Britain’s relationship with the European Union was not a prominent issue in national debate when Sir Keir Starmer became prime minister, and Downing Street has striven to keep it that way. Labour strategists have seen Europe as a fissile topic, and Sir Keir’s opposition to Brexit in the 2016 referendum as a liability with swing voters. The prime minister has moved Britain closer to Europe, but in timid increments. The summit that formally “reset” relations early this year was long on statements of ambition, but short on substance. The government’s private recognition that economic logics impel Britain back into a European orbit has been in constant tension with fear of making that case in public.
The balance now appears to be shifting. In a speech on Wednesday, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister responsible for EU relations, made the argument for closer regulatory alignment with Brussels in newly combative terms. The government is negotiating an agreement that would eliminate costly checks and licence requirements for food and drink exports to the continent. Mr Thomas-Symonds expanded his advocacy for that plan into an attack on Conservatives and Reform UK for peddling “snake oil” and willing Britain to fail by denying the need for closer EU cooperation.
Mr Thomas-Symonds also spoke enthusiastically about proposals for a “youth experience” scheme, allowing 18- to 30-year-olds to travel and work in the Schengen area on extended visas in exchange for reciprocal access to the UK for continental visitors.
This has long been mooted in Brussels, but ministers were initially allergic to the prospect lest it be mistaken for an agenda to restore the level of free labour movement associated with EU membership, or cynically misrepresented in those terms.
It is no such thing. Polling evidence indicates clear majority support for a programme that would, for time-limited periods, open up new European opportunities for young people. That is hardly surprising when opinion polls also show considerably more dissatisfaction with Brexit and its consequences than is widely reflected in political discussion of the subject. A clear majority says that it was a mistake to leave the EU.
That shouldn’t be confused with willingness to undergo the kind of upheaval and social division that a campaign to rejoin the union would entail. But it does suggest that the government could be more aggressive in its criticism of Boris Johnson’s Brexit, and more courageous in facing down the militant Eurosceptic minority that has for too long arrogated to itself the right to speak for the whole nation.
Although Nigel Farage has pledged to reverse Labour’s rapprochement with the EU, the Reform UK leader is notably reluctant to make a defence of Brexit the centrepiece of his bid to be prime minister. Indeed, none of the once ubiquitous high priests of Euroscepticism seem especially keen to be associated with the fulfilment of their cherished goal. That is a vulnerability in the opposition that Labour should be exploiting with more vigour.
The manifest failure of Brexit to deliver any of its advertised bounties, coupled with the challenge of Donald Trump’s unreliable, protectionist administration in Washington, make an indisputable case for Britain to seek greater strategic intimacy with the continental trading bloc on its doorstep. The government is moving in that direction, but too stealthily, behind public opinion, following where it could be leading.
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