Six years after Britain left the European Union, the promise that we would “take back control” rings hollow. The truth is painful: Brexit has weakened our country. It has diminished our prosperity, our standing, and our confidence. What was sold as liberation has instead become a slow estrangement from our closest allies and from the European identity that once helped define us as an open, confident nation.
For Liberal Democrats, the damage goes deeper than trade or economics. Brexit was a rejection of something essential: our belief that Britain’s strength lies in cooperation and shared purpose. It narrowed our horizons and encouraged a politics of resentment and blame. For millions who see themselves as both British and European, it felt like being written out of the story of our own nation.
The Damage Done
Brexit has left marks on every part of our national life. Small firms struggle with new border checks that slow exports and drain their budgets. Farmers face endless forms and higher costs. Musicians and creative workers have lost easy access to European tours. Investment has slumped, and the “global trade revolution” we were told to expect has produced little reward.
Yet the damage is not only economic. It is emotional, generational, and cultural. For young people, the Continent is no longer a place of effortless study, work, and discovery. The loss of Erasmus+ was not a policy detail but a breaking of connection. Freedom of movement, once taken for granted, is now a memory, and many Britons are only beginning to understand what that freedom meant. Families that once moved easily between London and Lisbon or Glasgow and Athens now feel distance where closeness used to be.
Even the tone of our politics has suffered. Instead of looking outward with confidence, the national conversation has shrunken, more about barriers than bridges. Britain was meant to be freer after Brexit, yet too often it feels smaller.
And Europe too has felt our absence. When Britain stepped back, the European project lost a voice that spoke for democracy, free trade, and internationalism. At the very moment when authoritarians challenge Europe’s borders and global crises multiply, our decision to turn away weakened all of us.
The Promise of Reconnection
Rejoining the European Union would not be a nostalgic step backward. It would be an act of renewal. In a century dominated by global blocs and shared threats, true sovereignty is found in partnership, not in isolation.
For Britain, re-entry would bring back frictionless trade, restore investor confidence, and return us to the table where decisions are made about the rules that shape our economy and environment. It would reopen the doors of collaboration to scientists, artists, and students, and it would remind the world that Britain is once again ready to lead through cooperation and friendship.
For the European Union, welcoming Britain back would be more than a symbolic reunion. It would make Europe stronger on defence, energy security, and climate policy. A liberal, globally minded United Kingdom within the Union would help anchor the whole continent in democracy, stability, and human rights.
Why It Must Be Our Cause
Every party has a defining belief. For Reform UK, it is immigration. For Labour, it is welfare and the NHS. For the SNP, it is independence. For the Liberal Democrats, it has always been Europe. We were the pro-European voice when few others would be. We led the campaign for a People’s Vote when it seemed impossible. Our dedication to internationalism is not a slogan but a principle woven through our history and our values.
That is why we cannot afford to treat Europe as just one issue among many. If we do not lead the way back toward Europe, others will. Labour may drift there, the Greens may step forward, and we risk losing the very ground that has long defined us. Owning this cause is not optional, it is our purpose.
But leadership also means honesty. Britain will not rejoin overnight. The path back must be steady, practical, and rooted in trust. We must rebuild cooperation step by step, from trade and research to cultural and diplomatic ties. Most of all, we must remind citizens why Europe matters, not as a bureaucratic structure, but as a community that protects our freedoms, prosperity, and shared hopes.
A Shared Liberal Future
Brexit was a rupture, not a destiny. The wounds are deep, but they can heal. As the costs of isolation grow and public opinion shifts, Britain faces a new choice: whether to remain withdrawn or to rejoin the family of nations that mirrors our values.
When that moment comes, the Liberal Democrats must be ready with a roadmap that combines realism and vision, and with the courage to lead the argument for partnership over separation.
Reuniting with the European Union would not erase the past decade, but it would allow both sides to look forward again. It would bring energy, optimism, and purpose back to Britain and reaffirm a truth that runs through the heart of our movement, that Britain belongs in Europe, and Europe belongs in Britain.
