{"id":132001,"date":"2025-05-26T01:15:38","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T01:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/132001\/"},"modified":"2025-05-26T01:15:38","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T01:15:38","slug":"starmers-post-brexit-reset-offers-clear-benefits-but-there-is-political-risk-too-trade-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/132001\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer\u2019s post-Brexit reset offers clear benefits \u2013 but there is political risk too | Trade policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

There were two moments at the UK-EU summit where it felt as if a corner had truly been turned. It was not on agrifoods, nor youth mobility, defence or fishing.<\/p>\n

When Keir Starmer<\/a> said the UK had changed, the most symbolic evidence of that came in a press release from No 10 that set out the terms of the agreement brokered at Lancaster House.<\/p>\n

It acknowledged, for the first time, what successive British governments have spent years denying \u2013 that Brexit<\/a> has damaged Britain. It laid out the figures: the UK has suffered a \u201c21% drop in exports and 7% drop in imports\u201d. Finally, the charade was over.<\/p>\n

And the British public know that. Half of Britons now say the decision to leave the EU was the wrong one and significant numbers of those who did not vote or were too young to vote think Brexit was the wrong decision. Poll after poll suggests the British public believe the UK is now worse off \u2013 although often that stops short of a demand that the UK rejoin.<\/p>\n

Second, and equally symbolic, was the acknowledgment that the changes proposed would require a vote in parliament. That confirmation came from No 10 almost as an afterthought.<\/p>\n

But there was a time not so long ago when the prospect of a vote in parliament on a deal like this would have been the top line of every news story. Gone are the days when Steve Baker or Bill Cash would be on the bulletins crying foul at every line of compromise.<\/p>\n

\"StarmerStarmer denies claim \u2018win-win\u2019 UK-EU deal has sold out fishing sector \u2013 video<\/p>\n

Starmer is the first prime minister in more than a decade who doesn\u2019t have to worry about that vote at all, despite some Labour MPs who, in \u201cred wall\u201d seats facing Reform, feel nervous. But most of Starmer\u2019s parliamentary party would probably prefer to see a deal that went even further.<\/p>\n

There will be no anguished briefings from rebel Conservative Eurosceptics who once in effective held Downing Street hostage and brought down two prime ministers. Kemi Badenoch\u2019s vow to oppose all the changes was irrelevant.<\/p>\n

It is that radically changed approach and circumstance \u2013 referred to time and again by Ursula von der Leyen as she praised \u201cdear Keir\u201d at Monday\u2019s press conference \u2013 which has seen this EU reset over the line less than six months after Starmer set the date.<\/p>\n

But that stability in parliament certainly does not mean that there is no political risk to this deal. There will be a battle on the front pages and the airwaves to set the narrative. Starmer\u2019s main political rival now is not a wounded Tory party but the far more dangerous godfather of Brexit, Nigel Farage.<\/p>\n

On Monday night, Starmer finally made that case to Labour MPs, vowing that he would fight Farage \u201cas Labour\u201d \u2013 a tacit acknowledgment that he has perhaps aped his opponent\u2019s language too much on issue like migration.<\/p>\n

But he said he would make the case that Reform UK\u2019s plans for Britain would make people poorer, dismissing the Conservatives as no longer Labour\u2019s principle rival.<\/p>\n

Farage, he said, was \u201ca state-slashing, NHS-privatising Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take the fight to him. We will fight as Labour.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must repair the social contract. We must unite the country against Reform. We must tackle the cost-of-living crisis. And we must show that we are the party \u2013 the only party \u2013 that can deliver change for working people,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

For Starmer, it will be a race to sell the benefits of his agrifoods and energy deals \u2013 cheaper food and cheaper energy bills \u2013 combined with quicker queues at the airport for frustrated Britons trying to placate their children as they land from their holidays. Practical delivery versus ideology.<\/p>\n

From Farage and Badenoch, there are cries of betrayal on two fronts. The first is fishing: a 12-year deal to keep the status quo when the industry had hoped for better terms from 2026. That was the price of a permanent agrifoods deal, worth so much more to the economy but potentially at the expense of such a symbolically important British industry.<\/p>\n

And the second is the sense that Britain has crossed the Rubicon that makes it a rule-taker, agreeing dynamic alignment on standards and a role for the European court of justice.<\/p>\n

No 10 is gambling that the public has lost interest in much of the technical aspects of the trade talks, as long as Brexit negotiations do not dominate the media discourse or are not seen to be distracting senior politicians from domestic matters.<\/p>\n

But there is also a risk of a distracted public \u2013 that voters already inclined to feel angry towards the government will see headlines about a \u201cBrexit betrayal\u201d and assume the worst, without reading the details. It is this arena where Farage has always had his greatest success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There were two moments at the UK-EU summit where it felt as if a corner had truly been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-132001","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114571493103844443","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}