Analysis
Starmer’s
post-Brexit reset offers clear benefits – but there is political risk too
Jessica
Elgot
Deputy
political editor
While
getting UK-EU deal through parliament should be easy enough, cries of
‘betrayal’ may chime with some voters
Deal with EU
will make food cheaper and add £9bn to UK economy, says No 10
Mon 19 May
2025 19.25 BST
There were
two moments at the UK-EU summit where it felt as if a corner had truly been
turned. It was not on agrifoods, nor youth mobility, defence or fishing.
When Keir
Starmer said the UK had changed, the most symbolic evidence of that came in a
press release from No 10 that set out the terms of the agreement brokered at
Lancaster House.
It
acknowledged, for the first time, what successive British governments have
spent years denying – that Brexit has damaged Britain. It laid out the figures:
the UK has suffered a “21% drop in exports and 7% drop in imports”. Finally,
the charade is over.
And the
British public know that. Half of Britons now say the decision to leave the EU
was the wrong one and significant numbers of those who did not vote or were too
young to vote think Brexit was the wrong decision. Poll after poll suggests the
British public believe the UK is now worse off – although often that stops
short of a demand that the UK rejoin.
Second, and
equally symbolic, was the acknowledgment that the changes proposed would
require a vote in parliament. That confirmation came from No 10 almost as an
afterthought.
But there
was a time not so long ago when the prospect of a vote in parliament on a deal
like this would have been the top line of every news story. Gone are the days
when Steve Baker or Bill Cash would be on the bulletins crying foul at every
line of compromise.
Starmer is
the first prime minister in more than a decade who doesn’t have to worry about
that vote at all, despite some Labour MPs who, in “red wall” seats facing
Reform, feel nervous. But most of Starmer’s parliamentary party would probably
prefer to see a deal that went even further.
There will
be no anguished briefings from rebel Conservative Eurosceptics who once in
effective held Downing Street hostage and brought down two prime ministers.
Kemi Badenoch’s vow to oppose all the changes was irrelevant.
It is that
radically changed approach and circumstance – referred to time and again by
Ursula von der Leyen as she praised “dear Keir” at Monday’s press conference –
which has seen this EU reset over the line less than six months after Starmer
set the date.
But that
stability in parliament certainly does not mean that there is no political risk
to this deal. There will be a battle on the front pages and the airwaves to set
the narrative. Starmer’s main political rival now is not a wounded Tory party
but the far more dangerous godfather of Brexit, Nigel Farage.
On Monday
night, Starmer finally made that case to Labour MPs, vowing that he would fight
Farage “as Labour” – a tacit acknowledgment that he has perhaps aped his
opponent’s language too much on issue like migration.
But he said
he would make the case that Reform UK’s plans for Britain would make people
poorer, dismissing the Conservatives as no longer Labour’s principle rival.
Farage, he
said, was “a state-slashing, NHS-privatising Putin apologist. Without a single
patriotic bone in his body. We will take the fight to him. We will fight as
Labour.
“We must
repair the social contract. We must unite the country against Reform. We must
tackle the cost-of-living crisis. And we must show that we are the party – the
only party – that can deliver change for working people,” he added.
For Starmer,
it will be a race to sell the benefits of his agrifoods and energy deals –
cheaper food and cheaper energy bills – combined with quicker queues at the
airport for frustrated Britons trying to placate their children as they land
from their holidays. Practical delivery versus ideology.
From Farage
and Badenoch, there are cries of betrayal on two fronts. The first is fishing:
a 12-year deal to keep the status quo when the industry had hoped for better
terms from 2026. That was the price of a permanent agrifoods deal, worth so
much more to the economy but potentially at the expense of such a symbolically
important British industry.
And the
second is the sense that Britain has crossed the Rubicon that makes it a
rule-taker, agreeing dynamic alignment on standards and a role for the European
court of justice.
No 10 is
gambling that the public has lost interest in much of the technical aspects of
the trade talks, as long as Brexit negotiations do not dominate the media
discourse or are not seen to be distracting senior politicians from domestic
matters.
But there is
also a risk of a distracted public – that voters already inclined to feel angry
towards the government will see headlines about a “Brexit betrayal” and assume
the worst, without reading the details. It is this arena where Farage has
always had his greatest success.
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