It is eight years this week since the referendum on EU membership put the UK on the path to Brexit.

That changed a lot in agriculture, but not in the way advocates of a better life outside the EU promised. Instead we have the same, or even greener policies, than the EU; productivity in farming is seen as something bad; national food security is deemed unimportant; and; above all; agriculture has lost its political influence.

The irony of these outcomes is that the referendum was never about a choice whether or not to remain in the EU. The then-prime minister David Cameron never expected to lose. He wanted a referendum to end the disruptive tactics of those in his party dubbed Eurosceptics, a thorn in the side of leaders right back to John Major.

As a tactic that failed, the boil was never lanced and party unity never restored. Now, with an election defeat looming, the split that drove Brexit is about to surface again – and this time it could tear a much-diminished party apart. This is ultimately a right/left battle – a final split between the few remaining one-nation Tories and those who would feel more at home with Nigel Farage’s Reform group.

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This is potentially a sad end to a long era in politics, and one that could leave the Conservatives out of power for a long time. It mirrors that last big split in the Conservative party, which was in 1846 over the Corn Laws. This was a battle over protection for landlords against the freedom to import cheaper grain and it was a split that left the party out of government for 28 years.

Time will tell whether amid post-election blood-letting the party will learn from the past. This, of course, all depends on what polls are saying being right, but the evidence of accuracy is so overwhelming that this caveat seems less necessary than for any other election. Assuming that come the early morning of July 5 we have a Labour government, the ghost of Brexit may finally be vanquished.

We have had a referendum that split the nation and the party in government; and we had in Boris Johnson a prime minister who, despite a massive majority and who claimed to support Brexit, someone who ultimately agreed a poor deal with Brussels. The UK in reality achieved little with Brexit and it did the EU no harm. Trade continued with the EU, thanks to the ingenuity of traders rather than anything the government did, and it took until this year before the UK was able to even partly impose checks on imports from the EU.

The promised trade deals for the UK failed to emerge and the EU remains by far our biggest food export market, as is the UK for Europe. A lot of political energy has delivered a case of plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

If the polls are right the election will see the political demise of many of the politicians who drove Brexit and some have decided not to stand. A new government should bring an end to tensions with the EU. That does not, however, mean a return to EU membership. The SNP is the only party committed to that as a policy. However, a Labour government at Westminster will arrive without the baggage of Brexit.

That will bring a new relationship with the EU, which in the aftermath of the recent European Parliament elections, and a move to the right by key founding member states of the original EEC, has bigger concerns than the outworking of Brexit. It may be on the agenda of the Labour party to bring the UK into the European Economic Area, with Norway and Switzerland, to overcome most trade issues. This was rejected by Johnson, buoyed as he was by his 2019 General Election and Brexit victories, but that was a case of politics masking commercial reality. His objection was to the UK having to accept EU food regulations, but it has done so anyway and will continue on that road, because these are viewed globally as a basis for trade.

That will not, however, come quickly. It may be a second term Labour government decision, but it will take the decision without risking a political earthquake within the party. That is worth betting on, but then betting on political outcomes is now a game with serious downsides.