Because it happened. Why expend any effort rejoining when we could just deal with our issues directly?? Build council houses. Build publicly owned renewables, rail and infrastructure. Bring water back into public ownership and reverse privatisation in out NHS. EU membership fixes nothing.

I think you’re wrong, indeed it would seem to be the remain/rejoin side of the argument the overstates the benefits of EU membership and has given EU membership primacy over policies like public ownership and tackling neoliberalism that would have far bigger benefits than EU membership.

The major benefit of Brexit is the greater ability to deviate from neoliberal economic policy free of competition rules, spending caps and our own currency. Ironically we gave the chance at a better economic settlement up by backing Mandelson’s 2nd ref policy in 2019.

Firstly the EU puts many barriers in the way of public ownership, from spending rules to competition and tendering rules to courts companies can use to frustrate nationalisation. But the bigger question is why expend energy trying to rejoin when we could just fix things directly.

Alistair King

alistairking.bsky.social

04 October 2025 08:36

… but I’m not sure if that latter point comes across in the publicity of the book. Anyway, good luck with it.