'Brexiteers must get back on pitch before next election or risk bottling it,' ex-Vote Leave chief says

Brexiteers must get back on the pitch before the next general election or risk bottling it altogether, the former chief executive of Vote Leave has told GB News.Lord Elliott, who has documented Vote Leave's campaign in his new book Ten Years On: The Untold Story of Brexit, issued his rallying cry after sounding an alarm about how progressive parties will look to bind Britain to the European Union ahead of 2029. Speaking to GB News, Lord Elliott suggested Eurosceptics had grown complacent following the UK's departure from the EU, while Remainers had evolved into Rejoiners.He said: “I think we need to be more confident in making the case for Britain to stay outside the EU. TRENDING Stories Videos Your Say Once we left the EU in January 2020, Brexit was finally done, but people who were on the Remain side quickly became rejoiners and continued to make that case.“Brexiteers need to, in a sense, get back on the playing field and continue to be proud of how they voted and proud of where the country is going by making the case that we need to make the most of Brexit powers and making the case that it will be disastrous to rejoin.The Tory peer went on to urge Brexiteers to mobilise ahead of the 2029 General Election amid a potential pivot from Labour.Sir Keir Starmer, who served as Jeremy Corbyn's Remain-supporting Shadow Brexit Secretary, pledged not to rejoin the single market and customs union in his 2024 Labour Party manifesto. However, ex-Health Secretary Wes Streeting and newly elected Makerfield MP Andy Burnham, who have both vowed to challenge Sir Keir for the Labour Party leadership, have expressed a desire for the UK to rejoin the EU.Despite making a pro-EU pitch last year, Mr Burnham later watered down his pledge by insisting: The last thing we should do right now is re-run those arguments.Lord Elliott, who first became involved in the Eurosceptic movement while working alongside Brexit veteran Sir Bill Cash in the early 2000s, believes the next election will be fought between progressive parties pushing for a much closer relationship with Brussels and right-wing parties advocating for making the most of the opportunities of Brexit. “A key thing historians will look at in 50 years' time is the next general election, Lord Elliott said.LATEST DEVELOPMENTSThe 'hidden' Brexit polls that tear apart the Remainer myth that Britons want to rejoin the EURejoining EU will NOT be issue at next election, Keir Starmer's Brexit chief pledgesMPs to debate UK rejoining EU after Labour opens door to Brexit 'betrayal'Will it basically bottle it and seek to go on the path to rejoining, which will be a historic mistake, or will it be the moment where we really complete Brexit, having taken back control, having made some use of the powers, making the full use of the powers, and really embracing the full opportunities of Brexit?”He added: Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting have both spoken about rejoining, so it looks like the Labour leadership will be much more in line with rejoining, just like the Lib Dems, Greens, Plaid and SNP are.”“But it is also clear where the right is, where Reform UK and the Conservatives are, in the sense that both of them want to talk about making more of the Brexit powers, which is great. They’re also both talking about leaving the ECHR, which is different from the EU, but a crucial component to us getting migration under control in the UK.Despite issuing a warning about the next general election, Lord Elliott claimed Brexiteers hold a key advantage if Europhiles push for a poll on rejoining the Brussels bloc.He said: “You hear at the moment in the UK debate, perhaps we'll join the single market for goods, or perhaps we'll join the customs union, or perhaps we'll have some sort of hybrid approach.“The EU really isn't interested in that, and Europe made it very, very clear that if we rejoin, it's basically rejoining, joining the Euro and not having the rebates.“We’d have the full membership fee, which should now be about £28billion a year, and crucially, we'd lose all of the trade deals we've done that you just have, so there are lots of downsides to rejoining, and I don't think that any rejoin campaign will be able to get over the hump of explaining all of that to the electorate. They would think we were better off staying outside the EU.”Ex-European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned wounded member states would block Britain from rejoining and claimed the UK would need to commit to the single currency and give up its old budget rebate. However, Brussels's former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier argued it was perfectly possible to carve out the same opt-outs.Recent polling by YouGov suggested 55 per cent of Britons would now vote to rejoin the EU, with just 34 per cent wanting to stay out.The figure falls to just 35 per cent if the UK is not able to retain its previous opt-outs, including an exemption from both the Euro and Schengen. Lord Elliott told GB News a large number of 2016 Remain voters would even support staying out of the bloc if the EU refuses to budge on potential opt-outs.He said: “If you think back to the 2019 general election, there was a group of people who basically voted for Boris because they wanted to get Brexit done to end the uncertainty of the drawn-out, sort of three-year process starting with Theresa May on Brexit; they wanted to lend to it and to get Brexit done.“I think similarly there’d be an important group of people who were perhaps for Remain last time but now don’t want to reopen it all up and don’t want to face the prospect of basically a Parliament dominated by the terms of membership, possibly a referendum and all those negotiations; they wouldn't want any of that.”The Tory peer went on to claim the growing salience of immigration would change the way the issue is debated in a referendum to rejoin the EU compared to the poll in 2016.Lord Elliott concluded: “Politics has changed a lot in the past 10 years. Think about the controversy over the ‘Breaking Point’ poster during the referendum a week out from the voting day, and then think back to last summer when Keir Starmer was talking about an island of strangers. Now, who would think that a human rights lawyer, a Labour leader, 10 years after Brexit, would be talking about Britain becoming an island of strangers? You wouldn’t believe it. Those two words didn't cross Nigel Farage’s mouth 10 years ago. So, politics has changed; public opinion has changed a lot.The Prime Minister, who was accused of echoing Enoch Powell's 1968 Rivers of Blood speech following the reference to an island of strangers, later apologised for the remarks. Our Standards: The GB News Editorial Charter