If the EU had hired a billion-dollar agency to push Britain back into the union, they couldn't have bought what Donald Trump has done for free.
He campaigned for Brexit. He called it a triumph of nationalism and sovereignty. He toasted the result at his Florida estate the morning after the referendum and told a press scrum at Mar-a-Lago that the United Kingdom had "broken free." Ten years on, he is the single most effective argument for getting back in.
That sentence is not commentary. It is a reading of the polls, the diplomatic cables, the foreign-policy choices and the money. Each of those has shifted decisively since January and each of them has shifted in one direction.
What he's actually done since January
Begin with the tariffs. British steel and aluminium were slapped with a duty in week three of the second administration, on the stated grounds that the UK was "freeloading on American security." The same tariff was waived for Canada and Mexico after a phone call apiece. Britain, despite four direct calls from Downing Street and a personal visit by the Foreign Secretary, was told the matter would be "reviewed in due course."
Then NATO. Trump has spent four months publicly threatening to pull US troops out unless European members pay "what they owe." This is the same argument he ran in his first term, but the rhetoric has hardened. In April he told a Bedminster fundraiser that Article Five was "a suggestion." European defence ministries spent the following week composing emergency white papers about what a NATO without America would actually look like, while pretending in public that nothing unusual was happening.
Then the public insults. Trump has referred to Starmer in three separate pressers as "the British socialist" and once, memorably, as "the man with the hair." He has held bilateral summits with Hungary's Orbán, Italy's Meloni and even Iceland's centre-right coalition. He has not held one with Downing Street. The cold shoulder is not subtle.
Then the alliance-as-hostage doctrine. Whatever cooperation the US still extends to allies, it now extends conditionally. Intelligence sharing pauses when the White House is annoyed. Weapons transfers wait on personal favour. Treaties are described in Trump's own briefings as "starting points for renegotiation." Britain, the country that bet hardest on the special relationship, finds it has the least leverage of any major Western capital to influence what happens next.
Europe has stopped pretending
The European response has been markedly less subtle than it used to be. Polish prime minister Donald Tusk told Starmer in January he was "dreaming of a Breturn." Finland's president Alexander Stubb called Brexit "a colossal mistake" and said openly the UK should rejoin the union. Spain's Pedro Sánchez said he would "definitely like to have the UK back on board." Germany's foreign ministry spent the early spring quietly briefing British counterparts on what an accession-light arrangement might look like.
None of this is back-channel. The Polish PM said his line on television. The Finnish president said his at a public university lecture. The Spanish PM said his to journalists in Brussels. Five years ago this kind of language from EU heads of government would have been politically toxic. Today it is unremarkable. The Overton window has moved that fast.
This is not coded diplomacy but courtship conducted in public by people who have stopped pretending otherwise.
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The polling has caught up
YouGov, February 2026: 64% of Britons with a view want to rejoin the EU. Among 16-to-24-year-olds the figure is 80%. Among Labour voters of any age it is 78%. Among Conservative voters under 40 it is 51%, the first time a majority of young Tories has supported rejoining since the referendum. Even among 2016 Leave voters, 22% now say they would vote differently if the vote were rerun tomorrow.
The generational arithmetic is brutal for the status quo. Every year that passes the median voter gets younger and more pro-European. Every year that passes, the people who voted Leave in 2016 are a smaller share of the electorate. Demographic trends do not normally reverse themselves for a political project and they are not reversing for this one.
Business sentiment has caught up faster. Eight FTSE 100 companies have publicly called for closer EU alignment in the last year. The CBI has dropped its post-Brexit "make it work" framing entirely. The City of London is back-channelling for a financial-services equivalence deal. The supply chains have already voted with their feet. Half a million jobs that used to be done in the UK are now done in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin.
The bill
The Office for Budget Responsibility puts the long-run cost of Brexit at 4% of GDP. Chancellor Reeves uses the figure 8% in her Mais lecture. Either way, it is roughly £80 to £90 billion in tax revenue every year, vanished into a folder marked Sovereignty.
To be specific about what £80-90 billion buys: it is the entire annual police budget of England and Wales, twice over. It is the schools budget. It is what the country says it cannot find for the NHS workforce plan, defence spending up to 3% of GDP, social care reform and an infrastructure programme combined. It is, every twelve months, the price tag on the deal Britain was sold.
The deal Britain was sold has not delivered any of the things its supporters promised. Immigration is higher, not lower. Trade with the EU is down significantly even after the inevitable adjustment. Regulatory divergence, the supposed prize, has barely happened, because UK industry quietly asked for and got alignment back, sector by sector. The "Australia-style deal" with the US that was meant to compensate has not arrived in either Trump term and shows no sign of arriving in any future one.
What Starmer says vs what his government does
Starmer will not say the R-word. He is terrified of handing Reform another stick to wave at the Red Wall. He has said publicly there will be no return to the single market or customs union "in this Parliament," which everyone correctly reads as "until the politics changes."
What his government is actually doing is rejoining by stealth. Veterinary alignment with EU sanitary rules: signed in February. Mutual recognition for energy regulation: signed in March. Equivalence for emissions trading: in negotiation. A youth mobility scheme that looks suspiciously like a rebadged Erasmus: the Department for Education denied it three times before announcing it on a Friday afternoon in April. Each of these is described as a technical fix. Stack them up and they describe an accession glide-path.
The pattern is unmistakable. Britain is not rejoining the EU. Britain is rejoining the EU.
The closer
The man who campaigned for Brexit, who lobbied for it on television, who flew to Britain twice to support the cause and who took personal credit for the result is now, through tariffs, threats, insults and incompetence, the most effective recruiting sergeant rejoiners have ever had. He has not done this on purpose. He has not changed his mind. He simply cannot help being himself in public.
He campaigned for Brexit and he is now its most effective critic.
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