KEIR STARMER has said the UK should move towards closer alignment with European Union markets \u201cif it\u2019s in our national interest\u201d, while ruling out rejoining the EU single market or customs union or ending freedom of movement.<\/p>\n
The prime minister told the BBC it would be \u201cbetter looking to the single market rather than the customs union for our further alignment\u201d to protect trade deals with India and the US. He said existing manifesto commitments would remain in place.<\/p>\n
Speaking to BBC presenter Laura Kuenssberg, Starmer said: \u201cI think we should get closer, and if 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. I think it\u2019s in our national interest to go further.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that after securing deals with the US and India, \u201cwe are better looking to the single market rather than the customs union for our further alignment. And it wouldn\u2019t be in our interest now to give up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starmer said closer economic ties were a \u201csovereign decision\u201d and had delivered the best UK\u2013EU relationship \u201cfor 10 years\u201d. He said further alignment should be considered \u201cissue-by-issue, sector-by-sector\u201d, noting that the UK has already aligned on food and agriculture rules, to be implemented this year.<\/p>\n
The comments follow pressure from within Labour, with 13 backbenchers backing proposals linked to a customs union in a Commons vote in December. Starmer said he was not reversing Brexit, adding that nobody wanted to be \u201cpicking over the bones of Brexit\u201d and that the focus was on what was in the national interest.<\/p>\n
On youth mobility talks, he said: \u201cThat is not the return to freedom of movement, we\u2019re not going back to freedom of movement.\u201d He added that opportunities for young people were \u201ca very good thing\u201d, citing the decision to rejoin Erasmus.<\/p>\n
The Conservative Party accused the government of using Brexit to excuse economic problems. Shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel said Labour\u2019s \u201cBrexit betrayal\u201d was becoming clearer and warned closer alignment would mean \u201csurrendering our freedom to cut regulation and strike our own trade deals\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KEIR STARMER has said the UK should move towards closer alignment with European Union markets \u201cif it\u2019s in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,26311,299,5187,1699,4884,807,66932,16,3106,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-675515","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-eu-relations","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-great-britain","16":"tag-keir-starmer","17":"tag-trade-policy","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-uk-politics","20":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115842849455325453","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675515","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=675515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}