Why a left-wing Brexit might have also been a disaster for the UK

His thumping election victory was put down the Tories winning previously long-term Labour-held constituencies in northern England – the so-called Red Wall seats.

But as Marx and Engels remarked in their Communist Manifesto of 1848: “All that is solid melts into air.”

With the defenestration of two Tory administrations in 2022 and the limping on of the current third one, it has not taken long for the portmanteau of Bregret – Brexit regret – to become a more commonly used term than Brexit – British exit – itself. This is not because of Remoaners – Remainers who moan – or even Rejoiners – those wishing to return to the European Union.

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It is because many who voted Leave now believe it was the wrong decision based upon how Brexit has turned out. Housing, wages, employment, the NHS, social services – the list is endless – have not improved as was pledged by assorted Brexiteers such as Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage when they said “taking back control” was what was needed.

The slogan was naively thought by many Brexit supporters to mean economics and politics in Britain would become fairer and more democratic. But that control has passed on those who already were in control, so there’s been no upending of the various elites that dominate society for their own benefit.

Some on the radical left supported Brexit as a way to break from a European Union that was imposing neoliberalism upon public services in Britain. This meant privatisation, marketisation, limits on government spending, and compulsory competitive tendering.

Among them in Scotland were the likes of former SNP MP Jim Sillars (below) and the RMT union. This became known as the Lexit position – advocating a left-wing exit from the EU. But was a Lexit ever on the cards? Any voices supporting it were more than drowned out by others on the left and right of the political spectrum.

Many on the left supported remaining in the European Union as the least-worst option, especially as a way to stop the further rise of xenophobia and racism, often embodied in the so-called Little Englander mentality.

Lexiteers ended up making a major strategic miscalculation in supporting Brexit in the 2016 referendum. This was because the whole drive to Brexit was created by reactionary political forces in the right of the Tory Party and among Ukip. These forces wanted to leave the European Union and further deregulate the economy, allowing private capital to operate with even fewer constraints.

Lexiteers ended up supporting this trajectory even if their numbers were small and their wish was not to support reactionaries.

All this casts an interesting question over Britain and Brexit: could there ever have been a Lexit from the European Union? The simple answer is yes. But the context, process and outcomes are far less simple.

First, it would have taken many decades of previous campaigning work from the 1990s onwards. This would have had to gain significant traction with masses of people, where those of the left, both inside and outside of Labour, as well as in the trade union movement would have been able to convince people that the EU was not their saviour.

This would have been a difficult task given many still believed the Social Chapter – concerning employment rights – of the single European market was influential in protecting their rights.

Second, such campaigners would have had to also convincingly show that the forces of neoliberalism had captured the European Union and were using it to force through privatisation and the like.

Third, and this is the crux of the matter, a left-wing Labour government of a type led by the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell would need to be in office, implementing a radical programme of social and economic change – as Labour’s 2017 and 2019 General Election manifestos indicated the party would do.

When the European Union then told this left-wing Labour government that it was breaking European Union laws by renationalising utilities, re-regulating markets, insisting upon union recognition for any tenders awarded to private-sector companies for public-sector work and so on, this left-wing Labour government would have had to say: “We will not back down, and we will continue with our work.”

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Faced with continued EU membership only being allowed on the condition of reversing these policies, a mass popular campaign to defend these changes could have been organised to say to the EU: either undo your rampant neoliberalism or expel us.

If the EU did not back down, this is the only scenario in which it could be envisaged that a mass, popular and effective Lexit could take place. If the EU did back down, a service would have also been done for left-wing policies in other European Union countries.

Either way, Scotland and Britain could have moved towards having an economy and society far more based on need and not profit. This is then not to envisage a Greek-type scenario where Greece could have left the European Union in the mid-2010s to avoid some of the pain inflicted upon its people by the austerity programmes imposed by the European Central Bank and European Commission. Leaving at such a point after incurring such debt is in no way a position of strength from which to emerge.

Many will say this is pie-in-the-sky politics, a leftist fantasy. In some ways, they are right because it only goes to show just how huge the scale of the task at hand is. Re-entering the European Union on its terms would be dangerous. But becoming the epitome of a deregulated “Singapore-on-the-Thames” would be equally dreadful. A third way is necessary even if very difficult to achieve.

Professor Gregor Gall is editor of A New Scotland: Building an Equal, Fair and Sustainable Society (Pluto Press, 2022, priced £14.99)