Is ‘Goldilocks’ Starmer chasing a Brexit fairytale?

Such is the state of Brexit that even Nigel Farage said a few months ago that it had been a “failure”. Of course, old Nige meant that we currently have a botched, partial Brexit rather than his, rather phantasmagoric version of a “real Brexit” – the one, if necessary, where the UK would thrive without even a free trade agreement with our biggest and closest economic neighbours.

Even if he were right, however, it doesn’t seem intuitively obvious that, if Brexit has been a flop because of all the obstacles to business it has created, then “more Brexit” and erecting yet more barriers is the answer.

In short, the British people, broadly disillusioned with the way Brexit hasn’t yielded many of the great advantages promised for it, want rather “less Brexit” than we’re “enjoying” at the moment.

This is the lucrative political space in Brexit that has opened up in recent years, and which Keir Starmer has correctly identified. Starmer wants to “make Brexit work”, and redraw the flawed, rushed deal that Boris Johnson and David Frost concluded in 2019-20. So, embarrassingly for the Tories, does the government.

Rishi Sunak tore up the Northern Ireland Protocol and substituted the Windsor Framework. New trade barriers on this side of the English Channel due to come in years ago have been postponed and postponed again and are for all practical purposes ignored. The “CE” conformity badge is accepted and the new British regulatory “Kitemark” has been abandoned. We have rejoined the Horizon research community. Right now, ministers are desperately seeking a rewrite on the problematic rules of origin for trade in electric cars. If renegotiating Brexit is such a bad idea, why is the Conservative government busily engaged in it now?

Starmer has also seized on the clause in the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), the Brexit treaty, that promises a review of its workings after every five years (so 30 December 2025 into 2026). What, one might reasonably ask, is wrong with making Brexit work much better – and for all sides?

Starmer does seem to have caught the public mood, perhaps in a way he didn’t while he was in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet and campaigning for a second referendum or, indeed, when he campaigned for the Labour leadership and promised to “protect freedom of movement as we leave the EU”. It’s now Goldilocks Starmer: not too soft a Brexit, so we don’t get free movement back; but not too hard a Brexit that we can’t make a living out of trading freely in services, say. He wants one that’s “just right” for Britain. Trouble is, it doesn’t exist.

Support for rejoining the EU isn’t yet overwhelming and is rather weak if conditions such as joining the euro are thrown into the mix. We also know that the nation certainly doesn’t want to go through the traumas of the last referendum again anyway. But a kinder, gentler relationship? One where we cooperate more and don’t insult each other? Where we can come up with solutions to problems in trade, migration and security for mutual advantage – without reversing Brexit or joining the EU single market, customs union and reinstating freedom of movement? Sounds quite appealing after a decade of acrimony.

A new settlement for a new era, shall we say? The groundwork and optics for Starmer to emerge as a great European, indeed global statesman, are being carefully constructed: the handshakes with Justin Trudeau, the leaked chats to Obama, the upcoming summit with Macron. Starmer is promising to restore Britain’s place in the world and in Europe.

If only. Sorry to dispel the exuberant hopes, but it does seem like Starmer is in reality the latest of a long line of British politicians, of all parties, to fall prey to “cakeism”.

It does, after all, take two to tango in Brussels (actually 27 EU members plus the UK on a crowded dancefloor), and there are strong reasons to believe that the EU neither wants nor needs to give Starmer the deal he strives for.

If the next Labour government would like to have easier movement of food and livestock, people like lawyers and architects working without restriction in the EU, faster movements through passport control, defence and security cooperation, sensible mutually agreed regulatory alignments, a revived Dublin protocol on returning people arriving in the UK by irregular means, the EU space programme and all the rest – well, what is the UK offering in return? What’s in it for the EU? British leaders used to argue that opt-outs, compromises and special derogations would help keep the UK in the EU and neutralise the Eurosceptics. We no longer have that card.

Starmer won’t be allowed to cherry-pick. Fish will be in play, as will migration policy and visas, perhaps even contributions to certain budgets…

There is a sorry pattern here. A new British prime minister insists that only they have the diplomatic skills, political empathy and goodwill to repair UK relations with Europe and place them on a more sustainable footing, and, sotto voce, to the advantage of the British. Then things go wrong.

John Major promised his friend Chancellor Kohl of Germany and the world he would put Britain “at the heart of Europe”. A few years later we were in a “beef war” with Brussels and vetoing EU laws out of spite. Tony Blair spoke in fluent French of his desire to end all that, and for Britain to resume its position of leadership – until the Nice treaty and the EU constitution had him pulling his hair out.

David Cameron thought he could get a great new deal out of Chancellor Merkel and win the Brexit referendum. “I can do this,” Cameron told worried colleagues. He couldn’t. Neither could Theresa May bridge the gap between British and European aspirations. Johnson only did so superficially and by betraying his (unwise) promises to Northern Ireland and giving away much else in his dash to “get Brexit done” and “unleash Britain’s potential” – in the words of his 2019 manifesto.

Yet, as Sunak, Starmer and the rest of us know Brexit, will never be “done”, and Britain’s potential will remain sadly dormant. The TCA review in 2025-26 is supposed to be a technical, low-level affair, not a renegotiation as Starmer suggests.

The EU doesn’t want to reform the TCA and create something that represents a whole new treaty, complete with cross-continental ratification across all national and regional parliaments. It’s utterly unrealistic, but it’s the only way he can deliver on his promises: altering a few rules about vets in Stranraer won’t boost UK investment and the growth rate.

I’m only wondering what Starmer’s excuse will be when he inevitably fails. I suspect he’ll blame Brussels. We usually do.