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
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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