33:64 presents “Liquid Cool.”

Happy Birthday Brexit. 10 years old today, who would’ve thought it? I hope people still remember and they haven’t forgotten. After all, it’s not easy keeping track of everything, especially when everyone is busy moving on with their lives, inevitably it becoming just another memory. And like all memories, gradually fading away into a vague collection of nostalgic imaginings and wistful regrets.

As if! Brexit is a potent and divisive as it ever was. Possibly moreso. Time isn’t the great healer.  Andy Capp proves it. His forthcoming coronation is predicated on appeasing the ranks of disaffected Labour MP’s, and nothing appeases them more than the prospect of ever closer ties to Europe. I know he said to the voters of Makerfield that he’d reversed his previously held opposition to Brexit, but everyone knows he’ll reverse that reversal. He’s a politician. He says what people want to hear. 

And whilst I’m on the subject of telling people what they want to hear, it just so happens that ‘The Guardian’ is running this story today. ‘Three in five gen Z Britons would like new vote to rejoin EU, poll finds.

Data reveals 60% of 18 to 28-year-olds would vote to rejoin bloc if given the opportunity’ 

And a story is exactly what it is, if we understand a story in ‘The Guardian’ about Brexit to be utter bollocks. One of my main gripes about any poll about Brexit that appears in ‘The Guardian’ tends to have at least two things in common. First of all, there is the astonishingly small number of people polled upon which they base the ‘story’. ‘The More in Common study, which surveyed 440 young people across Britain, shows that 50% of gen Z Britons categorise Brexit as a failure.’ But a graph helpfully clarifies that that 50% is actually 50.2%. This illustrates my second gripe; they interview just enough people to get the desired result and then stop. There’d be no point carrying on. If anything, it’d possibly make things worse. 

As soon as the magic number – more than 50% – is reached, no more people are asked the question, as doing so only increases the likelihood of that number falling. More in Common knows exactly what ‘The Guardian’ wants the poll to confirm and also knows that the more it gives them what they want, the more it will be asked to do so.‘The Guardian’ also knows precisely what its readers want to read. Well I write readers, but they could more accurately be described as cash cows. And boy, are they milked! I’ve written about this mutually beneficial relationship before. 

The more that ‘The Guardian’ promotes narrative in which Brexit was disaster, that the people who voted for it are wracked with guilt and how the sooner we rejoin the better, the more money it is that the readers will hand  hand over. It’s certainly lucrative and getting even moreso. Up from £88m in 2023/2024 to £107m in the year to the end of March 2025.     

I’ll end by sharing two observations, one serious and the other less so. Hopefully you’ll be able to work out which is which. Firstly, that 50.2% is a much better number than 220.88. Which is what it is. Quite who or what .88 is or even how it exists, don’t ask me. 50.2% of 440 is 220.88.

Secondly, if England lose tonight against Ghana, we all know what ‘The Guardian’ will blame it on…