Keir Starmer should not be frightened. This week he admitted in Montreal that Britain’s Brexit agreement was “not a good deal” and that he wanted a “closer” trading relationship with the EU. What does he mean? He mentioned security and research, ties that Rishi Sunak has already initiated. Yet he shudders with fear at any accusation that he might favour returning to Europe’s customs union or single market, let alone to the EU itself. He quails at the thought of what a Brexit voter in a “red wall” seat might say. Each week his apologists explain this as paranoia over losing his 20-point poll lead. They promise he is a radical at heart. That is what they all say.
The Labour party bears its share of the blame for the failure of Theresa May’s search for a soft Brexit. There were a number of attempts to piece together a Commons coalition behind staying in the customs union or single market. Yet Labour MPs, who overwhelmingly favoured softer versions of Brexit, retreated into a militant Commons polarisation. Why should they help May just because it was in the nation’s interest? They duly allowed the Tory right to enforce its “hard” definition of Brexit as a total divorce from Europe’s economic zone. In their study of this chaotic period, The Parliamentary Battle Over Brexit, political scientists Meg Russell and Lisa James graphically describe the ignorance of most Labour MPs in what they thought they were voting for. They just obeyed their whips. It was a dreadful chapter in parliament’s history.
Barely 30% of Britons still think the UK was right to leave the EU. The rest may not want a return to Brussels, or at least not yet, but they have heard the message loud and clear – that being excluded from free trade with the rest of Europe is harmful and inconvenient. According to one estimate from the Centre for European Reform, the British economy is more than 5% smaller than it would have been if Brexit hadn’t happened. The thesis that the country could make more money trading with the rest of the world was a lie. Yet Starmer seems terrified either of admitting this – or of setting off boldly on the road to correction.
The list of items Starmer and other Labour figures have claimed he wants to renegotiate seems vague: innovation, veterinary affairs, border friction, security and “youth mobility”. The reopening of barrier-free trade with Europe must involve dismantling an already towering border bureaucracy. It cannot be relegated to hundreds of micro-deals taking years to arrange. Rejoining the customs union should be straightforward – or at least relatively so. Relinking to areas of the single market would in many cases be tough. Britain would surely want to play a part in the new age of digital regulation, but how? As for the zero benefit Brexit has brought to UK immigration, some deal on population movement has to make sense. This has to be an EU-wide matter.
This is no place for airy abstractions over sovereignty. All commerce between nations is a trade-off between sovereignty and prosperity. Reverting to soft Brexit will involve pain and compromise, but can only be worth it. The 2025 revision of Johnson’s departure agreement should be relegated to the realm of preferably bipartisan diplomacy. Starmer should make Brexit boring. He should set his team to work as soon as he takes office, and let the Brexiters go howling into the night.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
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