Keir Starmer’s plans to soften Brexit

Anew political bromance is brewing on the continent. Keir Starmer has met Olaf Scholz, his German counterpart, three times since he entered Downing Street last month. Already the two men have found plenty in common. Both are social democrats, both are lawyers from similar backgrounds and both went through a socialist phase before selling themselves on competence. ‘Charisma is largely alien to them,’ said Der Spiegel after the two met recently at Blenheim Palace. ‘Perhaps this is why they like each other so much.’

Most importantly, Starmer and Scholz are both very keen for a new, closer relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union.

Under the strategy, it seems, Britain would unilaterally but informally agree to match EU regulations

After Starmer won the Labour leadership in 2020, he quickly did what he could to dispel the notion that he was a diehard Remainer (even if he did once cite Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’, the EU anthem, as the tune that best sums up the Labour party). The new Labour leader, who had called for a second referendum during the Brexit years, changed tack and said there would be no going back. This was partly down to a calculation by his own team that accepting the referendum result would be vital to bringing back disillusioned Labour voters in northern heartlands.

Although every cabinet member backed Remain, Labour ministers now rigorously stick to the script on Starmer’s Brexit red lines: Britain will not rejoin the single market or customs union. David Lammy, now Foreign Secretary, spent several years campaigning for the undoing of Brexit – even after other Labour MPs let the subject drop. He’d quote Martin Luther King to his colleagues, saying that ‘silence is betrayal’. Yet even he, now, is silent about his own sympathies.