With Keir Starmer’s Labour, political definition comes in a series of negatives. The greatest clarity is found in the things he has ruled out. And there are few issues where he has been more emphatic than what he does not intend to do about Brexit.
The man who secured the Labour leadership with his stand against Brexit has drawn the kind of red lines which once delighted Tory Leavers. Labour would not seek to rejoin the single market or customs union or to restore freedom of movement. Officially, Starmer seeks only incremental advances: a veterinary regulations agreement, mutual recognition of qualifications, returning to the Erasmus student exchange scheme and easier youth mobility.
Even these are not simple. Labour would want a bespoke sanitary and phytosanitary veterinary deal, mutual qualification recognition is complex to deliver and greater mobility would also mean more EU arrivals, though the party hope for progress on short-term work visas (particularly in the creative industries).
Until recently, Labour’s focus has been on a looming review of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement as the way to revisit disadvantageous aspects of the post-Brexit deal. But there is little evidence that the European Commission has any appetite for reopening a settlement it found favourable. In Brussels the review is seen more as operational.
So Labour’s thinking is shifting. There are signs it is looking beyond the review, which one insider refers to as “a bit of a red herring”, for other ways to rebuild a relationship with the EU and lay the groundwork for some commercial realignment. The party now sees a new security and defence pact as an alternative and more productive path back.
Defence strategists are enthusiasts for a pact which goes beyond the European Political Community, a grouping of 40 countries that amounts to little more than a forum for heads of government. Labour’s vision is for a highly structured body, probably with its own budget and secretariat and regular ministerial and official-level contacts.
The pact would be important in itself. The invasion of Ukraine and the prospect of a second Trump presidency have reminded both sides of the UK’s role in European defence — and the case for pulling it back into the EU’s broader orbit.
But senior Labour figures, including Starmer and shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, believe there is scope for a very broad definition of security. This would allow them to push in to a number of other areas including energy and the economy, such as joint agreements on critical raw materials.
Ever the former chief prosecutor, Starmer’s first priority would be to use the pact to improve British access to EU criminal data. While the TCA allows the UK to request and receive criminal data, it has lost real time access to Schengen area data, is no longer a member of Europol and has seen its access to a European arrest warrant downgraded to an extradition deal with liaison officers at Europol’s headquarters in The Hague. Starmer would also like to see the UK regain some influence over Europol investigations. Unlike the Tories, Starmer is less troubled by the thought that this may require ceding some jurisdiction to the European Court of Justice.
On clean energy, an expanded definition of security could mean linking emission trading schemes. Others inside Labour note favourably that Community, the steelworkers’ trade union, is arguing for the UK to join or align itself with the EU’s new carbon tariff system, though there is a lot of detail to work through before that can happen. Another area being discussed is AI regulation, although Brussels would resist allowing the UK into US/EU trade and tech discussions.
Starmer has also talked up a refugee deal, though the politics may prove difficult if it means the UK taking more people than it removes. Co-operation on defence procurement is another long-term goal — in the early stages this is more likely to be about shared missions, such as supplying ordnance to Ukraine. Above all, the value of these structures is their potential to rebuild regular contact and trust between officials and ministers.
Is this really a platform for a wider relationship? Up to a point perhaps. Much depends on the EU’s desire to at least partially reintegrate the UK. Not much will happen in the early days. The commission’s aversion to “cherry-picking” remains and little official work has been done at the UK end.
But Labour sees the pact opening doors. Insiders also point to the party’s plans to bolster employee rights as proof the EU can forget Brexiters’ overblown talk of a deregulated “Singapore-on-Thames”. There is little prospect of major moves on financial services — a notion resisted by the Treasury — but Labour is instinctively more relaxed about other regulatory alignment. As one senior figure puts it, “We are not interested in divergence for divergence sake.”
For pro-Europeans and business figures, this will be neither far nor fast enough — their best hope is that Starmer rethinks his red lines in a second term. While these moves will not quickly deliver major economic change, each of them begins to breach the dams erected by the Tories. In Labour’s expansive definition of security, it is possible to glimpse the first steps towards reimagining the Brexit settlement.
robert.shrimsley@ft.com