Beware Labour’s desire to get cosy with Europe

There was nothing seriously unexpected in Rachel Reeves’s speech today to EU finance ministers. Most of it was non-committal flim-flam: ‘I believe that a closer economic relationship between the UK and the EU is not a zero-sum game. It’s about improving both our growth prospects.’ Making reference to ‘breaking down barriers’ and relationships ‘built on trust, mutual respect and pragmatism’ isn’t going to excite anyone.

One suspects Reeves’s niceties are more for home than European consumption: a dig at the Tories, and a repetition of the pre-election party line that Labour wants a grown-up rather than argumentative relation with Brussels. Nevertheless there are lurking dangers.

For one thing we must be cautious about being too conciliatory towards Brussels at this stage. There are markers that need to be put down but haven’t been. Plans, for example, for the approximation of animal and plant safety provisions have already been floated by Labour in the name of easing trade: innocent sounding at first sight, these could reintroduce by the back door a great deal of the EU micromanagement of the food and farming industry that Brexit freed us from.