Brexit: The Great British con trick by Jemma Norman

The most extraordinary thing about Brexit is not that Britain made a historic mistake. It is that, years later, the people who sold the mistake still expect the country to pretend it was a triumph.

Andy Burnham's willingness to talk about a possible British return to the European Union, or at least a softer relationship with it, has reopened a political wound that Westminster has desperately tried to cover with patriotic wallpaper. And look at the reaction. Not the hysterical national outrage that once accompanied even the suggestion of closer European integration, but something considerably more revealing: a relatively mild response, a political shrug, and an increasingly obvious willingness to discuss what was once treated as national treason.

That change matters. For years, Brexit's architects presented themselves as the fearless liberators of a nation supposedly imprisoned by Brussels. They promised sovereignty, prosperity, control of borders, economic renewal and a glorious restoration of Britain's international importance. They sold nostalgia as an economic programme and nationalism as a substitute for political intelligence. The British public was promised a land of opportunity, freed from European bureaucracy, where everything from trade to immigration would magically become easier.

What a magnificent collection of political rubbish. The country was told that leaving the EU would be straightforward, that trade agreements would fall into Britain's lap, that the NHS would receive imaginary weekly fortunes, that immigration would be controlled and that British sovereignty would somehow become more powerful simply by abandoning one of the world's largest economic and political partnerships.

And what happened? Years of economic uncertainty, bureaucratic complications, damaged commercial relationships, labour shortages in important sectors, reduced opportunities for younger generations and a country still struggling to explain what exactly it gained.

The greatest achievement of Brexit was making Britain smaller while convincing some of its politicians that it had become bigger.

Of course, one must be careful about interpreting public reaction. A mild response to Burnham's remarks does not, by itself, prove that every British voter regrets Brexit. Nor does it establish that a majority is ready to rejoin. But it does demonstrate something politically significant: the old emotional defences of Brexit are weakening. The subject can increasingly be discussed without triggering the familiar theatrical performance about sovereignty, traitors and Brussels dictators.

That is progress. The most poisonous aspect of Brexit was never simply the departure itself. It was the dishonesty surrounding it. Political opportunists transformed complicated economic and constitutional questions into a simplistic battle between supposedly patriotic Britons and imaginary foreign oppressors. They exploited genuine frustrations, ignored inconvenient facts and treated warnings as sabotage. When reality arrived, many of those responsible conveniently disappeared into political retirement, television studios or their next lucrative opportunity.

Meanwhile, ordinary people were left with the consequences. Britain does not need another referendum tomorrow, nor another round of political circus. It needs an honest national conversation about its future relationship with Europe, including the practical possibilities of rebuilding cooperation, restoring economic connections and eventually considering membership again.

And it needs politicians with enough courage to admit that a decision can be democratically made and still be disastrously wrong. There is no shame in reconsidering a mistake. There is considerable shame in defending it indefinitely because admitting the truth would embarrass the people who made it.

Brexit was marketed as Britain's liberation. It increasingly looks like an expensive lesson in what happens when a nation mistakes political propaganda for a national strategy. Perhaps the most British thing about the whole affair is that the country is now being asked to pay for the promises of people who never intended to pick up the bill. The European door has never been the problem. The British politicians who slammed it shut were.