Even the Murdoch press is now waking up to the truth: Brexit was an act of self-harm

theguardian.com:

My love of gardening is grounded in the thrill of renewal: the first snowdrop bulb, the first songbird to break the silence, that shaft of warmth in early March. This week, as a veteran party member and supporter of every Conservative leader from Churchill to Cameron, I have detected something similar: the renewal of my party’s European legacy.

The disastrous consequences of Brexit for living standards, for our economic wellbeing and for Britain’s reputation abroad, have so far been obscured by Covid, the war in Ukraine and the headline-grabbing story of our prime minister’s lack of truthfulness and integrity. But this week, the British press perhaps unintentionally revealed the real world that is emerging as a result of Brexit.

While readers of the Guardian have been kept closely informed about the continuing tragedy of Brexit, it’s only now that other parts of the British press have begun to consider the truth of its legacy. The economies of three of the regions that voted most heavily for Brexit were “smaller at the end of last year … than at the time of the vote”, wrote David Smith in the business section of this week’s Sunday Times. Despite a weak pound making Britain’s goods cheap for foreign buyers, “exporters are … struggling”, Jim Armitage wrote in the same paper. “First-quarter figures last week showed exports of food and drink to the EU were down 17%, or £614m, on pre-Covid levels. Exports to non European countries increased by 10.7%, or £223m, but not enough to offset the European decline.”

Brexit was meant to be a “new beginning for the Tory party,” Jeremy Warner wrote this week in the Daily Telegraph, “but by making trade with Europe more difficult and costly it has so far only added to the country’s