Can Keir Starmer ride two horses without falling off? - Brian Monteith

Three months into his premiership and Sir Keir Starmer is in trouble, serious trouble. The latest poll from Opinium reveals his personal leadership rating has crashed from a positive 19 percent when he became prime minister to a negative 26 percent now. Falling 45 points so quickly is not a good start.

The removal of the Winter Fuel Allowance from ten million pensioners while awarding generous public sector pay awards was always going to be unpopular, but to do so knowing he has been taking expensive gifts to kit out his and his wife’s wardrobe – and that these would eventually have to be declared as donations – suggests an incredulous level of arrogance that risks haunting him for the next five years.

With the Halloween Budget still to come, which the Prime Minister has framed as likely to be painful, he faces seeing his popularity ratings drop even further.

The PM must steer a course that pleases biddable sections of the electorate and he believes one of those is delivering an improved relationship with the EU. Starmer is talking up the prospect of closer ties with Germany, Italy and Spain, but so far it is only warm words – the EU has therefore called his bluff by dangling the idea of an under thirties freedom of movement agreement with the UK.

The deal looks great for the EU with its 72.45 million citizens aged 15-30 from 27 countries gaining free and easy access to the UK, but the UK’s 12.3 million 15-30 year-olds would gain access to only one EU country in return. Add to that the probable demand for free university education for EU students and it would become a very expensive trade for very little, not least when evidence shows the majority of young Brits prefer to go to North America and Australia anyway.

With the number of illegal migrants arriving from the EU to claim refugee status showing no signs of abating, the danger for Starmer is the impact on Labour seats in its red wall only just regained from the Conservatives. This time the threat will come not from a Tory revival but from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party making inroads in the 89 Labour seats where it is placed second. One poll already reports one-in-four Labour voters considering backing Reform.

Friendly EU-vibes is one thing, but accepting more young people legally or illegally in the competition for jobs, student places, housing and healthcare is a great risk when Farage now has a parliamentary bridgehead to go on the attack against Labour.

Many commentators talk glibly as if the British people would easily sign up to EU membership, but get into details of issues and the outcome is nowhere as clear cut. The pollster Omnisis has asked a representative sample of the British public over 50 times in the past two years (roughly every fortnight), whether or not they would rejoin the EU if it meant accepting the Euro (a pre-condition of entry). Every time the majority opted to stay out.

It is all too easy to forget the European Union now is an entirely different beast from that which the British people voted to leave eight years ago – and with every year that passes it diverges further away from the UK.

It is now more regulated than before and the resulting costs of rejoining would consequently be far larger. In addition, there are a number of liabilities the EU has established we would be expected to take on, and then there’s the €800bn of spending former ECB president Mario Draghi called for this month in a coruscating report condemning the EU’s smothering of business.

An example of the growing regulatory burden bringing huge costs is the EU’s Deforestation-free products Regulation (EUDR) due to come into force next year. This requires all producers of various foods and goods to provide traceability that deforestation was not required for an item or an ingredient in its production. It extends not just to all member states but in particular to countries exporting into the EU.

Given European countries conducted their own deforestation over the centuries before their coal and steel industries reduced the need for timber to provide fuel or build navies it is blatant protectionism dressed as environmentalism.

The complexity is immense and the cost huge. No wonder EU President Ursula von der Leyen’s own party in Germany, the EPP, and Chancellor Olaf Scholz himself, have called for a two-year delay to EUDR – like the governments of Czechia, Austria, Finland, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Sweden. Outside the EU, the US and Brazil have also requested a similar delay.

Livestock farmers and processed food manufacturers in Scotland and the UK are also very concerned about the EU restrictions they will face and the lack of action by the UK government to help deal with EU demands. These regulations don’t have to be met to make similar exports from the UK to the US, Japan or other markets, only to the EU, but thanks to the Windsor Agreement any UK exports to Northern Ireland would also have to comply.

And for what? Great strides are already being made by the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil certification scheme covering 98 per cent of farmers. Yet estimates suggest EU regulations will add $1.5bn to palm oil and rubber producers’ costs, to be passed on to customers or drive farmers out of business. The result will risk greater deforestation as poverty stricken farmers turn towards growing lucrative narcotics. It is typical EU overreach.

If Starmer is intending to establish UK membership of the EU it will likely be in a possible second term, involving support from the Liberal Democrats if needed. Until then expect him to continue riding two horses; one foot each on the Europhile and Brexiteer steers. As both want to gallop in different directions the chances are he will fall flat on his face and take many Labour MPs with him.

Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments and communications director of Global Britain