Where’s Our Brexit Gone? This City Would Like to Know

(Bloomberg) -- It was a regular Friday morning in the northern English city of Hull. Mothers passed each other in the street pushing buggies, pensioners lugged shopping bags and students clutched their takeout coffees.

This wasn’t meant to be like any other day, though. Britain was supposed to be leaving the European Union, at 11 p.m. to be precise, a cause to rejoice for many here. Indeed, with 67 percent backing Brexit in the 2016 referendum, Hull was one of two British cities that relished the prospect the most. Now people can hardly bring themselves to talk about it.

“It’s an absolute disgrace,” said Ken Batty, a Hull native who used to run a delivery and haulage business. “They should have at least got the basics done on trade,” said the 66-year-old, who was returning from signing his will.

The fact that March 29 will come and go like any other day underscores the astonishing deadlock in a country whose political system has focused on little else for three years. Up and down the U.K., many of those who voted for Brexit are lamenting the chaos and increasingly bitter at the prospect of what they expected –- or thought they were promised -- slipping away.

There’s still no clear picture of how Brexit will all unfold. In a series of votes this week, Parliament failed to find majority support for various scenarios, though it will return Monday to seek a consensus. Options include keeping closer alignment to the EU or even holding another public vote.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s deal with Brussels was defeated in Parliament for a third time on Friday, the deadline set by the EU to get it over the line or risk leaving on April 12 with no agreement.

About 180 miles (290 kilometers) north of the political action in London, the only remarkable thing in Hull was the weather: warm sunshine and blue skies. Heading to the bus stop with her friend, Sandra Simpson summed up what the city thinks with a roll of the eyes.

“Nobody wants to talk about it,” said Simpson, 71. She voted for Brexit and would do so again if it came to a second referendum -- just don’t make her choose a leader by having a general election. Simpson wanted to “put the great back into Great Britain,” she said in unison with her friend. Is Brexit doing that? “No,” she said.

The mood in Hull matters because it staged the most emphatic rejection of the EU of any city, along with Stoke on Trent in the Midlands. They’re also places that highlight what’s become one of Brexit’s biggest quandaries: How to break the political impasse while staying true to the referendum result.

Parliamentarians both in the governing Conservatives and opposition Labour Party are concerned about being accused of betraying voters. Like Stoke, Hull is a stronghold of Labour, a majority of whose lawmakers are opposed to Brexit or at least the government’s version of it.

Diana Johnson, one of the three Labour MPs in Hull, said she had been called a traitor. “We are not part of a ‘treacherous’ conspiracy against our country or ‘betraying democracy,’ she wrote a week ago, responding after May had lambasted the House of Commons for blocking her Brexit plan. “Quite the opposite,” she said. Her concern was that there was growing vitriol toward lawmakers just trying to represent their constituents and understand the resentment that brought about Brexit.

Batty, the Hull resident, said he didn't vote in the referendum because he wanted to leave the decision to the younger generation. He said so many of the arguments are flawed, such as curbing immigration and the idea that Britain is more democratic than the EU.

“When it comes to politics, Hull can be quite backward, very old-fashioned,” he said, pointing to how the city always voted Labour.

For sure, the backlash against the EU wasn’t surprising given Hull’s history and location. Long eclipsed by the larger Yorkshire cities of Leeds and Sheffield to the west, Hull was always off the beaten track. The sense of neglect runs deep.

In its heyday, Hull was one of Europe’s biggest fishing ports. EU membership in 1973 led to greater competition in U.K. waters. By 2014, unemployment was among the highest in Britain, at 12 percent, and the city of 280,000 was seen as an exemplar of Britain’s social malaise.

There’s been a pickup of late thanks to investment by wind-energy companies, including a Siemens AG turbine factory, and a regeneration to mark its status as U.K. City of Culture 2017. The theme was “a city coming out of the shadows.”

But Brexit has since cast another shadow.

“It’s all a frenzy now,” said Lucy Hoy, 17, who studies geography, photography and film at her local college in Hull. What do her family think? “They’re very annoyed. People voted for out and it’s not being followed through.”

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Sillitoe at psillitoe@bloomberg.net

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.