{"id":523929,"date":"2025-10-24T05:03:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T05:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/523929\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T05:03:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T05:03:12","slug":"starmers-new-brexit-line-its-a-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/523929\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer\u2019s new Brexit line: it\u2019s a disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

How many positions can a politician have on a single issue? For Keir Starmer<\/a> the answer is: many.<\/p>\n

The UK Labour leader has gone from vigorously opposing Brexit <\/a>(position number one) to being neutral on the issue and not wanting to talk about it (position number two).<\/p>\n

Then in the lead-up to the 2024 general election and in a bid to win back the so-called red wall (former Labour seats that voted for Brexit), he championed the country\u2019s EU divorce, insisting \u201cBritain\u2019s future is outside the EU\u201d (position number three).<\/p>\n

Position number four, hatched in recent weeks in response to a resurgent Nigel Farage<\/a>, whose Reform UK<\/a> party is riding high in the polls, is to say it has been a disaster and to blame his political opponents. <\/p>\n

Downing Street insiders say Labour\u2019s front bench have been primed to blame Farage and Brexit for Britain\u2019s downturn in productivity and the resulting hole in the exchequer at the next month\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no doubting that the impact of Brexit is severe and long-lasting,\u201d chancellor Rachel Reeves<\/a> told Sky News recently. <\/p>\n

Her comments have been echoed by others in the party, after a period when the topic was almost banned from public discourse.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Brexit has been a disaster and they don\u2019t want to talk about it\u2019: Labour Party face awkward questions on the campaign trailOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad that Brexit is a problem whose name we now dare speak,\u201d health secretary Wes Streeting said, welcoming the shift in political messaging.<\/p>\n

The change of tack is also being driven by recent polling data that put support for Brexit at an all-time low. <\/p>\n

A July poll by More in Common found just 29 per cent would vote to leave while 52 per cent would vote to remain if the 2016 referendum were held again. <\/p>\n

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said earlier this month that without new tax increases or spending cuts, UK borrowing in 2029-2030 could be about \u00a322 billion higher than previous estimates.<\/p>\n

\n

According to one estimate, being outside the EU\u2019s trading orbit costs UK business \u00a337 billion a year as a result of a 5 per cent drag on trade with the EU<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Starmer and Reeves are reportedly planning to argue that his downgrade would not have happened were it not for Brexit and former prime minister Boris Johnson\u2019s bad divorce deal.<\/p>\n

Labour\u2019s new Brexit blame game is subtle if not risky. It seeks to blame Britain\u2019s current economic lethargy on the politicians who drove Brexit \u2013 Johnson, Farage et al \u2013 while absolving the people who voted for it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a far cry from Farage\u2019s own position.<\/p>\n

He continues to deflect criticism of Brexit by claiming politicians failed to implement it correctly and to exploit the opportunity it presents rather than conceding it might have been an intrinsically bad option in the first place.<\/p>\n

According to one estimate, being outside the EU\u2019s trading orbit costs UK business \u00a337 billion a year as a result of a 5 per cent drag on trade with the EU. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that Britain\u2019s long-term productivity is 4 per cent lower than it would have been if the country had stayed inside.<\/p>\n

Low productivity means low growth, which means low tax revenue, which means more borrowing, a merry-go-round that the UK has been on since the financial crash and a problem that has been amplified, rather than caused, by Brexit. <\/p>\n

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey told last week\u2019s International Monetary Fund gathering in Washington that while he takes \u201cno position per se\u201d on Brexit, the impact on growth will be negative \u201cfor the foreseeable future\u201d.<\/p>\n

He also said it served as a warning to the wider world of the damage caused by erecting trade barriers.<\/p>\n

\u201cMake an economy less open and it will restrict growth,\u201d Bailey said, while noting that Brexit also showed that businesses could adapt to tougher trade conditions, but that it took time and came at the expense of growth.<\/p>\n

While the UK government has partially remedied the drag on trade, signing a fresh co-operation agreement with the bloc earlier this year, the measures put in place don\u2019t offset the totality of the challenge of being outside the EU.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Keir Starmer delivers perhaps his best speech so far as UK prime ministerOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

As a counterpoint, Brexit has been a boon for Brussels in public relations terms. Euroscepticism had mushroomed in the wake of the EU\u2019s botched handling of the financial crisis and amid a surge in migration. Brexit triggered, as one pundit put it, a further \u201csecessionist contagion\u201d.<\/p>\n

But years of wrangling, political turmoil, trade barriers and passport controls, and a UK economic outlook that is on a par with warmongering Russia\u2019s, has all but killed off the Frexit, Italeave and Nexit movements in other countries.<\/p>\n

Brussels and London now have perhaps bigger fish to fry in terms of the surge of populist politics in their respective jurisdictions and the security threat from Russia, which should put any lingering bad blood over Brexit into some sort of perspective.<\/p>\n

UK politics is becoming increasingly polarised, and fudging the Brexit issue \u2013 as Starmer has done \u2013 is becoming less tenable.<\/p>\n

He used the recent Labour conference in Liverpool to claim that his party was in \u201ca fight for the soul of the country\u201d against Reform UK, hitting back against the \u201clies and division\u201d of the right-wing party\u2019s populism.<\/p>\n

It seems he now intends to enlist Brexit in that fight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How many positions can a politician have on a single issue? For Keir Starmer the answer is: many.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,807,384,386,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-523929","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-keir-starmer","16":"tag-nigel-farage","17":"tag-reform-uk","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115427397148131065","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523929","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=523929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}