* Gareth McAleer is a Liberal Democrat member in Didcot and Wantage, and is active in the Liberal Democrat European Group.
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18 Comments
“As the costs of isolation grow and public opinion shifts..”
Precisely. The democratic way to go about rejoining the EU is through persuading a majority of our fellow citizens that this is the choice they should make in a future referendum. And yes, though I voted Remain and will vote to rejoin, I have no respect for any argument that an easier route to rejoin is to simply wait until a majority of parliamentarians are pro-rejoin and then push through legislation to rejoin even if the majority of the public remains opposed. Anyone willing to countenance such an undemocratic move should have no place in a Party that proudly has ‘Democrat’ in its name.
As long as any major political party in the UK is against rejoining – it will never happen. As Starmer said, not in his lifetime. When we were in it – it was never that popular, EU election turnouts were dismal. The more deprived the area the more irrelevant it was. Fom & Schengen good luck with that.
I spy strangers.
Still waiting for you to confirm or deny that you are supporter of Reform Mr Levene.
Is that the new requirement, Craig? I thought that 52% was good enough?
But setting aside the argument of someone who can’t point to anything that Brexit has achieved that improved the life of our people, I agree with Gareth that the argument needs to be won piece by piece, so that we can go to the public confident that we can win any future referendum.
Part of that is establishing what any deal looks like in advance. Having the discussions with our European sister parties about how they picture such a deal is part of that.
I sincerely hope that we don’t have another Euro Referendum. Such devices always put too much power in the hands of whoever framed the question. Far better to campaign actoss parties to the point when parliament is in effect a rubber stamp when the “popular will” is very clear. In a representative democracy there have to be better ways of decision making than the distortions of boiling everything down to a binary question in the ne of so-called democracy.
You’d be lucky to get 52% with Schengen and fom on the table – as for the euro – good luck with that.
“But setting aside the argument of someone who can’t point to anything that Brexit has achieved that improved the life of our people”
Having spoke to so many Brexit voters in areas that voted heavily to leave their main argument was what has the EU done for my community – looking around it was always going to be difficult to counter that..The status quo is never a good sell.
I think the article underestimates the damage Brexit did. If you took someone from 2015 & showed them Britain now the thing that would shock them most is the scale of The Far-Right revival, larger now than its been for 90 Years, it was Brexit that began their return to prominence.
We can begin the fightback by making it clear that we want to Rejoin as soon as possible.
So, Craig, even the “people I’ve spoken to” can’t offer anything about Brexit that has made their life better, and nor can you.
And yet, a majority of the British public, as polled repeatedly, are of the view that rejoining would improve their lives. And yes, that’s without knowing the details. But on the other hand, they don’t appear to like the status quo much, do they?
We often hear the claim there are no benefits to Brexit.
However, the main benefit so far is that we are no longer obliged to follow the EU rules on austerity spending which are contained in the so-called “Stability and Growth Pact”.
It’s highly contradictory to be both against the EU’s austerity policies and in favour of the the EU itself.
But many do attempt to perform contortions to try to justify the unjustifiable. True believers, in all causes, usually do their best to come up with some kind of justification rather test out their own assumptions.
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The attempt by the Cameron and Osborne govt to comply with EU regulations caused the austerity in the first place. All economies needed a fiscal stimulus after the 2008 GFC. Vince Cable has since admitted that the level of EU imposed austerity made the difference in the 2016 referendum.
This austerity led to high levels of unemployment in EU countries. Naturally workers will look to move to find work when they need it. We shouldn’t blame them for that but it did lead to social tensions which were exploited by far right groups .
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN01960/SN01960.pdf
Mark Valladares is, of course, correct about the latest polling on EU membership.
You Gov poll (23 Feb), “was the UK right or wrong to leave the EU” :
30% right, 58% wrong, 12% Don’t know.
