Reader Warning: This post contains swearing right from the outset and discussions about a reality that you may find uncomfortable if you voted for Brexit. Reader discretion is advised.
When it comes to the subject of Brexit, I sometimes feel like we’ve been living in a particularly hellish version of a Marvellian multiverse. There is a group of people who have been looking at what has been happening to the United Kingdom, hair in hands, and going “what the actual fuck have we done to ourselves?”
I am, very firmly, in this group of people - and if you’re subscribed to this newsletter, then it is very safe to assume that you are in there with me.
At least once a week, I find myself being presented with one of the panoply of fuck-ups from Brexit, and just losing a bit more faith in humanity - a panoply that includes, but is not limited to:
Trade friction that has left our long-term productivity lower by 4%.
Additional policies and regulations that we have to align with to trade with the EU anyway, while having no say whatsoever in creating these.
A massive reduction in rights we took for granted - like the right to live in another country without having to go through visa processes that have more in common with a proctological exam than they do mere bureaucracy.
Those previously mentioned trade barriers that have cost consumers billions upon billions of pounds.
A trade border in our own fucking country between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
This is a list that could go on and on and on, and if I had to write it all out, I would probably end up with a stroke from the rapid spikes in blood pressure that would happen in between bulletpoints.
The other part of the Multiverse that was spawned into being on the 31st of January 2020, however, have a completely different take.
To their credit, they have moved onto realising what an incredible pile of dog-shit Brexit is, and it took them only about four or so years to do - the problem being that their conclusions seem to be somewhat… creative.
The most prevalent excuse, of course, is that we “did not get the Brexit we voted for.”
Which is pretty convenient if you ask me - especially when considering that ill-fated referendum had literally two choices:
Leave.
Or remain.
That was it. In this reworking of history though, we get told, time and time again, that it was us lefties that somehow sabotaged things. That it was the civil service. That we had not, in fact, left the EU at all.
According to Farage, Boris “Brexiteer” Johnson, was not, in fact, a true believer. That the government he led, which at the time had people like Michael “Have-your-Cake-and-Eat-It” Gove, Dominic “I’m-not-a-bully-you’re-weak” Raab and Nadine “Give-us-a-Sauvignon-Blanc-there-love” Dorries - all of whom were some of the biggest proponents of Brexit imaginable was not, in fact, a Pro-Brexit government.
We have been told by the Haunted Hatstand, Jacob Rees-Mogg that Brexit is a grand success, but that it is, in fact, the French that are sabotaging our trips to Europe. That all we have to do is give it another half a century or so and things will turn out okay. And that’s fine for him when we consider that he’ll likely live forever as a member of the undead community, but the rest of us have a pretty set time on this mortal damned coil.
Labour, for their part, have been little better. Keir Starmer’s red lines have done nothing but stymie us in actually trying to fundamentally improve our relationship with our nearest neighbours, and it has, until very recently, felt like there must be a morning announcement to every member of the Labour MP cohort of 2024 that says “if you have to mention Brexit, in any way or form, just tell them we must make it work.”
Which, again, is great if you’re talking about using a pen instead of a pencil, or have to take the train instead of driving - but on one of the issues that we have in this country that has been draining the soul and all finances out of every single person living here, just doesn’t really cut it.
We are of course now seeing some change.
As part of his Labour Party speech at the 2026 conference, newly minted PM Andy Burnham did admit that Brexit might, in fact, be a bit shit. That there’s a conversation to be had around it. That there will be an options appraisal of some sort ahead of the next election.
This is great to hear - truly. But forgive me for not getting my hopes up quite yet when we still have a media class that believes that distancing ourselves from our nearest neighbour is somehow still the answer to the issues of low growth and fiscal problems we’ve been facing. That there is a whole swathe of people out there with influence trying to convince us that instead of working with the 27 countries on our doorstep, we should be looking west to the United States under the leadership of Mango Mussolini for our fortunes.
To look to a country that is currently alienating every single one of its allies, has threatened to invade and annex not one, but two countries in the past two years. A country that has gone on a tariff binge that has caused untold damage to the global economy, and then topped it off with starting a war in the Middle East that just multiplied the pain that we’re all feeling.
And if you think there is any sort of rationale or method to the madness?
I’m sorry, but there is none. As an example of the blatant lengths that the pro-US Brexit denying influencers will go to, I give you Tom Harwood, the US Political Editor for GB News, who this week gave us this weapons-grade level dive into gaslighting:
And yes, you did read that right - somewhere very recently Britain (by which I presume he must mean England, Scotland and Wales and fuck Northern Ireland as usual), managed to detach itself from continental Europe and move due west by several thousand miles.
Tom did, in a subsequent post note that he meant culturally - however even that is a helluva stretch. The only real thing we share with the people on the other side of the damned Atlantic is a language, and at times, I’m not even sure of that.
There are so many questions in my mind as to just how much self-delusion you must be living under that you can state something like this with a straight face.
I imagine that he has no choice but to do it though. How else do you keep the multiverse of “we never actually left the EU” going? How do you protect all those true believers for those times when reality intervenes, like when they pay that much more for their groceries or where their own businesses struggle.
“It’s the French!”
“It’s the lefties!”
“It’s just another half a century!”
“It’s the fact that we’re not actually even European and are, in reality, American!”
No matter how hard we try to fix our relationship with the EU, we are going to get absolutely nowhere until our two multiverses conjoin again into the same timeline - and we won’t be able to do that until we address the constant flow of misinformation, obfuscation, lies and gaslighting that are coming from a very large proportion of our political, media and social media ecosystems.
That in turn means that we need to ask a great deal more of the people that we trust to run this country. When a politician blames the French, press them on exactly how. When they promise moonshine and roses, interrogate them on exactly how we’ll get these.
And when the same people who sold us this mess turn up with yet another answer for the last broken promise, stop handing the damned microphone to them until they have explained that they know exactly how much they lied, how much damage they have caused and give us a good reason to not completely exile them from public life.
But demanding better answers is just part of it. Misinformation is rife. It permeates every single part of our lives now, and it won’t get better until it starts being addressed at a true national and international level. I can type until my paws go blue to dispel, explain and mythbust, but unless there is actual legislative action and, above all, funding, to combat the lies we’re fed on a near constant basis, absolutely nothing is going to change.
We simply cannot keep spending our lives and livelihoods financing a fantasy whose authors get to rewrite reality every time something goes wrong.
Brexit was voted for by millions of deeply patriotic people. But it was a fundamentally treasonable project. (The hard brexit that the projectors were determined to force on us, and have).
The nearest geographical and cultural part of North America to here is Canada, which is, of course, trying to get as close to the EU as possible.
There are people who have done well from brexshit I mean Brexit, some of them fiercely fought for Brexit then promptly moved their businesses away from Britain Mr Dyson for example, others played the shorting the pound game and made a mint, they also extolled the benefits of Brexit. While the average man and woman of the UK woke up to extortionate post prices to get anything sent to the UK from the EU, the fisherman were promised so much by a certain someone and then soon realised it was another lie. Yes there certainly are people who have done very well from the country cutting it’s financial throat, I’d love to see a journalist investigate list their names and post Brexit income.