Next June 23, how will you mark Brexit’s decade of decay?

Finally, after Roger Daltrey and Right Said Fred delight the crowds, there is a stunning break with tradition. For the first time since VE Day, His Majesty appears on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with a politician – the man who took on the establishment and won; the man whose vision has been so gloriously vindicated over the last golden decade of soaring GDP and sweet, sweet sovereignty.

As sweating bobbies try to hold back the flag-waving, grateful hordes, a chant goes up: “We want Nigel! We want Nigel! We want Nigel!”

Back in June 2016, that must have been how Nigel Farage dreamed that the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum would pass. Yet after a decade of disappointment and disaster, it will very likely pass with no commemorations at all. Outside of a few deluded diehards, there will be no celebrations, rather a sense of deep national embarrassment.

In part that is because so many of those who were persuaded to Vote Leave – whether by lies, or bigotry or sheer despair at their lot in life – have been regretting their decision for years now. Some 18% changed their mind long ago, another 11% are no longer sure they did the right thing and as Peter Kellner has recently calculated, another 3.2 million of the 2016 Leavers have sadly died. 

The brief, “once in a generation” majority that took us out of the EU is no longer there and hasn’t been for years. 

That helps explain why Labour is quietly and gently pushing the message that Brexit has been a disaster – albeit far too meekly and far too slowly. Even Kemi Badenoch is gracious enough to admit it caused “a shock” to the economy, one that she compared to Covid.

In other words, Brexit has been another generational blow, just with less fraud and corruption attached. Oh, and they found a vaccine for Covid so it did not go on doing lasting damage. We’re still lacking one of those for Brexit. 

Badenoch must know that so far Brexit has been unremittingly awful, and it is showing every sign of getting worse. As you are probably sick of hearing, the latest research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research by the excellent Nicholas Bloom et al (no relation), has found “Brexit had reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8%, with the impact accumulating gradually over time.”  

To put those figures in context, the UK is struggling to increase defence spending to 2.5 % of GDP. Without Brexit we could double defence spending and have room for tax cuts too. 

Rachel Reeves knows this full well, which is why she was blaming Brexit before the Budget for our loss of productivity. David Lammy, the justice secretary, has given the game away by repeatedly dodging a question on whether the UK should rejoin the customs union. 

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“That’s not currently where we are,” he conceded before adding: “But you can see countries like Turkey with a customs union seemingly benefiting and seeing growth in their economy”.

The Brexit promises made ten years ago look increasingly tatty, like the drenched and frayed union jacks now hanging from suburban lamp posts.  

Remember that we had the EU over a barrel, that we held all the cards, that they needed us more than they needed them, and so we would be able to walk away with all the advantages of membership and none of the costs?

A lie that was exposed first by David Cameron ambling off into the sunset humming happily to himself because he knew how badly the UK was about to be shafted. Only to be replaced by Theresa May, whose red lines condemned us all to the worst possible Brexit deal. A negotiating ploy of such complete incompetence that showing the rest of the table your poker hand at the start of the game looks like the work of a genius. 

The worst possible Brexit deal was ultimately signed by the worst possible prime minister, Boris Johnson. He was a proponent of the idea that post-Brexit, America would welcome us with open arms and Britain could ally itself with the dynamic US economy rather than being “shackled to a corpse.”

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Well, the Atlanticist Brexiteers are not the first losers to be suckered by Trump and they won’t be the last. First came tariffs and now his neo-facistic new National Security Strategy lays bare the contempt he has for European democracies (including Brexit Britain). Trump doesn’t want us as a trading partner but as a slave state that he can bend to his will. Ironic, isn’t it?

And what of the freedom to be “Singapore on Thames”? The one clung to desperately by Farage and the discredited likes of Liz Truss?

Put simply, it could never happen. We had to promise the EU a level playing field to get even the terrible deal signed by Johnson and Brexit halfwit Lord Frost. 

Undercutting the EU by slashing and burning regulations would not just make our goods and services unsaleable on the continent, the rest of the deal would be suspended too. Becoming Singapore-on-Thames would be suicidal; we’d be bankrupt before we’d even had a chance to string someone up for dropping their chewing gum.

Rather than reaching the sunlit uplands, we can all see what ten years in the wilderness has done to our diplomatic and political heft in the world. Instead of regaining our seat at the top table, we are lucky to be invited. Billy No Mates has to ask to join the gang each and every time, it is a humiliation that will continue for decades to come, unless something changes.

Which may well be on the cards. In December, a token Lib Dem motion on rejoining a customs union with the EU sneaked a Commons win. But the UK still lacks the ladder and the leader to get out of the deep mess we find ourselves in. A new PM unencumbered by years in opposition trying to support the least worst Brexit may be able to break with the past, admit the truth and take the country back into a much closer relationship with the EU.

This would cost money and take large amounts of currently invisible political will and courage, but the government’s own analysis shows just joining the CU would boost growth by 2.2%, which is almost two years’ worth of economic growth at current trends. 

It may still be a dream after 10 years of nightmares, but it is a far better and more realistic dream than any Nigel Farage is ever likely to have.