Brexit is a dead issue at Westminster. There are any number of issues where it is hard to separate Labour and the Conservatives, and the reluctance to reopen the 2016 referendum debate is one of them. As with tax and spending, Keir Starmer is broadly offering continuity Rishi Sunak.

That doesn’t mean the debate about leaving is over. Plenty of people still nurture the hope that the decision will be reversed and are working to that end. But any successful campaign would need to do two things: convince voters that the UK economy had become a basket case since the Brexit vote and that life for those still in the club was so much better.

Neither criterion has been met. Britain’s economic performance in the seven years since 2016 has been mediocre but not the full-on horror show that was prophesied by the remain camp during the weeks leading up to the referendum. The doomsday scenario – crashing house prices (falls of up to 18% could result, warned then chancellor George Osborne) and mass unemployment – never happened.

What’s more, after the inevitable disruption caused by leaving, there have been signs of the economy adjusting. Nissan’s decision to invest more than £1bn in its Sunderland plant with the intention of building three new electric car models is an example of that. Microsoft’s £2.5bn investment in the growing UK AI sector is another.

That’s not to say that the process is complete. Brexit provided opportunities to do things differently but those opportunities have so far not been exploited. It is a lot easier for a giant Japanese car company to make the Brexit transition than it is for a small food and drink exporting company faced........

© The Guardian