I think its starting to be yes.
The fact that polling is showing a 12% lead for the EU, suggest the mood has changed significantly and there is a growing receptiveness to stories like this.
The Spectator being willing to publish that article - albeit from Matthew Parris - is interesting.
As is the willingness of the BBC to revisit this. See this from Ros Atkins from earlier this week. He is BBC World News rather than domestic news, but I think its still significant. Its somewhat shaking ground for the BBC to cover even for international news.
twitter.com/BBCRosAtkins/status/1586240654426148865
Even Tobias Elwood being quite open about needing to revisit things as part as a bbc interview , I do think is a shift, despite him always being one of the more pro-EU tories throughout. He couldn't have done that 12 to 18 months ago.
So yes, perhaps some usual suspects on this. But the tone seems to be that Truss's bust up with Braverman over wanting to roll back on harshness in order to facilitate growth is starting to open up a conversation over what exactly has stifled growth. Sunak is a commited Leaver and seems to support Braverman BUT he's also in a massive corner with little room to move too.
Free movement of people and being unable to fill crucial jobs I think is starting to be a real stinker of an issue for the government to merely gloss over. One of the issues thats starting to appear is that people in their 50s have unexpectedly taken early retirement post covid which has also compounded the problem and the government haven't got an answer to the labourer shortage with the unemployment rate so low. You can't even use the argument about scroungers on benefits in this context, cos the numbers don't add up.
Again this is a story thats going to increasingly blow up and we will start to hear a lot about. Its just starting to do that thing of resonating when a narrative in politics starts to enter the echo chambers. Its got a while to go before it starts to be a real trend, but its got all the hallmarks of being the 'next big thing'. I've seen a few things gradually creep up the public consciousness in recent years and this is one of those I think is going to take hold because we are starting to see major problems in recruitment in key services on a scale we haven't seen before. Because its going to start to match, people's lived experience, its going to start to catch attention and stick.
Also, there's a shift in tone in Sunak's approach to France. There's severely damaged relations with France in the EU due to both Truss and Johnson having massive foot in mouth moments. That might lead to a more receptive response from the EU, plus there is also a major shift in global politics following covid and the Ukraine War. The contextual tone is that Russia is a threat to European interests and that if there is a shift to a bipolar world between the US and China, then Europe (inc UK) will find itself as somewhat harmed in this squeeze. There's also some concerns about bi-lateral relations between Germany and France being very bad atm with a recent sumit getting cancelled over differences of agenda, at the last minute. These things all mean there is a different environment going forward across the board, and not just restricted to the UK.
Overall, I think we just hit a moment of sea change across the board, and direction of travel is about to start going a different way to the way it has for the last 6 years, both here and in the EU.
Remember Johnson 'got Brexit done', so the conversation about that is over. The conversation is now about 'building a new relationship with Europe'.
I counter this by saying there still the debacle of the British Bill of Rights and the Bill to revoke EU laws to consider and I think they will, at least at first, be pushed forward very heavily. However if Sunak clearly sees a need to do some heavy duty foreign diplomacy, and views his precedessors as having done significant damage, then he's going to hit some barriers pretty quickly.
Where this leads, I don't yet know and can't fully work out, in terms of how it will eventually play out, but there's a change happening.