Starmer is being called out for “shamelessly” crawling back to his EU allies. Now he has a strategy to become closer to his EU partners.
Sir Keir Starmer was accused of “shamelessly” leveraging the Iran war to overturn Brexit. Last night, he intimated that the UK may rejoin the single market in all but name.
The Prime Minister added that dealing with the effects of the Middle East conflict, which has strained the UK’s ties with the US, “requires closer partnership with our allies in Europe and with the European Union.”
At a news conference at Downing Street, he stated that reconnecting with Brussels would generate “too big to ignore” economic and security prospects. He also said that becoming closer to the single market was “hugely in our economic interest.”
But yesterday night, Shadow Foreign Secretary Dame Priti Patel said that Sir Keir was seeking to “reopen old Brexit wounds” to take attention away from the “mess” that Labour made of the economy.
She said that the Prime Minister was “desperate for someone or something to blame for the terrible mistakes he has made, and that he is focused on Brexit.”
Sir Simon Clarke, a former Tory Cabinet minister, said that Sir Keir was “shamelessly using war in the Gulf to effectively reverse Brexit,” which he had always planned to do.
Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform UK, said it was “ridiculous” to get close to the EU, which he called “a failing economic bloc that has a long history of not investing in defence.”
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, who used to be the minister for Brexit possibilities, encouraged the Conservatives to make it plain that they would undo any attempt to bring the UK back into the orbit of Brussels. “Labour are fundamentally wrong about this,” he told the Daily Mail.In the past few years, the UK has done better than France, Germany, and Italy’s economy.The increasing cost of electricity is an issue for us since we are so focused on Net Zero. It won’t work to connect us with economies that are even weaker than ours.Keir Starmer has always intended to halt Brexit, and it’s dishonest to say that this is anything more than another means to do that. “The Conservative Party and Reform need to make it very clear to the EU that they will reverse anything Starmer signs up to, without compensation.”
Senior members of the Labour Party have been pressing the Prime Minister to become considerably closer to Brussels. Both Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy and Health Secretary Wes Streeting have said they support rejoining the customs union. London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan is also campaigning for Labour to rejoin the EU.
Sir Keir indicated yesterday that there would be a UK-EU meeting this summer and that he was “ambitious” about the possibility of the UK becoming closer to Brussels.
The Prime Minister, who indicated during the election that he respects the result of the 2016 referendum, now says that Brexit “did deep damage to our economy.”
He said he would not break Labour’s promises to stay out of the customs union, single market, and free mobility.
But when asked if he thought the country was moving back toward the single market, he answered, “The steps we’ve taken so far have been in relation to the single market, and I’m ambitious that we could do more because I think that’s hugely in our economic interest.”
Ministers have already agreed on the main points of a food and farming deal. This will mean that those industries will have to follow EU rules all the time, even though Britain won’t have any say in how new laws are made.
The government has also agreed to rejoin the EU’s Erasmus education program, which would cost up to £6 billion over seven years. This is three times the amount that previous Tory PM Boris Johnson turned down because it was too expensive.
The Cabinet Office is now looking through the rest of the economy to find places where the UK could work with Brussels.
A Labour source added, “We want to get rid of the Tory Brexit hurdles that slowed growth and raised prices. We want to replace the paperwork fee at the border and their
“ideological fantasy” with “common-sense economic reality” that helps the continent’s economy stay strong.