Starmer’s savvy Brexit position

Keir Starmer has made the anodyne demand that Britain seek a ‘closer trading agreement’ with the EU. But why doesn’t he go the whole hog and make it Labour policy to rejoin the single market? 

The Labour leader could hardly be accused of seeking to reverse Brexit. Some Leavers, prior to the 2016 referendum, wanted Britain to stay in the single market after Brexit – including Daniel Hannan and, on many occasions, Boris Johnson. So surely rejoining the single market, but staying out of the EU, could be the compromise which would please the greatest number of the public, propelling Starmer into Downing Street as a unifying force? What’s more, he would win a huge slice of the business vote, such as that of car-maker Vauxhall and its parent company Stellantis which warned this morning that the UK car industry is doomed unless trading relations improve with the EU. One of its bugbears is that zero tariffs on cars exported from Britain to the EU only apply if 45 per cent of the value of a the components that go into the car are made in either the UK or the EU.