In the past six weeks, it has become clear that in one respect at least, Keir Starmer is a man of his word. When he said that he had no intention of taking the UK back into the EU he meant it. Those who thought he was only striking a Eurosceptic pose to please the Europhobic commentariat and gullible Red Wall voters were deceiving themselves. For Keir Starmer, Brexit means Brexit, just as much as it did for Theresa May.

Starmer has admittedly attempted to conceal his commitment to Brexit with soothing talk of a “reset” in EU/UK relations, unrelated to any prospect of rejoining the EU.  Ironically, the only listeners who have taken this mantra seriously are the obsessive Eurosceptics, always on the lookout for the betrayal of their fluky victory in 2016. Everyone else has looked at the Labour government’s contemptuous dismissal of the European Commission’s proposals for youth mobility, its indifference to the Erasmus project and its bizarre enthusiasm for trade with countries on the other side of the world—-and drawn the only possible conclusion, that the government of Starmer is no less committed to Brexit than was that of Rishi Sunak.

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Among Labour’s membership and MPs, there will be many uneasy at the Starmerite attempt to pursue Brexit with a human face. But their capacity to make a difference will be negligible. Starmer and his cronies rule the Labour Party with a rod of iron. A Prime Minister with such a large Parliamentary majority will always have the wherewithal to resist internal opposition to his favoured policies.

There are however two gathering clouds for Starmer on the Brexit horizon, public opinion and economic reality. Even without any national party’s making the case for rejoining the EU, a majority of British voters now tell the opinion pollsters that they want to rejoin the EU. This majority that can only increase as the next eighteen months see increased barriers to travel and trade between the UK and the EU. More importantly, economic pressure will grow in the next two years for the Labour Party to reinforce its flimsy economic policies with a realistic European dimension. Starmer has already warned of economic difficulties at the beginning of his Premiership. If, as seems likely, those difficulties persist in two years time, a volte-face on European policy will begin to seem very tempting to a beleaguered Prime Minister.

It is increasingly obvious that Brexit cannot be “made to work.” The coming years will prove this to Starmer beyond any doubt. The great unresolved question of British politics is whether and how soon Starmer will draw the correct conclusion from this failure, and recognise that Brexit must be reversed as quickly as possible. He is much more likely to come to this conclusion if there is political pressure on him to do so. His party and the other leading parties of the UK have until now failed to produce this pressure. Nor is there any reason to believe that they will do so in the near future. There is a gap in the political market, a gap for a party saying that the UK needs to rejoin the EU and it needs to do so now. The Rejoin EU Party will be doing its utmost over the coming months and years to fill that gap. The General Election is behind us. Let the battle to rejoin the EU commence in earnest.

Brendan Donnelly,

Leader, The Rejoin EU Party

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