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Nigel Farage will haunt Keir Starmer’s big Brexit summit



 Nigel Farage will haunt Keir Starmer’s big Brexit summit

 

Britain’s Labour government is still smarting from a bruising set of local election results at the hands of the chief Brexiteer.

 

May 15, 2025 4:08 pm CET

By Jon Stone, Stefan Boscia, Emilio Casalicchio and Caroline Hug

https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-eu-brexit-summit-pm-keir-starmer-labour-haunted-ghost-nigel-farage/

 

LONDON — When Keir Starmer sits down with European Union leaders at his big Brexit summit on Monday, there'll be a ghost at the feast: Nigel Farage.

 

Britain's prime minister wants to reset relations with the EU and walk back some of the harder edges of the Brexit settlement. On Monday, he's hoping to finally break ground on the first phase of a deal.

 

But Starmer looks set to spend the meeting looking over his shoulder for the Euroskeptic populist whose party is surging in the polls.

 

His Labour government, still smarting from a bruising set of local election results, is now consistently trailing the Brexit godfather's Reform party in public opinion surveys.

 

The insurgent right-wing group — effectively a re-brand of Farage's old Brexit Party — is hoovering up votes from Tories and Labour alike. Its anti-immigration platform has been supercharged by anti-establishment rhetoric and Starmer's own political missteps.

 

Some in Labour fear the high-profile meeting with European Commission and Council presidents Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa could now prove the perfect opportunity for Farage to kick them while they're down.

 

“It's a very difficult time to be resetting relations and the politics need to be handled very carefully,” said one Labour MP, like others in this piece granted anonymity to speak candidly.

 

EU proposals on youth mobility — a system of easy visas to help British and European young people spend time living abroad — as well as future alignment with the bloc's regulations and potential financial contributions to the Brussels budget are all seen as areas of risk.

 

“These are things we did not rule out in the manifesto and unless we prepare our narrative for them coming down the track the Tories and Reform will spin them into attacks,” a second MP from Starmer's party says.

 

Immigration blitz

Downing Street is aware of the risks, and is taking steps to mitigate them. Officials now expect that the only big agreement out of Monday's meeting will be a relatively uncontroversial defense and security pact — with trickier topics like youth mobility expected to be put on a list of subjects for future negotiations.

 

British negotiators are still being ultra-cautious about this document, with one EU official saying “it's been quite tricky to negotiate language” No.10 would agree to.

 

Starmer also used the week ahead of the meeting to announce a blitz of hardline immigration policies aimed squarely at Reform voters. He escalated his rhetoric, too, angering liberals and some of his own MPs by claiming the U.K. risks becoming an “island of strangers” thanks to new arrivals.

 

But far from taking the wind out of Reform's sails, Farage's insurgents believe Starmer's efforts have actually prepared the ground nicely for them ahead of the meeting.

 

A Reform official said the party would concentrate on the disparity between Starmer’s tough immigration rhetoric and his government's newfound openness for a U.K.-EU youth mobility deal.

 

“You’ve got Starmer one week speaking about tight borders and about bringing down immigration. And then the next week, it’s ‘what a fantastic deal to open our borders and have loads of under 30s come in’,” the official said. “He seems to think voters have a memory of a goldfish.”

 

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Reform's Deputy Leader Richard Tice told POLITICO: “If they sell us out then that will politically play to us. But we don't wish ill in order to steal votes; I want the government to stand strong, stand firm and force the EU's hand. I don't want them to sell out.” He added that were Reform in charge “there would not have been a summit — simple as that."

 

A U.K. government official meanwhile said: “We wouldn’t be introducing white paper to bring net migration down only to blow that out the water the next week.” The official said the government was “listening to sensible proposals from EU that would also benefit young Brits," and that the U.K. already had 13 existing youth mobility schemes with other countries.

 

Not just Farage

Britain's beleaguered Tories, too are hoping to use Monday's summit to regroup. Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch — also a committed euroskeptic — has struggled to be heard in Westminster over the din of Reform's poll stampede.

 

She is now turning the noise up to 11, promising to tear up any agreement Starmer signs that crosses strict Brexiteer red lines the second she gets into office.

 

The pledge is unhelpful for the Labour government's negotiators, who are still trying to counteract a lingering perception in Brussels, formed over years of Brexit-induced political instability, that the U.K. may not be an entirely reliable negotiating partner.

 

“Kemi hopes that pledging to reverse Starmer’s EU surrender will send a clear signal to the EU that any lop-sided deal they sign with Labour isn’t worth the paper it’s written on,” a Tory spokesperson said.

 

Badenoch's promise might have spiked Starmer's guns entirely were it not for the fact her path to Downing Street currently looks rather outlandish — with the Tories in third place on 18 percent of the vote and falling.

 

What does Brussels make of these competing pressures on the British prime minister? The general sense among diplomats and officials POLITICO spoke to was that it's not really their puzzle to solve.

 

“We obviously keep an eye on domestic political developments in the U.K., but ultimately it's up to Starmer himself to make the calculation of what he might or might not be able to sell back home and bring that to the table,” one EU diplomat said.

 

If Starmer can pull it all off, there may be political rewards. Despite the focus in Westminster on euroskeptic-leaning Reform voters, opinion polls suggest the wider British public do actually want a closer relationship with their European neighbours — and by quite a large margin.

 

Pollster YouGov found on the eve of the meeting that the supposedly controversial youth mobility scheme is backed by 63 percent of voters to 17 percent opposed, despite all the noise. Similar majorities of people support aligning with EU rules on agrifoods and wider product standards, as well as a defense pact, and a common customs area. What's more, YouGov's numbers also suggest Labour is actually losing more voters to the pro-European Liberal Democrats and Green Party than to Reform.

 

“Just four percent of people who voted Labour last July believe the deal currently being talked about, 'goes too far',” said Labour MP Andrew Lewin, who also chairs the independent UK Trade and Business Commission, which pushes for closer EU ties. “A clear majority of voters who put my party in power are ready for a closer relationship with the European Union.”

 

Another Labour MP was less diplomatic: “History won’t look kindly on a Labour leader who flinched at the sound of Reform’s drumbeat," they said. “If the prime minister chooses to chase Farage’s shadow instead of a better deal with Europe, he won’t just be squandering Britain’s future — he’ll be volunteering for a place alongside those who sold the country a lie and called it sovereignty.”

 

How Starmer has chosen to play his hand will become clearer on Mond

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