After a rough old decade for the nation\u2019s Europhiles, Remainers finally have their tails up again. Everywhere you look, Brexit is being chipped away at, critiqued and subverted. <\/p>\n
On Wednesday the government signed a deal costing \u00a3570 million a year to revive the Erasmus student exchange programme<\/a> from 2027. The Erasmus agreement also resulted in the EU agreeing to set firm deadlines for upcoming deals on agriculture and emissions trading, so wrangling between Brussels and Westminster is going to be a feature of 2026 as well. <\/p>\n But some in Labour\u2019s government are dreaming much bigger. During the recent budget negotiations, as the problem of Britain\u2019s sclerotic growth arose, several officials raised the idea of rejoining the EU customs union. This idea was expanded considerably when the deputy prime minister, David Lammy, went on a podcast this month to muse about the benefits of Turkey\u2019s customs arrangements with the EU. <\/p>\n \u201cThose comments triggered a lot of reflection on Europe inside the party,\u201d says one government source. \u201cMinisters are staking a lot on long-term plans for economic growth, building houses, AI or nuclear power plants. But in the shorter term, they are realising that the only real growth to be found is in much deeper alignment with the EU.\u201d<\/p>\n Figures on the benefits of drawing closer to the EU are pinballing around Labour<\/a> circles. Last month, during his Isaiah Berlin lecture, the former foreign secretary David Miliband estimated that being outside the customs union was costing Britain \u00a315 billion to \u00a330 billion a year. Others quote research from Best for Britain, a think tank set up by the Remain campaigner Gina Miller, which estimates that \u201cdeep alignment\u201d with the EU on goods and services would give the country a 2.2 per cent bounce in GDP, equivalent to \u00a364 billion a year.<\/p>\n Like First World War soldiers who found themselves re-excavating trenches on the Marne four years after they dug them, familiar battle lines are being redrawn. \u201cWe are Europeans,\u201d insisted Polly Toynbee in Friday\u2019s Guardian. \u201cA Brexit<\/a> betrayal\u201d thundered Thursday\u2019s Daily Mail. <\/p>\n So are we really heading back into the Brexit wars? Where does the Europe debate go from here? <\/p>\n The prime minister, who made his political bones opposing Brexit under Jeremy Corbyn, has long signalled his desire for a closer alignment with the EU. But he is also adamant that this should be a incremental process, deal by deal, first fish, then students, then perhaps youth mobility<\/a> and agriculture. <\/p>\n Starmer has ruled out rejoining the customs union, which was a \u201cred line\u201d in the Labour manifesto and would undo much of the work his government has done striking trade deals with India and America. Instead, he is pursuing what has been described as a \u201cSwiss cheese\u201d settlement with Europe, full of holes and gaps, not unlike Switzerland\u2019s.<\/p>\n As ever with Starmer, the more pragmatic, gradual path is the likely one<\/a>. But the prime minister\u2019s political weakness means this issue may be moving faster than he wants it to.<\/p>\n If a Labour leadership fight takes place next year, it\u2019s likely that the Europe debate will form an important part of the contest. Indications are that Wes Streeting for one is willing to go further and faster than Starmer<\/a> on Europe if he needs to court MPs and party members. \u201cWes could do with a membership-friendly idea,\u201d one party source says. <\/p>\n Streeting amplified speculation over Europe this weekend in an interview with The Observer. \u201cWe\u2019ve taken a massive economic hit leaving the European Union,\u201d he said. \u201cThe best way for us to get more growth into our economy is a deeper trading relationship with the EU.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u201cgo faster\u201d camp also points to next year\u2019s presidential elections in France, with the distinct possibility of a hard-right Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella government, which would rather complicate France\u2019s position in any UK-EU negotiation.<\/p>\n Another factor is the increasing volatility and, at times, seeming hostility of the Trump administration towards Europe. Only last week, Britain\u2019s much-heralded \u00a331 billion \u201ctech prosperity deal\u201d with America was paused<\/a>. Starmer is proud of his work maintaining the special relationship with Trump so far and security officials in Whitehall still see the US bond as the cornerstone of Britain\u2019s foreign policy. But if Trump continues to gnaw away at the transatlantic alliance, a turn towards Europe could make increasing geopolitical sense. <\/p>\n It\u2019s also the case that Starmer has struggled to define and maintain a clear agenda in office. In the absence of a defined mission, the party\u2019s anti-Brexit forces are more than happy to supply one for him. Lammy has already pushed beyond his leader\u2019s position. There has also been newspaper speculation that a trio of closely linked Europhile heavyweights, the Downing Street communications chief Tim Allan, the Starmer biographer Tom Baldwin, and Alastair Campbell, have banded together to press the prime minister to go further on Europe. <\/p>\n Campbell describes this story as delusional. What\u2019s true is that he and other pro-EU power brokers do sense a window of opportunity is opening. Starmer can be slow to alight upon a course of action, but once he gets there he can move quite decisively, as he did at the Labour Party conference in 2018, when after months of being cajoled he suddenly and unexpectedly opened the door to a second referendum on EU membership.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Erasmus renewal is a small step towards repairing the huge damage Brexit has caused,\u201d Campbell says. \u201cI look forward to more such steps in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n