Why Keir Starmer will be pushover in talks about UK-EU 'reset'

As the news agenda slowly turns away from festive frivolities, we can begin again to analyse what our governments intend to do with the the power they wield over us. So focussed was last year’s general election on domestic issues, such as the economy, that the international agenda hardly figured at all.

Part of the reason for that was the two parties most likely to form a government did not display significant differences that merited campaigning upon. Both were continuing to support Ukraine in its defence against Putin’s aggression, nobody wanted to become embroiled in the coming US presidential elections, and nobody was talking about handing over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius (against the wishes of the Chagosian islanders).

Keir Starmer has said he wants a reset of EU-UK relations (Picture: Benjamin Cremel/pool) | Getty Images

No hostages to fortune

Even Brexit hardly merited much discussion. The Conservatives, still riddled with division in the parliamentary party, would rather it disappeared than talk about its benefits, of which Rishi Sunak could have used at least 75 tangible achievements to put Keir Starmer under pressure.

For Labour, its line was that Brexit was done and in the past – there would be no going back to the single market or customs union. All that was needed were some changes in attitude and tone, and possibly some smoothing of procedures – what would amount to a “reset” of UK-EU relations.

A typical example was when, in April, the EU offered an EU-UK youth mobility scheme for 18-30 year-olds, it was not just rejected as unnecessary by the Conservative government but also by Keir Starmer. Nothing, not anything so damaging to Labour support in the red wall seats he had to win back (like freedom of movement), was going to become a hostage to fortune in the general election campaign.

Behind Starmer’s invisibility cloak

Now, six months on from Keir Starmer’s victory and 2025 will reveal just what he is willing to concede so he may enjoy what he calls greater co-operation and friendlier relations than existed after the UK formally left the EU on January 31, 2020.

Thanks (again) to the focus on Britain’s economy – with businesses now seriously struggling to find any optimism after Labour’s first Budget – there still is little interest being shown in Starmer’s EU reset, so let me point to a number of issues that are likely to rise up our political agenda as Starmer’s cloak of invisibility is pulled back.

As is often the case, we only need to read what the EU is saying in its official communications to know much more than what our own government will admit to, and therefore establish what concessions it expects Starmer and his ace negotiator, Foreign Secretary David Lammy, to make.

Top of the agenda – and being presented as an appetiser without which the EU will not take any other discussions seriously – is a reheated version of the EU’s youth mobility scheme.

Migrants’ rights of access

Why is this so important to the EU members states? Simple, there are 49 million EU citizens compared to 8.5 million British citizens aged between 19 and 29, and for the majority of those countries their youth unemployment is significantly higher. The EU wants all those nations’ youth to have a right of access to the UK, paying only home student tuition fees and having no contribution to free access to the NHS – in return for the UK’s youth having access to only one nominated EU member state of their choice. As well as the attraction of UK employment (often with a higher minimum wage) is the real opportunity to learn English.

This junior freedom of movement would create a further strata of migrants’ rights of access without border checks when in 2023 official figures show 12,000 EU citizens were denied entry because they had served more than a year in jail. It is an utterly unequal deal and should continue to be rejected.

Then there is the demand to open up greater access to the UK’s fishing grounds to increase the catches of EU boats. A poor settlement for Britain’s fishing communities will be made even worse.

It took decades of campaigning by the RSPB and others before the UK implemented a ban last year on the industrial fishing of sandeels in our own waters – to protect the food chain of endangered seabirds such as puffins and kittiwakes. A ban was only possible because of Brexit.

Spider’s web of EU obligations

Other areas to be conceded include veterinary agreements that will primarily benefit EU food exporters, but the chief attraction to the EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is a security agreement which will tie UK defence interests into a spider’s web of obligations to the EU’s foreign policy goals and how we spend our defence budget.

Despite the continued failure of EU foreign policy and desperate lack of military resources, the British foreign policy and defence establishment continue to be entranced with the concept of joint operations commanded to achieve EU goals even if they might differ from our own. Tying up our military procurement spending in preference to using top quality US kit is another EU goal.

A one-way street

What does Starmer want in return? I’ve intentionally not left much space, because what our PM wants is what the EU is asking for – he has never set out any detailed demands. There is no Command Paper, no Green Paper, never mind a White Paper to inform us what Labour wants out of its “reset” for the benefit of the UK.

What about mutual recognition of trading standards instead of the farcical Windsor Agreement? Nope. Nothing. Zilch. Silence.

Starmer will be a pushover. His “reset” will be a one-way street the length of which will be decided by just how much the EU pushes a barrier that is already ajar. With the economy going into a Labour-induced recession, the real reset he needs is a new Chancellor – but that is not on the agenda either. Yet.

Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments and a senior advisor to the Tax Reform Council