Keir Starmer is being accused of “betraying the 2016 Brexit vote” by seeking, in his “Brexit Reset” today, a closer relationship with the EU in an effort to improve our economy. And here’s why we shouldn’t care.
The Brexit vote was nearly 10 years ago. We voted on it before we’d even negotiated what Britain’s new relationship with the EU would be. Everyone, including the parties who supported it, thinks the new relationship is a disaster. And we’re in a poverty crisis that matters a lot more than all of the above. The only betrayal would be tolerating that poverty by not going far enough against Brexit.
Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has said for years that it would not take us back into the EU single market or customs union. The single market is the system by which EU countries have the same rules for products and services, so that anything made in one country is automatically legal to sell in another. The customs union is how the EU negotiates trade deals as a single bloc.
Both mean that EU countries can sell products and services to each other without the need for checks or paperwork, which keeps prices down. And leaving the single market and the customs union was not on the ballot paper in 2016. Norway, for example – a non-EU country – is in the single market.
In fact, Daniel Hannan, a member of the committee for the Vote Leave campaign, said: “Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market.” And in each of the following elections, the majority voted for parties that promised to retain all the benefits of the single market.
So Starmer’s red lines about staying out of the single market and the customs union have no basis in democracy. He’s just making it harder for himself to properly address the cost of living crisis, by tying his own hands during these negotiations. And there’s no apparent reason for him to do so.
Last week, the prime minister announced a major crackdown on immigration. He said that failing to control the number of people coming here risked turning the UK into an “island of strangers”. Downing Street denies deliberately parroting Enoch Powell’s famous “rivers of blood” speech, in which Powell he said immigration would make Brits “strangers in their own country”. But the fact that a Labour politician’s words could even be considered to be a homage to one of the most famous racists in UK history should raise not just alarm bells, but the question “Why?”
The answer is simple: the Reform party.
Starmer is avoiding going too far in undoing Brexit, and is parroting racist lines about immigration, because he’s scared of losing votes to Reform. But you either believe progressive policies are good for people, or you don’t.
If you do, then be progressive – talk progressively and enact progressive policies, so that people can see in their bank balances and their kids’ bellies that left-wing politicians are on their side.
Making our trade with Europe less expensive – in order to fight poverty – while blaming immigrants and maintaining that staying out of the single market is in the national interest just looks confused. It sends the message that people’s lives would be better if they went with a party like Reform – a party that is rabidly pro-Brexit and unashamedly hostile towards immigration.
The irony is that Starmer’s fear of Nigel Farage becoming prime minister is what is preventing him from properly addressing the cost of living crisis. And that fear of a Reform PM is what will deliver a Reform PM.
This is particularly ludicrous given that several Reform party politicians have admitted that Brexit is making us poorer – and that if they were in charge, they would damage our food supply for the next 20 years by pursuing a no-deal Brexit. And we’re expected to believe that Starmer, one of the most successful lawyers in the country, couldn’t win a debate about whether Brexit is bad for working-class people against a party that has admitted that Brexit is bad for working-class people?
If we’re aligning with EU rules to make our supply chains cheaper and lower the cost of living, then just say we’re moving towards the single market because it’s in the national interest to do so. These red lines are only slowing us down.
As with any positive change in human history, one shudders to think of the number of people whose lives would have been saved, or drastically improved, if that change had come just a few years sooner.
We know Brexit is making people poorer. Every medical body in the UK says Brexit is damaging the NHS. And we know poverty and sickness cost lives.
So the question is: how many lives are going to keep being ruined because Starmer is too scared to put his foot down?
Labour’s Brexit reset should be an easy win for Starmer – shame it’s too late
The UK-EU summit is a welcome chance to start fixing the damage caused by Brexit
The Trump plan to send Gazans to Libya is as stupid as it is evil
The world must speak out against Israel’s brutal war and Gaza’s suffering
I have the same disease as 1 in 100 people – but I’ve never felt lonelier
Why Gen Z and millennial women are done with the dating apps and opting for Mr Darcy
