Is Keir Starmer really about to start renegotiating Brexit?

People who think they’re going to be the next prime minister have a tendency to do slightly mad things. Neil Kinnock helicoptered into a mass rally in Sheffield and shouted the words, “We’re all right!” over and over again, before losing the election eight days later. Jeremy Corbyn went to Glastonbury. Ed Miliband decided it was very important for him to seek the endorsement of Russell Brand, who both before and after had been issuing clear instructions not to bother voting at all.

But it is possible that Keir Starmer has outdone them all. For he really has gone to Paris to start renegotiating Brexit. It’s not to say it’s a bad idea. It doesn’t appear to have escaped the attention of quite a few of the people who voted to ”Get Brexit Done” four years ago, more out of desperation than actual hope, that Brexit has not been got done.

But that is not to say that those people are in any way clear of the denial phase of grief. There is a story around today that suggests that Macron is seeking to create an even more integrated central European Union for France, Germany and other so-inclined countries, with the possibility of an “outer tier” or “association membership” for the United Kingdom, which might involve commitments on trade or regulation... and as these words exit my fingers I really can feel my stomach hitting the floor.

Could it really be that this time next year, we will again have a prime minister making constant trips to European capitals and negotiating a new relationship between the EU and the UK? Can any of us say that we are ready for such things as the Reeves Amendment? The Lammy Compromise? Single Market 3.0? Could the backstop be resurrected from the bin?

All sane analysis makes clear that Brexit has left the UK vastly poorer, and therefore having to pay more tax not to improve public services but merely to slow down the speed at which they are collapsing. (That is why Liz Truss, yes her, is still talking about the need to “grow the pie”, even though when left alone with the pie for barely a second, the whole world walked in and saw what she did to it, not unlike Jim’s dad in the pie-based coming-of-age movie American Pie.)

But what the British public have not been asked is whether, actually, they’re still fine with it. Brexit is estimated to have cost the average UK household more than £1,000 a year. That is a catastrophic waste of money, but if anyone knocked on my door right now, and said I’ll give you that money back, but all you’ve got to do is sit through three years of Brexit renegotiations, I fear they might get the door shut on them even faster than if they were offering to jet wash the driveway.

Starmer, for his part, has described the meeting as “constructive and positive”, but said it began with warnings that attempts to renegotiate Brexit are entirely futile for as long as he is committed not to rejoining either the single market or the customs union, two things which would improve the UK’s economic outlook instantly, but in a country rendered politically dysfunctional by Brexit, would also be considered electoral suicide.

So it can only be concluded that deeper negotiations are potentially afoot. That there is to be a whole new EU – and a whole new place for Britain in it. It’s hard to say, given what came after, whether it’s possible to be nostalgic for the years 2016 to 2019. They felt historic at the time, even though absolutely no one can remember why. Oh well, we’ll know soon enough.