Why is Brexit not discussed in the UK election

Boris Johnson's Conservatives considerably won Britain's 2019 election thanks to their promise to "get Brexit done." This promise was repeated over and over again until it became boring.

However, after four and a half years, the topic that was so important to UK politics for so long has yet to come up much in this summer's campaign.

Keir Starmer's Labour Party is 20 percentage points ahead in polls, but he only talks a little about Britain's relationship with the EU. He had to lie in a recent interview that he was not afraid to talk about it.

Labour does not want the UK's standing outside of the EU to change much, but Starmer said he was set on building a "closer, better" relationship with the 27-country group and accused Johnson of making "a botched deal" because he was in a hurry to leave.

"If you are so far ahead, whatever you are doing is working, so why change it?" asked Anand Menon, the think tank UK director in a Changing Europe.

"People are nervous because Starmer is seen as easy to attack because she used to support staying in the EU and is now against Brexit, and Labour needs to keep voters who want to leave the EU."

There needed to be a clear plan for how to carry out the Brexit vote, which happened in June 2016 and resulted in a tight 52% vote in favor of leaving the EU. That caused much political trouble, not ending until Johnson took over the Conservatives and won the 2019 election.

Before the vote, Starmer, the party's Brexit spokesman at the time, pushed for Labour to back a second vote, saying, "We would campaign for remain." However, the subject has been moved to the side because Johnson's election was transparent, and Labour needs to win back Conservative votes among Brexit backers.

Menon calls the silence "Brexit omertà," and it goes even further. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, also does not want to discuss Brexit. Parts of the reason for this is that fewer and fewer Britons think leaving the EU is a good idea, even though there have been many stories about problems with putting the plan into action.

This week, an Italian driver said that border officials in Kent made him wait 55 hours while 10 of the plants in his truck full of plants were inspected because they were thought to contain dangerous pests. Full controls on plant and animal imports after Brexit did not start at the end of April. It is only one of numerous modifications that have affected businesses functioning internationally.

On the other hand, the Conservatives do not have many examples of how Brexit has gone well. When we asked people last year to name a specific benefit of Brexit, only about 10% could do so for the country and only about 20% for themselves and their families. Joe Twyman, head of the research company Deltapoll, said,

Sunak backed Brexit in 2016 but has never been very excited about it. For example, when running to be the leader of the Conservatives in 2022, he made a pretty dull movie about it. A man was tearing a piece of paper that said "EU legislation" and made a weak promise to "keep Brexit safe."

James Starkie, a member of the leading pro-Brexit Leave group and adviser to three Conservative cabinet ministers, said, "Sunak did not get into politics to talk about Brexit or immigration, and she never really bought into either." "Many Conservative policies on both issues have not worked out, and Labour does not want to stress either. It feels like both parties have agreed not to talk about either issue."

Nigel Farage, a right-wing radical actively trying to get votes for his party, makes things more difficult for the Conservatives. He is one of the leaders who want to talk about Brexit but only criticize the government's record. Sunak's party had failed to lead to a sharp drop in immigration, Farage said at the start of his campaign last week. He called it "a massive betrayal of the 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit."

However, people in the UK are more interested in the economy, which they call the "cost of living crisis." During the last four and a half years of Conservative rule, inflation has skyrocketed, reaching 11% in 2022, at levels not seen since the early 1980s. At the same time, mortgage rates went through the roof during Johnson's disastrous 49-day premiership when she announced a series of tax cuts that would not be paid for.

Economists say that the UK's GDP, or the total size of its economy, has dropped by about 2% to 3% since it left the EU. However, politicians want to refrain from talking about this link because re-entering the EU would almost certainly require another controversial vote.

The Liberal Democrats, the UK's third party and usually the most pro-European, do not say much about Brexit. This week, the party released its policy platform, which promised to put more money into the UK's health service. This differs from 2019, when the party pledged to undo the Brexit vote. Ultimately, the Lib Dems did badly and won only 11 of the 650 places in parliament.

Labor should be braver about its plans to move closer to the EU since it is already far ahead.

Tom Baldwin, who used to be the party's head of media and fought against Brexit, pointed to a less public promise made by David Lammy, the party's foreign affairs spokesman. He wants to talk to the EU about a "security pact." This could include "economic security and climate security," but what that would mean in real life is unclear.

However, the most crucial reason for the Brexit silence is that voters are tired of the topic. Johnson won the election in 2019 partly because people were tired of hearing about an issue that had been in the news for three years, especially since the election held after the Brexit vote in 2017 did not give any party a majority in parliament.

Menon said that when people are asked about Brexit in focus groups, "all they do is yawn and roll their eyes."