The right-wing media remain trapped in a 2016 time warp, still wildly waving Union Jacks and making snide digs at Brussels, oblivious to how far the country has moved on. For the right-wing commentariat, the old tunes are always the best. Updating the playlist has to be resisted at all costs.
It’s incredible just how badly the right-wing media continues to misread the national mood. Their relentless demonisation of migrants, for example, isn’t just toxic, it’s increasingly out of step with public opinion, where there is growing sympathy towards refugees and migrants. And now Brexit, which let’s be honest, by any reasonable measure, Britain has become an anti-Brexit nation. But the right-wing media remain trapped in a 2016 time warp, still wildly waving Union Jacks and making snide digs at Brussels, oblivious to how far the country has moved on. For the right-wing commentariat, the old tunes are always the best. Updating the playlist has to be resisted at all costs.
The latest YouGov poll shows most Britons (62%) think Brexit has been more of a failure than a success and that it was wrong to vote to leave the EU (56%). In addition, most Britons (53%) say they would support Britain rejoining the EU, and 66% say they would support the UK having a closer relationship than it does now – including 52% of Leave voters and 54% of those who backed Reform UK in 2024.
Beyond the polling, the demographics are equally as stark.
Analysis for the New European in 2023 showed that since the 2016 referendum, more than four million mostly Leave voters had died, while around five million young people, overwhelmingly pro-Remain, had reached voting age.
Yet a dwindling core of die-hard Brexiteers refuse to let go. They cling to the fading myth that Brexit is still worth defending, even though its damage is impossible to deny.
This week, their misguided indignation reached boiling point over Keir Starmer’s tentative steps toward repairing relations with the EU, our largest trading partner.
The reaction from the right-wing press was predictably hysterical. The headlines began to fly on Sunday, with the term ‘Surrender Summit’ doing the rounds, in an absurd attempt to frame practical diplomacy as betrayal.
“Brexit? What Brexit?” cried the Mail on Sunday.
“Britain could be forced to hand hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to Brussels every year as part of a new EU deal being negotiated at a ‘Surrender Summit’ in London tomorrow,” the article preached.
Writing in the Sun on Sunday, longstanding Eurosceptic and prominent Vote Leave figure Priti Patel declared: “Labour’s great Brexit betrayal has begun – Sir Keir Starmer is selling Britain out in his EU surrender summit.”
The shadow foreign secretary warned that Starmer and his “band of EU-obsessed cabinet ministers” were preparing to “formerly place the United Kingdom on a pathway back under the control of the EU” betraying what she called the “historic referendum result of nine years ago.”
“But I know that Sun readers will not be fooled by Keir Starmer’s spin and Labour’s lies,” she continued, confident in the tabloid’s power to mobilise Brexit sentiment, even as public opinion continues to drift in the opposite direction.
But the trophy for the most unhinged commentary perhaps went to Daniel Hannan, one of the original architects of the Leave campaign, having been described by the Guardian as “the man who brought you Brexit.”
Writing in the Telegraph, Hannan managed to surpass even his own typical hyperbole, with the crass claim: “Britain will not be so much the EU biatch as its gimp.” Such a charming turn of phrase in a desperate effort to be hip. An earlier generation of Telegraph columnists such as Peregrine Worsthorne must be turning in their graves at where their successors have taken the art of political commentary.
The day after the summit and the outrage of the right-wing media machine roared up a gear.
“Day the Brexit dream died” splashed the Mail’s front page, accompanied by commentary from Richard Littlejohn, a columnist synonymous with reactionary provocation.
Before the 2016 referendum, Littlejohn suggested the Irish should be denied a vote, one of many incendiary positions in a career that has included authoring books like To Hell in a Handcart, described by the author and former literary editor of the Guardian, Stephen Moss, as “racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic trash.”
Yet it was Littlejohn’s comment, “Done up like a kipper doesn’t even begin to cover the PM’s sell-out” that the Mail chose to elevate to its front page.
As was the comment by Britain’s right-wing media stalwart Andrew Neil, who said, “the rush to throw our lot with the stagnant EU is unfathomable.”
