Jo\u00ebl Reland reacts to Keir Starmer\u2019s speech on the direction of the Labour Party following their poor performance in the local elections. He argues that, despite promising to put \u201cBritain at the heart of Europe\u201d, the Prime Minister continues to uphold the status quo on Brexit.<\/p>\n
The status quo isn\u2019t working, so here\u2019s some more of the status quo. As an epitaph for Keir Starmer\u2019s administration, his speech today could hardly have been neater.<\/p>\n
In the run-up to the speech, it was widely briefed that EU affairs would be at its heart. As a political strategy for a downtrodden Labour Prime Minister, this made intuitive sense. Labour is losing more votes<\/a> the Greens, Lib Dems and nationalist parties than to Reform and the Conservatives.<\/p>\n As Patrick Maguire wrote in the Times<\/a>, a bolder offer on Europe is one thing which might give some discontented Labour MPs pause for thought: a unifying vision which suggests their leader has both a plan to boost the ailing economy and to win back the liberal-left voters who are deserting the party in droves.<\/p>\n Some predicted Starmer might even take the opportunity to review his manifesto red lines of no single market, customs union or free movement. A last hail Mary for a Prime Minister with nothing else left to lose.<\/p>\n The early parts of the speech suggested this might be the case. Sleeves rolled up, Starmer laid out his analysis of the troubled state of the UK: \u201cThe status quo isn\u2019t working\u2026 Incremental change won\u2019t cut it\u201d. He went on, \u201cI will set a new direction for Britain\u2026 This Labour government will be defined by rebuilding our relationship with Europe, by putting Britain at the heart of Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n Then came the crunch. The moment where Starmer had to set out the detail of this vision, of what Britain at the heart of Europe means in practice. At which point he offered up a single policy, \u201can ambitious youth experience scheme\u201d, which was already committed to a full year ago and has been under negotiation for most of the time since.<\/p>\n The implications of this are unambiguous. Starmer has no plan to change the status quo. Nothing new was brought onto the agenda, and the Prime Minister\u2019s focus is on concluding the handful of agreements committed to at last year\u2019s UK-EU summit, with a vague promise of new agreements to come at the next summit this summer.<\/p>\n The most charitable reading is that Starmer is laying the necessary groundwork for a successful second summit. The reality is that, if he wants to use that event to announce the conclusion of deals to take the UK closer to the single market (on agrifoods and emissions trading), a deal is also going to have to be reached on \u2018youth experience\u2019 \u2013 the EU\u2019s number one negotiating interest.<\/p>\n And negotiations on the latter have proved fraught, due to disagreements over participant numbers and the level of tuition fees which EU students should pay. Starmer\u2019s words today may be a sign that the UK is about to compromise on those points so he has some other \u2018wins\u2019 to sell at the next summit. That could also open up the space for the two sides to commit to negotiations on enhanced cooperation in a handful of other new areas (perhaps vehicles, medicines or digital policy).<\/p>\n But the problem remains that this is exactly the kind of incrementalism which Starmer so derided earlier in his speech. His plan maintains Boris Johnson\u2019s Brexit deal as its centrepiece: a deal which places the UK not at the \u2018heart\u2019 of Europe, but as its appendix \u2013 outside of all the key economic and political institutions.<\/p>\n Starmer might hope to improve economic ties in a few limited sectors, but the structural reality of the UK\u2019s position will remain unchanged, and the boost to GDP is likely to be nothing more than a few fractions of a percent by the end of the next decade.<\/p>\n