Starmer and the Brexit can of worms

Brexit has faded somewhat from the headlines in recent months; we haven’t had anything much to say about it here since March. But this week it’s back. British Labour leader Keir Starmer, meeting with other centre-left leaders in Canada at the weekend, promised that if elected next year he would “seek a closer trading relationship” with the European Union, although he ruled out rejoining either the EU itself or the customs union or single market.

The trade deal that Boris Johnson negotiated with the EU in 2020 is up for review in 2025, although it’s thought that the EU is thinking in terms of no more than minor revision. But assuming that Labour wins the election expected in the second half of next year, it would be a good opportunity for talks with the Europeans on possible options for the future relationship.

The background to this is that opinion polls now show a fairly large plurality of British voters in favor of rejoining the EU: “rejoin” typically polls in the high 40s, around 15 points ahead of “stay out”. An actual vote would probably see the undecideds break strongly in favor of the status quo (although some would simply stay home), but even so that’s a very healthy lead. In the 2016 referendum “leave” won with only 51.9% of the vote, and prior to that a double-digit lead for either side was almost unheard of.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Labour also holds a commanding lead in the polls. It has been stable for most of this year in the mid-40s, with a lead of between 15 and 20 points over the Conservatives – a swing of about 15% compared to the 2019 election. If that holds up even moderately well for the next twelve months, Starmer will win a large majority.

The natural conclusion from those numbers is that Brexit as an issue is working in Labour’s favor and that there is no need for it to rock the boat by changing its position. Those for whom support for the EU is a vital issue are likely to vote Labour anyway, despite Starmer’s assurances of staying out, and since there’s no prospect of the Tories changing their attitude, Labour has no incentive to move far in either direction.

The incentives might change if one side in the Brexit debate was more highly motivated than the other and more likely to let it change their vote, but there’s no real evidence for that. (It may have been true prior to the 2016 vote, when many pro-Europeans didn’t take the threat seriously, but they are unlikely to make that mistake again.) Labour does suffer from not having all the pro-EU vote to itself, since the minor parties are mostly on the same side, but it’s always going to have that problem with first-past-the-past voting: if it wasn’t Brexit it would be something else. (The solution, of course, is electoral reform, but that’s a story for another day.)

So Labour’s best strategy is probably to do just what Starmer is doing. Keep the issue mostly off the table, while stressing that whatever problems anyone is experiencing are all the Conservatives’ fault. But open a route for talks with the EU, which can easily develop into an informal exploration of how the EU would regard a British application to rejoin and what sort of terms might be available.

Given how explosive the issue has been over the last decade, it would be foolish for Starmer to attempt more than that in his first term. But depending on the outcome of talks, and on how the government is travelling generally, he could go to the following election (probably in 2029) seeking a mandate to raise the possibility of rejoining – on the promise that nothing substantive would be done without further public approval, either at an in-principle referendum or (especially if the EU is dragging its heels, which is very possible) as an election commitment at the end of his second term.

No-one knows just what the response from Brussels would be to a British approach. Certainly the EU has been less than welcoming to new members in the last decade, as we’ve noted here several times. But Britain is not Serbia or Ukraine (or Turkey); if it were to rejoin it would add greatly to the union’s economic and geopolitical weight, not to mention the moral victory of having the 2016 result reversed.

It’s still possible that the EU would decide that it was all too hard, and would discourage any thought of rejoining – perhaps by diverting British attention towards a beefed-up trade deal. Even if membership were on the table, it’s unlikely that Britain would be offered the generous terms that it enjoyed prior to 2020, with their financial sweeteners and carve-outs from some EU rules (including from the requirement to adopt the euro).

But if things continue the way they are, then at some point – although not soon – we are likely to find out.