21 September 2023

FT: Can Keir Starmer reset Britain’s Brexit deal?

Experts say Labour leader has limited how far UK’s trading relationship with EU can be improved. Sir Keir Starmer has promised to try to get a “much better” Brexit deal for the UK if he wins the general election expected next year.

But although the leader of the UK’s opposition Labour party described the deal negotiated by then prime minister Boris Johnson in 2020 as “far too thin”, he has ruled out forming a customs union with the EU and seeking membership of the single market.

What could the Labour leader achieve within the Brexit “red lines” that he has set himself? When could Starmer negotiate a reset? Starmer’s advisers believe that his election would create a diplomatic inflection point that could allow him to draw a line under eight years of often bruising negotiations between London and Brussels under successive Conservative governments.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has already improved relations with the EU, concluding his Windsor framework deal to break the diplomatic deadlock over post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland and taking up membership of the Horizon Europe science exchange programme.

Starmer could look to build on this limited progress via the five-yearly “implementation review” of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which can begin from the start of 2026. Can the UK get the EU to improve the TCA? Trade and diplomacy experts warn that while the UK is fretting about the fallout of the TCA for its exporters, in most European capitals Brexit is yesterday’s problem. Senior EU officials say the bloc is now focused on issues such as immigration, net zero, energy security and plans for Ukraine to become a member state. “There’s little appetite to reopen the Brexit psychodrama in Brussels,” said one, ahead of Starmer’s trip to Paris this week to meet French president Emmanuel Macron, which has been touted as laying the early groundwork for a reset.

Charles Grant, the director of the Centre for European Reform think-tank, warned that the EU side had “many other priorities” and any initiative from a Labour government would require careful framing and a clear “offer”....

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