{"id":641847,"date":"2025-12-19T08:17:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T08:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/641847\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T08:17:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T08:17:14","slug":"finally-labour-is-finding-its-nerve-and-getting-britains-bad-brexit-deal-undone-polly-toynbee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/641847\/","title":{"rendered":"Finally, Labour is finding its nerve and getting Britain\u2019s bad Brexit deal undone | Polly Toynbee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Month by month, Labour is bringing us closer to Europe. This week, the UK announced it is rejoining the Erasmus+ youth exchange<\/a> programme. This will open the door beyond the many young people who attend university \u2013 its remit includes FE students, apprentices, and youth and school groups. A whoop of excitement greeted the announcement<\/a>, with opportunities for those involved in education, training, culture and sport, and a commitment to maximise take-up by disadvantaged young people. Widening experience, encouraging adventure: Erasmus+ may help cure Britain\u2019s monolingual handicap and the catastrophic decline in language courses. Last year in the UK, less than 3% of A-levels<\/a> were in languages.<\/p>\n

This all eludes Europhobes such as Andrew Neil, who posted<\/a> on X that \u201cextra taxes now being inflicted on working people will be used to finance some \u2018study\u2019 in Barcelona for gap-year yahs from affluent families\u201d.<\/p>\n

Our expensive experiment with isolation from Europe is unwinding. Forget Labour\u2019s embarrassingly futile slogan of \u201cmake Brexit work<\/a>\u201d, its insistence on \u201cred lines\u201d and fear of doing anything that might reignite Brexit passions. Now it is accelerating from tiptoe to trot towards Europe. Last month, Keir Starmer wrote<\/a>: \u201cWe must confront the reality that the botched Brexit deal significantly hurt our economy.\u201d Listen to other ministers\u2019 language. Rachel Reeves<\/a>: \u201cThe cuts to capital spending and Brexit have had a bigger impact on our economy than was even projected back then.\u201d Wes Streeting said Labour should undo \u201cthe economic damage done by Brexit\u201d, while David Lammy refused seven times<\/a> in one interview to rule out reversing a Brexit that had \u201cbadly damaged our economy\u201d. This is the new mood music, as Liberal Democrats and Greens eat Labour\u2019s pro-European lunch, with twice as many Labour voters<\/a> considering fleeing to them as to Reform UK.<\/p>\n

The Europhobe response to rejoining Erasmus has been as demented as you would expect. The Mail went for the Turks <\/a>again (Turkey is an associate member of the programme), with the headline \u201cThousands of Turkish students could come to UK\u201d \u2013 a reprise of referendum-era scare stories<\/a> about Turkey joining the EU.<\/p>\n

The Tories and Reform hope Labour is falling into their trap on Europe, reawakening deep Brexit \u201cbetrayal\u201d passions. But they sound out of step: the shadow foreign secretary, Priti Patel, says: \u201cLabour continue to betray Brexit \u2026 dragging Britain back under the control of Brussels.\u201d YouGov finds<\/a> 65% support for rejoining Erasmus with only 12% opposed. Even back in 2020, as the Brexit axe fell, 61% wanted to stay<\/a> in Erasmus.<\/p>\n

The Tories and their media attack the \u00a3570m cost of Erasmus. But if they bandy around numbers they have to answer for the whole cost of Brexit. The National Bureau of Economic Research finds that the UK\u2019s GDP is between 6% and 8% smaller<\/a> than it could have been. The House of Commons library estimates that leaving the EU is costing the Treasury up to \u00a390bn a year<\/a> in lost tax revenue. Here\u2019s how. Unless lorries are backed up outside Dover, the unseen blockages and deterrents to trade usually go unnoticed, yet an estimated 16,400 companies have abandoned EU trade<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an example of the obstacles, reported in Farmers Weekly<\/a>. Four refrigerated lorries carrying \u00a3650,000 worth of Scottish lamb to Europe were stopped at Calais; the meat was rejected by French inspectors despite being stamped as fit for consumption by the UK\u2019s Food Standards Agency. Worse still, the lorries were not allowed to return, either. \u201cThey hold all the power. We\u2019re completely helpless,\u201d said West Scottish Lamb. As the meat neared its viable time limit, they said that standoff was \u201ccrippling our business\u201d, adding: \u201cThe UK government has effectively handed the French authorities the power to control our goods.\u201d Yes, that\u2019s what the disastrous Brexit deal did. They can reject our exports, now we have given up any say. It was sorted last week, at the last minute. Though not accepted into the EU, the meat was finally allowed to return to the UK, after what Farmers Weekly says<\/a> was a three-week standoff.<\/p>\n

I spoke to the National Sheep Association\u2019s Phil Stocker, who said: \u201cIn the last six months there have been more problems. Our standards have become misaligned. They change some rules and we aren\u2019t told.\u201d This matters as more than a third of lamb is exported, and 95% of that goes to the EU<\/a>. \u201cWe urgently need that trade agreement on food,\u201d he adds. The government\u2019s response<\/a> is that it is negotiating an SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary) agreement<\/a> that will boost trade and remove border checks. Stocker says he\u2019s optimistic it may get done within 18 months, cutting red-tape costs. This example, he says, shows how Brexit makes costs rise and GDP contributions fall.<\/p>\n

No doubt when that SPS deal is made, Brexiters will protest that we have become rule-takers, obeying Europe\u2019s standards. But that\u2019s what Brexit did, obliging exporters to conform while removing our seat at the table to decide on standards and rules. There will be more trouble ahead, warns Liz Webster of Save British Farming, for as long as the government tries to keep strategic ambiguity with the US. The UK has agreed to allow up to 13,000 tonnes of US beef<\/a> per year (if it conforms to our standards, and is not hormone-fed), to the distress of beef farmers such as her. Donald Trump is pushing Britain for a full food trade deal, chlorine-washed chicken and all, yet that would kill off any deal with Europe. Given Trump\u2019s erratic behaviour over existing deals, and ministers\u2019 and senior MPs\u2019 warning that all agreements with him are only \u201cbuilt on sand<\/a>\u201d, the time is rapidly approaching when Britain will have to choose. Forget the \u201cbridge across the Atlantic\u201d fantasies: on trade, on defence and in terms of our identity, we are Europeans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Month by month, Labour is bringing us closer to Europe. This week, the UK announced it is rejoining…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641848,"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-641847","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\/115745249252786672","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641847","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=641847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}