be an easy win. Had the Brexiters lost by a whisker five years ago, do you think they would have quietly capitulated, any more than the SNP did after it lost in 2014? The omerta of Labour remainers has done them no favours, letting these Brexit car crashes pile up unopposed. True, Brexit is electoral dynamite that Johnson plans to exploit for ever, but that’s why Labour needs to make a stand now. There’s no reopening the referendum, it should just target the failed trade deal. Polls show the public knows how bad it is, Strathclyde university’s Prof John Curtice found that even among leave voters, only one in three thinks it a good deal.

Emily Thornberry, shadowing on trade, sees that wide-open goal. “Be grown-up and pragmatic,” she says. “We need a good deal. We can make the best of Brexit, while they’ve made the worst of it.” So far Covid shrouds the effects, driving the EU trade deal’s disasters from most front pages. But on everything from farming, manufacturing and finance to entertainment and food the government is vulnerable and culpable, if Labour would shake off its paralysing Brexit-phobia.

• Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist