Ian Dunt is the author of books including How Westminster Works … and Why It Doesn’t and Centrism: The Story of an Idea.
Brexit was the future once. Not so long ago, in a way that feels fanciful now, it stood for a dashing vision of possibilities.
“It’s 24 June, 2025,” the Conservative peer Daniel Hannan wrote in 2016, two days before the EU referendum, lost in a dream-like reverie about his appointment with destiny. He proceeded to make a series of questionable predictions. “Britain is marking its annual Independence Day celebration. As the fireworks stream through the summer sky, still not quite dark, we wonder why it took us so long to leave. The years that followed the 2016 referendum didn’t just reinvigorate our economy, our democracy and our liberty. They improved relations with our neighbours.”
This was just the most evocative of the predictions made by Leave’s figureheads. David Davis wrote that “within minutes of a vote for Brexit, the CEOs of Mercedes, BMW, VW and Audi will be knocking down Chancellor Merkel’s door demanding that there be no barriers to German access to the British market”. Boris Johnson insisted that “British people will still be able to go and work in the EU; to live; to travel; to study; to buy homes and to settle down”. Michael Gove said that “the day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards”. Liam Fox assured us that a trade deal with Europe would be “one of the easiest in human history”.
The crucial quality of this genre of Brexiter fantasy was excitement. The words associated with this period all had a sense of swagger to them, an invocation of combat and the ocean, with that tell-tale hint of Rule Britannia imperialism. The no-retreat-no-surrender Brexit hardliners in parliament called themselves the ‘Spartans’. Free-market Brexiteers dreamed of establishing ‘Singapore-on-Thames’. Even the term Brexiteer, rather than Brexiter, suggested pirate-like adventurism, sails pulled tight against the wind, driving forward through the waves towards our national destiny. And then, of course, reality set in, as it was always going to.
