Ursula von der Leyen “must keep her mouth shut” on Brexit, says Conservative deputy leader Lee Anderson after urging the younger generation to let Britain rejoin the EU

Conservative deputy leader Lee Anderson said Ursula von der Leyen should “shut up” on Brexit after she made comments earlier this week suggesting the younger generation could “fix” Brexit.

The Ashfield MP told GB News: “The generation that solved Europe’s problems was my grandfather’s generation.”

“He put on a British army uniform … he went against the Nazis, he traveled all over North Africa, through Sicily, through Italy and saw terrible things.”

“This was the generation that solved the problems in Europe.” They should keep their mouths shut.”

Asked if he thought Britain would rejoin the EU in his lifetime, he replied: “I hope not, because if we do I’ll move to the Orkney Islands.” [sic].’

The president of the European Commission suggested Britain should try to rejoin the bloc, admitting “we screwed it up” during an interview in Brussels on Tuesday.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, speaks at the first international conference on a global alliance to combat migrant smuggling in Brussels on 28 November.

Von der Leyen, whose first term as Commission president is coming to an end, suggested at a Politico event on Tuesday that Britain was on its way to rejoining the trading bloc.

Asked if she foresaw a reunification of Britain, she said: “I have to say that I keep telling my children: ‘You have got to sort this out.’ We messed up, you have to fix it.”

READ MORE: Britain must rejoin EU to ‘fix’ Brexit, says Ursula von der Leyen, admits ‘we screwed it up’

“So I think here too the direction of travel – my personal opinion – is clear.”

In response to her comments, a spokesman for the prime minister said the government was committed to “harnessing the benefits of Brexit”.

“We make Brexit possible.” We focus on the benefits that Brexit can bring.

“Through our Brexit freedoms, we are strengthening our migration system,” he said.

Although there are no plans for Britain to rejoin the European Union, Labor leader Keir Starmer has promised a review of the post-Brexit trade deal if his party wins the general election, which is expected to take place next year .

A spokesman for Starmer said: “We have made our position very clear on this, we are not rejoining the single market or the customs union. “We are not going back to freedom of movement.

“Of course we want to have a good working relationship with the European Union, we want to solve some of the existing problems on issues like trade, but no, we will not rejoin in any form.”

Research shows that Britons are still divided on the Brexit issue.

Opinion polls this month found that 57 percent of people in Britain now think it was a mistake to leave the EU, compared with 33 percent who still believe it was the right decision.

The percentage of people who do not know whether it was the right decision or not has been relatively constant between 11 and 14 percent since 2020.

Research by Changing Europe (UKICE), a British think tank, also found that only nine percent of British voters believe that Brexit went well.

But 61 per cent of Leave voters believe it will ultimately turn out for the better.

Approval ratings for the EU reached a record high in 2021, with 60 percent of respondents expressing a positive opinion of the bloc – higher than the approval rating among British voters at the time.

But support for Brexit remains strong. A poll of MailOnline readers found that 78 per cent still think Britain is right to leave the EU.

At the time of writing, more than 2,100 readers have completed the survey.

Assessing the relative pros and cons of Brexit is complicated. In September, the Office for National Statistics revised its assessment of how well the UK economy performed during the pandemic between 2020 and 2021.

In the fourth quarter of 2021, GDP increased by 0.6 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2019, instead of a decrease of 1.2 percent as originally reported.

Le Monde found that if the new calculation is correct and the statistics for 2022 and 2023 are not fully corrected, the UK economy was 1.5 percent stronger than pre-pandemic levels – comparable to France and better than Germany (0 percent), but worse than Italy (2.1 percent), Japan (3.5 percent), Canada (3.5 percent) and the United States (6.1 percent).

The BBC reported earlier this year that exports to the UK had recovered to pre-pandemic levels, according to official figures, after “start-up issues” were resolved.

But “one could argue that trade would have grown more had there been no Brexit,” the broadcaster suggested.

The Telegraph reported on Wednesday that 94 percent of companies surveyed had suffered negative effects from Brexit.

The article notes that Dave Ramsden, deputy governor of the Bank of England, said last week that Brexit had “chilled” business investment in the UK.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (R) welcomes Luxembourg Prime Minister Luc Frieden before a meeting on November 29, 2023 in Brussels, Belgium

A spokesman for Starmer (pictured at PMQs on Wednesday) said: “We’ve made our position very clear on this, we’re not rejoining the single market or the customs union. “We’re not going back to freedom of movement .”

Earlier this year, think tanks estimated that Brexit contributed to a shortage of 330,000 workers in Britain, especially in the low-skilled economy, which eventually caused prices to rise.

And research from the London School of Economics estimates that Brexit is responsible for around a third of food price inflation in the UK since 2019, adding almost £7 billion to the UK’s food bill.