Boris Johnson has no intention of uniting the country over Brexit – division suits him

The prime minister wants to keep the issue that won him the last election alive until the next one, and so misrepresents Keir Starmer’s position as wanting to take the UK back into the EU

Boris Johnson marked the fifth anniversary of the Brexit referendum today by saying: “As we recover from this pandemic, we will seize the true potential of our regained sovereignty to unite and level up our whole United Kingdom.”

His actions tell a different story. He has no intention of uniting the country over Brexit; it suits his narrow party interest to prolong the divisions rather than heal the wounds of the 2016 referendum, which would be in the national interest.

Some Tories justify this on the grounds that Labour elected an arch Remainer leader in Keir Starmer, the architect of the party’s support for a Final Say referendum. The reality is that Johnson smells Labour weakness. He wants to keep the issue that won him the last election alive until the next one, and so shamelessly misrepresents Starmer’s position as wanting to take the UK back into the EU.

Knowing that Brexit will have faded by the next election, Johnson has built on top of his 2019 foundations a divisive culture war, hoping this will entrench Tory support in the “red wall”. As one minister told me: “If there is a strategy, it’s about locking in the kind of voter who was attracted by Ukip.”

Starmer has a dilemma. The opposition has a duty to expose the holes in Johnson’s threadbare trade deal with the EU, which have been eclipsed by the coronavirus pandemic. He is under pressure from Labour’s overwhelmingly pro-Remain membership to promise closer links with the EU. But Starmer’s strategy is “don’t mention the war”; he knows there is no route back to power without regaining the red wall. He is right to resist the internal demands. There’s little public appetite for looking back or reopening the EU issue. Starmer should promise to make Johnson’s deal work better, without handing the Tories more ammunition for the next election.

Johnson has also breathed life into the Brexit issue by picking fights with the EU, judging that Brussels-bashing still plays well in the red wall. He and his Brexit minister, David Frost, fake surprise and regret that the UK-EU relationship has deteriorated, the naughty boys in the playground protesting innocence and telling teacher they didn’t start the fight. They complain that Brussels resorts too quickly to threats – still dining out on a foolish move to suspend vaccine exports from Ireland to Northern Ireland that lasted three hours – while they threaten to suspend all or part of the Northern Ireland protocol. “It’s as if the UK hasn’t left us, it’s all about point-scoring for the domestic audience,” groans one EU source.

Johnson and Frost also feign surprise at the way EU is implementing protocol. Some UK officials claim Johnson didn’t understand what he signed up to in 2019. I doubt it. It’s worth remembering what a backbencher called Boris Johnson told the 2018 DUP conference when he railed against Theresa May’s backstop, which would have kept the UK in the EU customs union. “We are witnessing the birth of a new country called UK-NI. UK-NI is no longer exclusively ruled by London or Stormont – it is in large part to be ruled by Brussels. We would be damaging the fabric of the Union with regulatory checks and even customs controls between GB and NI... it is self-evidently not taking back control of our laws.”

Johnson was right; the only problem is that it was he who made his nightmarish scenario come true. One minister admitted Johnson’s strategy on the protocol was “to hope it would be alright on the night”. It was never going to be.

Brexit broke the mould of British politics by loosening the traditional party loyalties of many voters. While this enabled Johnson to capture the red wall, his flagship policy might yet return to haunt him. The people of Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU. Brexit has given the Scottish independence movement a big booster shot. The immediate crisis over the Northern Ireland protocol will likely be postponed but it will be back; the history books might well mark Brexit as a crucial milestone on the road to a united Ireland.

By prolonging the Brexit war, Johnson risks alienating some natural Tory supporters and the younger voters his party will need. Last month’s local elections in England and last week’s Chesham and Amersham by-election showed that some Remain voters recoil from Johnson’s Brexit-based populism. In 2019, the Tories won the backing of 20 per cent of 2016 Remainers; the 10 seats they lost had all voted Remain in 2016. A study of Britain’s Brexit tribes published today by Ipsos MORI suggests that just as many people sit in the middle of the Brexit battleground as in the polarised Leave and Remain camps.

If Johnson really wants “one nation conservatism”, as he claims, he should find a national message that resonates in both the red wall and the Tories’ blue wall in the south, and stop refighting a Brexit war that should have ended five years ago.