British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he will pursue greater access to the European Union\u2019s single market, setting up a political fight with Reform UK party chief Nigel Farage that he hopes will help turn his government\u2019s fortunes around this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s in our national interest to have even closer alignment with the Single Market, then we should consider that, we should go that far,\u201d Starmer told the BBC on Sunday. The United Kingdom is better placed to gain more market access than form a customs union with the bloc because it avoids unraveling trade agreements brokered with the United States and India last year, he said.<\/p>\n
It marks Starmer\u2019s strongest language yet on his desire to soften Britain\u2019s Brexit deal, nearly a decade on from the referendum, and follows a growing debate in the final weeks of 2025 about forming a customs union with the EU in a bid to revive the British economy. Even Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy \u2014 two likely leadership hopefuls if Labour challenges Starmer \u2014 recently suggested they\u2019d be supportive of such a move, despite an election promise not to do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he will pursue greater access to the European Union\u2019s single market, setting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[802,748,393,2000,4884,807,384,1144,712,15689,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-675128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-brexit","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-eu","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-keir-starmer","15":"tag-nigel-farage","16":"tag-northern-ireland","17":"tag-scotland","18":"tag-u-k","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115841831005759335","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675128","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=675128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}