So, Craig, even the “people I’ve spoken to” can’t offer anything about Brexit that has made their life better, and nor can you…That’s my point Mark – neither did EU membership, who could blame them for voting to leave. As Ed said rejoining is for the birds. There is no appetite for a referendum. Our trade deals would be ripped up , we’d have to accept fom and Schengen probably – with a commitment to the euro at some point. All a tough sell. There is a Rejoin the EU party – it’s lost its deposit at every by-election.
Surely the most important point is that there’s no way the European Union would accept Britain back as a member unless they were satisfied that there was absolutely zero chance of another ‘Leave’ movement growing up and them having to go through the upheaval of another Brexit twenty or thirty years down the line?
I don’t think there’s any way the European Union would even agree to accept Britain as a candidate member country until there had been a long-term, sustained shift of public opinion firmly in favour of membership, such that Euroscepticism was evidenced to have become, in Britain, as fringe an opinion as it in in somewhere like France or the Republic of Ireland.
Which means, I reckon, at least three general elections at which both the winning party, and the main opposition party, has rejoining in their manifesto.
Otherwise the danger of Britain rejoining, only to want to leave again the next time a Euroscpetic party gets elected, and the massive hassles that would cause across the Channel, would be too great for them to countenance.
The irony in the Lib Dems’ EU stance is stark, many now echo the same right-wing media excuses they once ridiculed “not the right time,” “too divisive” anything to avoid defending rejoining.
Since ditching the clear “Rejoin” message, we’ve hemorrhaged members down roughly 50% from peak levels.
And let’s be honest: our 2024 seat surge came despite 177,000 fewer votes than in 2019, powered by anti-Tory protest rather than our fence sitting policies.
The tragedy isn’t just our historically low polling it’s hearing these defeatist lines from the very top of a party that used to champion Europe’s cause without apology. We can either sort this out now or do so when we are picking ourselves up and dusting ourselves down after a drumming in 2029 !
Exactly my point Dav. It’s fanciful thinking from the starry eyed feds. Looking at the growth figures across the eurozone it’s hardly blazing a trail. It’s just needs repeating time and again that membership was never that popular dismal EU election turnouts the norm – for many it was irrelevant.
One silver lining of Trump’s intervening in the Gulf (and his other antics) is that the geopolitical folly of Brexit /reliance on fossil fuels is being exposed. There is an opportunity to move public opinion in favour of net zero/energy security and closer relations with the European states.
The case for renewable energy is unanswerable in my view. Politically and practically the case for joining the EU is hard (see the comments of Craig Levene for example – or nip over to Conservative Home to get a flavour) while Reform exist and the Conservative party remain so opposed even though public opinion is moving our way.
Joining the single market /membership of a customs union seems much more achievable. That is what we should be arguing for.
Right now I think the question of joining the EU is for another day.
Reading Craig’s anti-EU comments from the right, I’m always disappointed that many on the left, even if they take a generally pro-EU stance, are somewhat reluctant to make any kind of criticism towards the EU. Many of the arguments made such as Craig’s:
” Looking at the growth figures across the eurozone it’s hardly blazing a trail….”
is fair comment from anyone in any part of the political spectrum.
I was particularly embarrassed that the EU’s political left gave virtually no support to Greece when its government clashed with the EU ruling class in 2015. If it had been different I would have voted Remain.
It is possible to be both critical of something and want to Remain a part of it. We do that all the time with the UK. Why should it be different with the EU?
The Times today (16 march) has a leader calling for the UK to have closer ties with the EU. This could be a significant moment.
The debate about rejoining has got ambushed by one about strategy, tactics and politics. It is challenging to be passionate about getting closer to Europe without a strong and defined vision. While the electorate is unhappy about embracing rejoining this muddling along is probably all that can be achieved. At some point strong pro-eu politicians will nail their sail to the mast and trust that the electorate will follow however reluctantly at first.