Brexit wars return to seaside battlefield as Britain feels seven-year itch

Debate rages on in pro-Leave seaside town of Clacton as EU loyalists hope tide is turning

Brexit campaigner-in-chief Nigel Farage holds a rally in Clacton-on-Sea in 2019. Getty

Seven years on from Britain's EU referendum, the Brexit wars have not gone away – least of all in the seaside town of Clacton.

Voters in the the symbolic Brexit-backing stronghold have been under an anthropological microscope ever since the UK Independence Party pulled off its first ever by-election victory there in 2014.

Now, after the BBC chose an all-Clacton audience to speak for Brexiteers in an anniversary TV debate, they are a test case for whether Britain is coming to regret its referendum vote in 2016.

There is no doubt that some people in Clacton, where hot summer weather brought scores of elderly visitors to the seafront this week, still feel strongly about Brexit.

Robert Hodgkins, who works at a corner shop till in the town, said he stood by Clacton's view that “we don’t want to be part of Europe”.

“We didn’t join it properly. We just sat on the fence so we got all the punishment and none of the benefits,” he told The National of Britain’s 47-year EU membership.

At the same time, there is genuine hope in the pro-EU camp that some of its perceived enemies are starting to change their minds.

It is rare these days to find a poll that celebrates Britain’s EU exit.

A YouGov survey this month showed 56 per cent believe Brexit was the wrong move, with 69 per cent saying the government had handled it badly.

The external shocks of Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine muddied analytical waters around the impact of Brexit.

But some blame it for everything from airport queues and labour shortages to weak growth and the UK’s stubbornly high inflation rate of 8.7 per cent. Former Bank of England chief Mark Carney is among those linking Brexit to high prices.

The UK has taken cautious steps to clear the air with Europe, with King Charles III dispatched to mend bridges with Germany, and a plan to purge the last remnants of EU law has been watered down.

Some Leavers admit the new era has not lived up to their hopes. Former Brexit Party politician Christina Jordan said "our Brexit opportunities have been squandered" even as she defended the 2016 vote.

Alastair Campbell, the former Labour spin doctor and an ardent Remainer on the panel taking Leave voters’ questions in Clacton, speculated that some of them might feel “let down”.

Elderly, mostly white and economically adrift, Clacton was a symbol of the “left behind” narrative around the EU vote, and the town was frequently courted in person by another Brexit ringleader, Nigel Farage.

Social media has been awash with unkind Remainer comments about its people since the special edition of Question Time was announced.

John Hyde, who grew up in Clacton and now works in the City of London for the Law Society Gazette, said negative stereotypes did not tell the “full story” of underinvestment and economic decline in his hometown.

More than half the area’s population is over 50, according to the most recent census, and Mr Hyde says younger people who might have been more pro-EU were driven away by a lack of job opportunities.

“This town was cynically identified as a Petri dish for testing out the kind of rhetoric that won the referendum,” said Mr Hyde.

He said people who might be angered by Brexiteers on the BBC programme should try to “understand the hardship and exploitation they have been through”.

Clacton Pier in the east of England is popular with elderly visitors. The National

Recent studies that branded Clacton the UK’s “worst seaside town” and a hotbed of antisocial behaviour have done nothing to improve its reputation in the media.

Some of this is unfair. Clacton, for all its traditionalist, Union Jack-waving image, has given homes to Ukrainian refugees and has a wind farm off its coast. The seafront has pleasant flower gardens and is not necessarily the most hardline part of the county.

One shopkeeper in Clacton said many locals felt disillusioned by the treatment of Brexiteer ex-prime minister Boris Johnson, who was forced out in a party coup last year and quit parliament this month.

But “no one has changed their mind that I know of,” he said of people in Clacton, which sits in a local authority where almost 70 per cent of voters backed Brexit in 2016.

“Things have moved on because the person who was trying to get Brexit done has been stabbed in the back.”

BBC presenter Fiona Bruce said the audience in Clacton included Leave voters “some of whom are happy with that decisions, some of whom may have changed their mind – others may be uncertain”.

Boris Johnson profited from public exhaustion over Brexit to win a 2019 general election but was forced from power last year. AP

One view expressed in Clacton town centre was that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had reneged on the promise to tear up EU law but that Labour leader Keir Starmer would “take us back in”.

In fact, Mr Starmer has ruled out rejoining the EU amid a reluctance from Labour to reopen the bitter Brexit debate that paralysed British politics from 2016 to 2019.

The Liberal Democrats are the only major UK-wide party that explicitly supports rejoining. The aim of Scotland's ruling nationalists is to become an independent nation and then re-enter the EU.

But Mr Sunak, too, has sought to draw a line under Brexit by striking a new deal on Northern Ireland and adopting a friendlier tone towards EU capitals than Mr Johnson often did.

Although there was some minority enthusiasm for Brexit among hedge fund managers, City of London chiefs have similarly called for banks to “engage productively” with partners in the EU.

Two economists, Jun Du and Oleksandr Shepotylo, wrote in a study last week that the UK appeared to have missed out on a recovery in global trade after the pandemic.

The latest figures make “clear that the post-Brexit export challenges have persisted beyond the initial teething period”, they wrote for the think tank UK in a Changing Europe.

“The reality faced by the UK is that it is harder to trade with the EU.”