Henry Zeffman: Less than meets the eye to Starmer's words on Brexit

It was the moment which, perhaps more than any, entrenched Sir Keir Starmer's position as a future leader of the Labour Party.

Defying his leader, Jeremy Corbyn, as well as the autocue, the then shadow Brexit secretary sent the 2018 Labour conference into raptures when he called for a second EU referendum with Britain remaining in the bloc as an option on the ballot paper.

The Labour Party did, before long, back a second referendum. At the 2019 election, the Conservatives won a landslide - at least by the standards of the day. Britain left the EU. Weeks later, Starmer became Labour leader. And he mostly stopped talking about Brexit.

At last year's general election, he could not have been clearer.

Yes, he wanted to "reset" the tenor of Britain's relationship with the EU. Yes, there were areas where the Brexit deal negotiated by the Conservatives could be improved.

But no, the tramlines of the post-Brexit settlement decided upon by Theresa May in 2016 - outside the single market, outside the customs union - would not be altered.

That is the approach this government has followed in office, culminating in a new EU-UK deal in May.

So it was striking that on Monday Starmer not once, not twice but on three separate occasions went out of his way to say that he wanted to go further.

"We must confront the reality that the botched Brexit deal significantly hurt our economy," the prime minister wrote in The Guardian.

"One element of our economic renewal will be continuing to move towards a closer trading relationship with the EU."

In a speech that morning, he warmed to the theme: "We have to keep moving towards a closer relationship with the EU."

And addressing the annual Lady Mayor's Banquet on Monday evening, he expanded again.

"The Brexit vote was a fair, democratic expression, and I will always respect that. But how it was sold and delivered was wrong," the prime minister said.

"Wild promises were made to the British people and not fulfilled. We are still dealing with the consequences today in our economy."

A consistent message, then. But what to make of it?

Well, as it stands, the answer is that there is less to all this than meets the eye.

At Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, Starmer reaffirmed his commitment to the fundamental architecture of the Brexit deal, saying that staying out of the single market and the customs union remain "clear red lines".

A senior government source said that the prime minister had merely on Monday been seeking to prepare the ground for more minor and specific areas in which the UK and EU hope to move closer in the coming months.

This May's agreement was not a "one and done" moment, the source said. Plenty of the details of closer ties which were committed to then are still subject to negotiation. For example, talks on the details of deals on food checks and carbon tariffs began between officials in the past fortnight.

Perhaps more eye-catchingly, there are also longstanding talks on how a youth mobility scheme would work, and whether British universities could rejoin the EU's Erasmus student exchange scheme.

In other words, say those in government, the PM was simply trying to set the scene for what is to come on the UK-EU relationship, and continuing to advance the rationale for why he believes these closer ties are necessary.

Those who want the government to change its red lines on Brexit were also cheered by the announcement this week that the government minister who has been in charge of the UK's talks with Brussels, Nick Thomas-Symonds, would be joining the cabinet.

But this, too, is said by those in government to have been over-interpreted. Thomas-Symonds has recently acquired extra responsibilities at the Cabinet Office including civil service reform while his fellow minister Darren Jones spends more time trying to help the prime minister drive his agenda.

Given recent concerns about cabinet dissent and loyalty, it also makes more sense for Sir Keir to have another a close ally like Thomas-Symonds at the cabinet table.

Still, there are those in the government and the Labour Party more generally who hope that the prime minister can be persuaded to go further on Brexit.

According to a report in The Observer at the weekend, referenced by the Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey at PMQs, those in government pushing for the UK to rejoin the customs union include Baroness Shafik, Sir Keir's chief economics adviser.

Others admit privately that they see rejoining the customs union as the simplest way to inject growth into the British economy. This would mean that the UK applies the same tariffs as EU members to goods imported from countries around the world. There are no tariffs applied to trade between countries inside the customs union.

One government source involved in this issue said that even if Sir Keir wanted to rejoin the customs union, it would not be straightforward. They said the EU would, initially at least, be likely to make unpalatable demands of the UK in exchange - pointing to the recent collapse of talks over the UK joining an EU defence fund.

Moreover, joining the customs union would mean the government giving up on its independent trade policy, and therefore achievements that the prime minister himself talks up regularly, including the free trade deal with India and the deal to reduce tariffs with the US.

In any case, would rejoining the customs union be politically possible?

Well, surprising people in the Labour fold think the answer to that is yes. At the general election, Labour was eager to reassure those who backed Brexit in 2016 that it would not reopen the European question. The party won back many seats it had lost in 2019.

Yet one MP who represents a 'red wall' seat which voted strongly to leave the EU said: "It's much less visceral than it was. Even in constituencies like mine there's space to go quite far I think. The single market is a non-starter because you reopen the immigration issue.

"But there's space to rejoin the customs union. It's about trade. No-one is going to object to better trade."

A cabinet minister agreed: "Voters just don't really care about Brexit any more."

Some in Labour believe that those voters who do still care about Brexit include progressives who the party risks losing at the next general election to the Greens or the Liberal Democrats.

They see a significantly closer relationship with the EU as a way of securing those voters in Labour's coalition, as well as drawing a sharp political dividing line with Reform UK and the Conservatives.

And polls suggest a majority of the public now believes the UK was wrong to leave the EU.

The cabinet minister said: "Brexit is becoming like the Iraq War. Lots of people supported it at the time but now you can't find anyone who admits to it."

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