Brexit has been a disaster – it’s time the guilty men felt some shame

All over the world, people are dying in conflicts that reflect the most unattractive of human motivations: the hunger for power, greed and racialism. They used to be characteristic of the lives of our forebears on these islands and on the continent itself.

Then the scale of human slaughter grew ever larger, culminating in the Second World War. I am old enough to remember the bombers, night after night over Swansea, and then the delirious crowds that celebrated the war’s conclusion.

But I remember, too, the profound sense of determination that it must never happen again. That is why the European Union exists. My generation caught the vision behind Winston Churchill's words. We must create a kind of United States of Europe. He said “we”, not “they”.

Today, 27 countries are bound together by treaties that establish the rule of law within shared institutions administered by citizens from all of the nation-states. The rights of citizens are protected by the European Court of Human Rights, where the law is administered by lawyers from those states.

The European market is one of the world’s largest and inevitably its rules and regulations are often agreed by compromise to reflect an acceptable set of conditions. This ensures that competition is fair and gives confidence to companies faced with the decision to invest.

Our preeminent position as a victor and partner with the Americans in 1945 gave rise to initial hesitancy, but by the turn of the century, our relationship was clear.

Brexit, a decade ago, was a self-imposed disaster for this country. It erected barriers between our manufacturing and service industries and our largest market. It divided us in a range of cultural, artistic, environmental and academic policies. It left our diplomats waiting in the corridors to learn what decisions were being taken with profound consequences for us.

It was clear at the time what was driving public opinion. The world suffered an economic collapse in 2008, within the resultant pressure on people’s living standards. The demand for change was easily linked to the cost of European membership and the regulations of the single market, while the pressure on jobs was blamed on the flow of immigrants and the exploitation of racial prejudice.

At its most extreme is the language of Nigel Farage and the Reform Party, which conjures up memories of Oswald Mosley in the 1930s and Enoch Powell in the 1960s. He seems mesmerised by the language of Donald Trump, and seeks to act as his puppet in Britain.

The Brexit referendum led to a government determined to exploit the new arrangements and secure the benefits that they had claimed would follow. Years later, public opinion has come to realise the bankruptcy of those claims.

The mood has changed and reflects a majority in favour of rejoining. The present government is making hesitant approaches to move in that direction but the fear of the extreme right is acting like a ball and chain on our political classes.

I had the privilege of supporting or serving in the governments that first told the British people the truth about our post-imperial position. It required courage and determination. Never has our national interest required these characteristic British qualities more than it does today.

We should reclaim our traditional role as a major European nation. We should do so in the interests of growing generations of our young people. We should do it in our interests as a nation-state with limited resources. As a European partner, we can compete with the world’s largest economies.

As Britain’s leading pollster Professor John Curtice said in an article in the Independent, voters see Brexit as a “big disappointment” and “not worth it”.

In my view that is an understatement. As the tenth anniversary of our exit from the European Union approaches, it is telling that virtually none of those who led the campaign to leave the EU have hailed it as a success.

Instead, they offer a variety of feeble excuses as to why all their bold promises of more jobs, more trade, more power for Britain have all proved to be a con.

Naturally, they blame everyone but themselves.

Fair-minded, intelligent, serious people can see the truth regardless of political affiliations. Also writing in The Independent, Labour former foreign secretary David Miliband described Brexit as an act of “sabotage”, claiming it costs Britain up to £30 billion annually, which he likened to a “punishing Brexit tax every day”.

Those responsible for inflicting this punishment, as Miliband so aptly terms it, say little or nothing, walking away from their heinous political crime. They derided warnings by experts that it would make us worse off, calling it “Project Fear”. But those warnings turned out to be true. Now “Project Fear” has become Project Here.

Where are the paeans of praise to Brexit from Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Nigel Farage, Dominic Cummings and their accomplices for the land of milk and honey they told us it would deliver? Never have so few done so much damage to so many with so little ability to execute what they lied about: this was no panacea.

They don’t normally hold back from giving their opinions. The reason is obvious, I would suggest: their scandalously false prospectus has turned to dust and ashes. They are the guilty men and should hang their heads in shame.

Lord Heseltine was a cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher, and deputy prime minister under John Major

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