Labour leader Keir Starmer will rule out the prospect of the UK rejoining the EU’s single market, describing it as “a recipe for more division” in a speech on Monday evening (4 July).
In a speech at the Centre for European Reform thinktank, Starmer will say that joining the single market “would distract us from taking on the challenges facing people, and it would ensure Britain remained stuck for another decade.”
“So let me be very clear: with Labour, Britain will not go back into the EU. We will not be joining the single market. We will not be joining a customs union,” he will add.
“The reason I say this is simple. Nothing about revisiting those rows will help stimulate growth or bring down food prices or help British business thrive in the modern world.”
Labour has opened up a steady lead over UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative party of between 5 and 10% in national opinion polls, but appears to have adopted a tactic of caution: making very few policy promises and hoping instead to benefit from the continued drop in public support for Johnson’s scandal-ridden government.
In response, the Scottish National Party accused Labour of being “now indistinguishable from the Tories on Brexit”, while the Liberal Democrats struck a similar tone to Labour by calling for “a pragmatic approach that works for the UK, cutting pointless red tape, reducing costs for businesses and making people better off as a result.”
The dilemma facing Labour is that while most of its activists are strongly pro-European, a large portion of its traditional supporters outside London voted Leave in the 2016 referendum on EU membership and then deserted the party in favour of Johnson’s Conservatives when it promised a second referendum at the 2019 general election.
Labour lost dozens of seats in the north of England and Wales in its industrial heartlands in 2019, a switch which formed the basis of Boris Johnson’s win with an 80-seat majority. However, there is evidence that many of those voters are returning to Labour because of Johnson’s unpopularity.
While there is no public desire for another referendum, a poll published on Monday by YouGov found that 54% of Britons believe that Brexit is going badly, with 16% believing it’s going well.
The Starmer speech is set to shy away from discussing whether a Labour government would be open to joining the alternative ‘European political community’ outlined by French President Emmanuel Macron. However, with Macron having indicated that this community would bring together countries with ‘shared values’ on freedom of movement, as well as trade and the rule of law, the implication is that this would not be on the table.
It is also unlikely to give clear details on how Labour’s approach to EU trade and relations would differ from the Conservatives’, though Labour has criticised the Johnson government’s plans to walk away from negotiations with the EU and override the Northern Ireland protocol.
Speaking on Sunday at a conference in central London organised by his think tank, former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the UK’s status outside the EU had been settled for a generation.
“We’ve done it legally, we’ve done it politically and it’s not going to be reversed any time soon – let’s say any time in this generation,” he said.
[Edited by Nathalie Weatherald]
Source: euractiv.com
