Britain
will not rejoin EU in my lifetime, says Starmer
Labour
leader also says he cannot foresee circumstances where UK would re-enter single
market or customs union
Kiran Stacey
Political correspondent
Wed 3 Jul
2024 17.00 BST
Keir Starmer
has insisted the UK will not rejoin either the EU, the single market or the
customs union within his lifetime, in his firmest pledge yet that Labour will
not seek much closer relations with Europe for as long as he is prime minister.
The Labour
leader told reporters on Wednesday he did not think Britain would go back into
any of the three blocs while he was alive, all but ruling out rejoining even if
he wins a second term in office.
In recent
days, the Labour leader has begun talking more freely about what his party
would do in power, as polls continue to suggest it is heading for a landslide
victory. He also said on Wednesday, for example, that he would seek to extend
the parliamentary timetable immediately after the election to allow more time
to legislate before the summer.
With less
than 24 hours to go until polls open, Starmer has largely avoided talking about
relations with the EU during the campaign, as Labour seeks to avoid the
mistakes it made in 2019 when it alienated Leave voters by promising a second
referendum.
Some have
suggested this reluctance to talk about the issue masked a desire to pursue
re-entry to the customs union or single market during a second Labour term,
something other senior figures in the party have failed to rule out. Starmer
insisted on Wednesday, however, this was not the case.
Asked
whether he could see any circumstances where the UK rejoined the single market
or customs union within his lifetime, Starmer said: “No. I don’t think that
that is going to happen. I’ve been really clear about not rejoining the EU, the
single market or the customs union – or [allowing a] return to freedom of
movement.”
He repeated,
however, his view that Labour could achieve better trading arrangements with
the EU in certain industries. “I do think we could get a better deal than the
botched deal we got under Boris Johnson on the trading front, in research and
development and on security,” he said.
Starmer
spent his final day on the campaign trail travelling around the UK, starting
with a stop in south Wales attended by dozens of Labour activists and
candidates.
On the
subject of a legislative programme, he said: “How much legislation we will be
through by the end of July I think is questionable, because the timetable is
very tight, although it seems obvious to me that we’ll have to extend the
timetable. We will be working very hard.”
Starmer’s
first days in office are likely to be spent battling various crises – including
one in Britain’s full-up prisons, which the Institute for Government suggested
on Wednesday could be alleviated by cutting average sentences.
Starmer
suggested on Wednesday he was open to such an idea, saying: “In terms of the
specific things that we will do, we’ll have to wait and see what that is, but I
can’t stand here and pretend to you or everybody else that we can build a
prison in 24 hours after the election result is called.
“We have to
get on with the hard yards of sorting this mess out, but it is one massive
mess.”
As well as
the immediate crises with which he will be grappling, Starmer has also begun to
talk about the long-term challenges facing a Labour government, including
taking on the threat of rightwing populism.
He told
reporters he saw it as part of his job as a progressive leader to combat the
appeal of parties such as Reform UK, and even suggested he would be willing to
work across party lines to do so. Such a scenario is playing out in France,
where candidates from centre-left and centre-right parties are dropping out of
the legislative election to make sure they do not stand in the way of others
defeating the hard-right National Rally.
Starmer
said: “The very many challenges here in Europe and across the world will have
to be met, in my view, by progressive answers. And it falls to us to make that
argument – and to work with others to make that argument.”
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