Despite the EU missteps, despite the vaccines, Brexit will still prove a grave error

“Europhiles have finally had their eyes opened to the hideous reality of the EU.” That’s Daniel Hannan, the ex-MEP, gloating in the Sunday Telegraph. Brexiter glee is achingly potent this week, a visceral punch to us remainers, pole-axed to find Boris Johnson right and the European Union behaving outrageously.

The European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, a medical doctor and mother of seven, has fallen off her superwoman pedestal. Throughout four excruciating years of Britain behaving badly, the EU were the grownups, firm and patient negotiators with our rabble of infantile lawbreakers. This (temporary, we hope) role-reversal leaves remainers dumbfounded.

Pandemic pressure weakened the EU’s glue, as 27 countries argued over how much vaccine to buy at what cost while Britain streaked ahead, wallet wide open. Yet some things can’t be unsaid: Von der Leyen’s threat to break the fragile Northern Ireland protocol and shut the Irish border opened several gates of hell. The DUP and Brexit-fanatic MPs dashed to use it as a means to tear up the agreement in their search for the nonexistent good Brexit.

UK ministers have suddenly assumed unaccustomed dignity, under strict No 10 instructions not to rub salt in the EU’s vaccine wounds: they even offer up Britain’s leftovers. But there’s a reason for this newfound civility. Because, beyond the vaccine wars, Brexit is unravelling before their eyes, and they know it. The five big business groups led by the Confederation of British Industry delivered the news to them with both barrels: “Absolute carnage!”, “Dante’s fifth circle of hell,” says manufacturers’ organisation Make UK.

Watch: Stormont ministers call for threats against port checks workers to end

Related: Why Labour should agree to a Scottish independence referendum – now | Neal Lawson

Disingenuously, the government replies that all is quiet at the ports; but that’s only because a third less traffic is trading either way, and may never return. Stockpiles will run down, 1,000 cars from just one factory are parked up waiting for parts, and things will get worse. A year before Brexit, the Institute of Directors warned that a third of businesses would move operations to the EU – and it’s happening, haemorrhaging tax revenues and jobs. This is not “teething trouble” but extractions without anaesthetic.

Despite this latest example of EU flaws, despite our relief at getting vaccines faster than other Europeans, over the coming years leaving the union will keep revealing itself as a fatal error. Brexit is not going away.

The Tories hoped to run the next election as “Keep Brexit done”, while Labour hoped never to talk of Brexit again. “Forward not back,” says Keir Starmer, to focus on the economy, jobs, public services, climate and fairness. But now it’s plain neither party can duck awkward Brexit questions. For Tories, the challenge from voters will be: you lied and now look what you’ve done. Labour’s is this: repair means rejoining the single market, but do you dare advocate freedom of movement?

Right now, pandemic politics dominates. In May comes an important test: the UK votes for councils and mayors. The government hopes that by then the easing of the lockdown will maximise its vaccine bounce. Political scientist Prof John Curtice tells me he expects a swapping of losses and gains, but no landslide either way: both parties are managing down expectations. These elections mean that the budget in March will extend furloughs for four million people, with businesses supported for longer. That weekly £20 for universal credit is a certainty. A hint of future fat-cat taxes on corporations and capital gains will come with much “recovery plan” rhetoric. Expect little of the deficit-reducing austerity that is certainly in the chancellor’s mind.

As is their wont, Labour supporters and some MPs are glum. Starmer is not breaking through, he’s not visible and voters don’t know him, finds Britain Thinks. Does he have a grand plan for Britain? Where’s his vision? Labour people are bad at patience. He’s only 10 months in post, and been plunged into a plague; within five months he had wiped out Labour’s 20-point deficit, mainly by not being Jeremy Corbyn. With personal ratings unseen in a Labour leader since Tony Blair’s heyday, in a New Statesman chart of decades of opposition leaders’ popularity, he does well.

Jeremy Hunt this weekend called Starmer the Tories’ greatest threat since Blair, warning he could bring about Labour’s “1948 moment” – the year the NHS was founded. A serious, decent and respected shadow cabinet may not be famous yet, but that’s better than being as infamous as many round Johnson’s table are. Right now, as people yearn most for safety and lockdown freedom, I doubt an opposition’s grand blueprint for the future would get much cut-through. Yet, frighteningly soon, the country will need Labour.

By all the forecasts, furlough’s end will bring a tsunami of unemployment: that needs Labour solutions, not the puny Kickstart so far only helping 2,000 young people. An exhausted NHS faces a waiting list of 4.5 million people: austerity had caused long delays before Covid. The government’s social care reform has vanished, while crippled councils hover near bankruptcy. Tory levelling-up will fail; Labour is better at social justice. Cop26 will let Johnson showboat climate projects, but Labour’s green new deal offers actual climate jobs.

Tory voices already reject IMF calls for investment rather than cuts; a Keynesian Labour plan may appeal better to business outraged by Brexit damage and small firms left on the brink of going bust by Covid. If there is a brief vaccine bounce, remember this bitter lesson: voters don’t do gratitude. They didn’t for Churchill winning the war, nor for Attlee’s NHS, nor will vaccine thanks last long for Johnson. Voters choose the best future: that’s for Labour to offer.

Marking Brexit’s first anniversary, Johnson repeated last year’s bombastic words: “The destiny of this great nation now resides firmly in our hands. I take on this duty with a sense of purpose.” Such balderdash may not have aged well by this time next year.

• Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Watch: What could scrapping EU labour rights mean for UK workers?