A former editor of the Sunday Times, founding chairman of GB News, long-time chairman of the Spectator, and now a regular voice in the Daily Mail, Neil’s influence across the conservative press is all but unrivalled. As for where he personally stood on Brexit? He once tweeted that not even his wife knew how he voted, a conveniently ambiguous position for someone who has spent years platforming Brexit cheerleaders while claiming journalistic neutrality.
The Telegraph meanwhile, a paper that claims to have “stayed faithful to the Brexit ideal to reflect and push forward the views of the silent majority,” as it boasted in a self-congratulatory piece entitled The Inside Story of the Telegraph and Brexit, delivered one of the most ludicrous headlines of the day. Beneath a photo of Starmer greeting the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen at Lancaster House, it thundered: “Kiss goodbye to Brexit.”
The irony of the headline wasn’t lost on readers. “It’s rare for the Telegraph to have such an optimistic headline,” wrote Sheffield for Europe.
Fishing fanatical
And why the obsession with fishing?
“Furious fishermen slam ‘raw deal’ that gives EU trawlers access to UK waters for 12 years – as Starmer denies being ‘stitched up like a kipper’,” cried the Daily Mail.
Rather than Britain’s economic sovereignty hinging on haddock and hake, in reality, Starmer has simply extended the existing fisheries agreement with the EU until 2038, hardly a betrayal.
On the contrary, the continuation of the deal allows fish caught in UK waters to be sold into the EU without burdensome veterinary checks, removing a key post-Brexit trade barrier. No wonder the shellfish fishermen and salmon farmers were quietly celebrating, not that you would have known it from the press coverage.
Additionally, the PM announced a £360 million fund to support fishing communities and modernise the British fishing fleet, an investment that, in any other context, might be seen as a rare win.
Still, critics pounced. The agreement was branded a “horror show.”
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch led the charge. “12 years access to British waters is three times longer than the government wanted. We’re becoming a rule-taker from Brussels once again,” she said on X, a post parroted by the Express in a piece headlined: ‘Ruletaker for Brussels!’ Kemi Badenoch skewers Keir Starmer for caving into EU.’
Providing some much-needed sense amid the deluded racket, Richard Kilpatrick, head of campaigns at the European Movement UK, welcomed the stability the longer timeframe brings.
“This will open a serious food deal with the EU, which is of huge benefit to all of us – including the fishing industry,” he told the Independent.
And let’s not forget, fishing contributes just 0.03% to the UK’s GDP. Sigh, the disproportionate political and media focus on the sector isn’t about economics, it has become the default symbol for Brexiteer sovereignty, patriotism, and grievance. The right clearly hopes to conjure up images of brave trawlermen in their rain battered sou-westers being betrayed by Starmer’s government. I’m not sure this one will get much traction though.
Beyond the right-wing clamour, which offers no feasible alternatives to what they’re opposing, the UK-EU ‘reset’ of course offers clear benefits and progress in areas that pro-Europeans have long campaigned for.
Among the highlights was the announcement of a reciprocal youth mobility scheme and a pledge to rejoin the Erasmus+ programme, offering new opportunities for young people. A new partnership on defence will strengthen joint support for Ukraine. Barriers to importing and exporting food and plants from the EU are being removed, not to mention, the likely speeding up of passport queues by allowing UK travellers to join the EU line, a move even the Expressgrudgingly admitted: “… could be good news for holidaymakers fed up of long queues.”
But more than queues, food, fishing, youth mobility, or defence, perhaps the most symbolic shift came with the government’s own acknowledgement of Brexit’s economic damage, something successive government have denied. The UK has suffered a 21% drop in exports and a 7% drop in imports, ministers finally conceded.
The charade is finally over.
But the question remains: does this ‘reset’ go far enough to undo the damage of Brexit?
Dr Mike Galsworthy, chair of the European Movement UK, is cautiously optimistic. “We are taking concrete steps towards Europe. And there is a sense of momentum, because this week is just the beginning,” he said.
One thing’s for sure; the right-wing press won’t disappoint when it comes to churning out hyperbolic headlines and completely misinterpreting the public mood, and there’ll be some fun to be had in reporting them.
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch
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