YOU know it’s a thing when people start inventing new words for it. Bregret. Bremorse. Brepentence. Since at least 2016, some voters have been having second thoughts about their support for Brexit and the numbers are overwhelming now. Bregret is real.
You can see the reality of it in the polls. According to YouGov, only 32% of people UK-wide now say it was right to vote to leave the EU with 56% saying it was wrong – a gap of 24 points, the biggest it’s ever been. We should put those numbers on the side of a bus.
The question it all raises is what kind of effect Bregret will have on politics and the answer is probably not much for now. Some in Labour are pushing for a commitment to rejoin the EU and it’s likely to happen at some point, particularly when support for rejoining among twentysomethings is around 80%. But not yet.
A more immediate question is what sort of effect Brexit and Bregret are having on support for Scottish independence and it’s complicated. Scottish nationalists thought the Leave vote would be a turning point for them and although it’s had some effect, it hasn’t been the turbo boost they hoped for. The recent rise in Yes support is more likely to be because of anger at the Supreme Court ruling on referendums – anger that will fade.
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The particular dynamics of Scottish politics also limit the effect Bregret is likely to have. For a start, Leavers were always in a minority in Scotland, which means the consequences of some of them having second thoughts won’t be as significant as they would be UK-wide.
We should remember as well – and this often gets lost – that some of the Leave vote in Scotland is made up of Scottish nationalists and in a way I understand it. Not only is their position more logical than the SNP position of leave one union (the UK) but join another (the EU), Scottish leavers are also pretty thrawn. I asked Leaver Jim Sillars about this and he insisted the Brexit problems over Northern Ireland were because of Brussels’ hostility towards a non-EU Britain. In other words, the effect of Bregret in Scotland may not be large.
On the other side of the argument, Brexit may actually be hardening support for some No voters. The former Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson – the opposite of Jim Sillars in every way I can think of – once told me Brexit had made her a more determined unionist. Leaving the EU, she said, was a demonstration of why breaking up was hard to do and also a prediction of what would happen with Scottish independence. Fair point.
It's also one that could get trickier for the Yes side. Talk about the Scottish border in any future Yes campaign and people will think about the border chaos at Dover. Talk about Scottish business and people will think about the damage to businesses in Northern Ireland. The big difference between 2014 and any future Scottish referendum is that we now know, by looking at the news and our bank accounts, what leaving a union can actually mean.
And yet, strategists for the SNP know some of the tactics used by Leave in 2016 could work for Yes and some of it has been happening already. The SNP’s document making the case for a second referendum in 2020 (remember that?) said there would be a smooth transition to an independent Scotland. “Smooth transition”. “Open borders”. “The easiest trade deal in history”. We remember all of that from the Brexiteers. The point is though: it worked. Fact-lite, emotion-heavy, they won.
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The only hope in the Scottish context is that Scots will see through it all, but imagine they don’t. Imagine another referendum happens and the Yes side wins. Scotland will “take back control” but face the same multi-crises of Brexit: a former partner that’ll make life as hard as possible, new barriers to trading with the biggest market on our doorstep, “open” borders that aren’t really open, and all the rest of it. We could then end up feeling the Scottish version of Bregret or Bremorse: Scremorse. Not the most beautiful word I know, but in years to come it could be a thing. It could catch on. I hope not.
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