Keir Starmer has finally shown his hand — how the PM just sparked fears of a major Brexit betrayal
The Prime Minister mentioned Brexit four times in his keynote conference speech alone
Sir Keir Starmer has finally shown his hand. After spending his first few years as Labour leader downplaying his role as Jeremy Corbyn’s Remain-crusading Shadow Brexit Secretary, the Prime Minister has started lashing out at those who pushed for Britain’s departure from the Brussels bloc.
Speaking to GB News, Sir Keir couldn’t be clearer. “I would gently point out to Nigel Farage and others that before we left the EU, we had a returns agreement with every country in the EU and he told the country it would make no difference if we left,” the Prime Minister said, adding: “He was wrong about that. These are ‘Farage boats’ coming across the Channel.”
Now, the Prime Minister has been clear that he isn’t a fan of Boris Johnson’s “botched” Brexit deal either. Sir Keir spent months rewriting the agreement to hook the UK closer to Brussels’s tentacles, sparking widespread condemnation from Brexiteers.
However, the Prime Minister reassured the public that this wasn’t about relitigating a political debate that divided the country for the best part of half a decade. “It’s time to look forward,” Sir Keir said at the UK-EU summit in May.
The PM continued: “To move on from the stale old debates and political fights to find common sense, practical solutions, which get the best for the British people.”
It might come as a bit of a surprise, therefore, that the Prime Minister mentioned Brexit four times in his keynote conference speech at Labour’s party conference in Liverpool, swiping at Mr Farage over small boats and taking aim at those who stood beside the Vote Leave bus in 2016.
Sir Keir’s attack on the small boats, which was first hashed out by Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey in Bournemouth last week, has some merits. Yes, we’ve certainly seen a surge in small boat crossings since the UK left the EU.
It does come a bit unstuck, however, when we really look at the Dublin Regulation that so many Remainers now tout as a migration-curbing convention.
Home Office data from 2016 and 2017 revealed that 676 asylum seekers were transferred from Britain, while 1,019 illegal migrants were transferred to the UK over the same period.
It doesn’t make for a good story that the UK was, over that period at least, a net recipient of asylum seekers.
However, the attack on Mr Farage also enters choppy waters, given the Reform UK leader spent his time mulling over whether to mount a political comeback, exposing the Channel crossing crisis from as early as 2020.
But what else has Sir Keir been saying on Brexit? “The Brexit lies on the side of that bus,” the Prime Minister said in his first snipe. “They lived through austerity, Brexit, Covid,” he added.
However, Sir Keir’s most revealing comment on the UK’s departure from the EU came much later in his speech. “That’s what I say to people who think it would be ‘nice if we could just go back to politics before Brexit or the crash’, and this does go back that far, conference, the Global Financial Crisis is when we were exposed, when a new Britain should have been born.”
There’s a sense of Brexit regret in the air. And it’s not particularly about the policy, but it’s certainly about its architects and their delivery. I’m sure the Prime Minister will remain adamant that the UK will not rejoin the EU’s Single Market or Customs Union, even if he only came about holding such a position at the eleventh hour.
However, Sir Keir is not hiding away from what he really thinks about Brexit any longer. Over the coming weeks and months, expect to see more kowtowing to Brussels, particularly when it comes to a Youth Mobility Scheme.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves, unsurprisingly another Remainer, made securing looser migration arrangements with the EU a cornerstone of her conference speech.
“We should not cut young people off from opportunities that my generation took for granted,” Ms Reeves said. The Chancellor added: “I can tell you today that we are working with the European Union to secure for young people in Britain the maximum economic and cultural opportunities available through an ambitious agreement on youth mobility.”
But all of this comes after weeks, months, if not years of pressure from the adamantly pro-EU wing of the Labour Party. The difference now is that these voices are getting louder and louder as Labour finds itself in a deeper and deeper hole.
Lord Kinnock launched the firing gun on a fresh conversation about the EU ahead of the Labour Party Conference. “If we rejoined,” Lord Kinnock claimed, “we’d be able to get rid of the economic growth deficit, which is costing us £100billion a year, which means the government is losing £40billion in tax revenue”.
Greater Manchester Mayor, who is still waiting in the wings for a pop at the Labour leadership, this week added: “I’m going to be honest. I’m going to say I want to rejoin. I hope, in my lifetime, I see this country rejoining the European Union.”
There has been a sea-change in Labour’s language on Brexit this year. However, there are a group of Labour MPs who might yet try to keep Sir Keir’s feet to the fire.
Blue Labour, fronted by Eurosceptic peer Lord Glasman, is clear that it is not the time to tell voters they were wrong for wanting to cut ties with the Brussels bloc.
At a fringe event on Sunday, GB News caught a glimpse of the Brexit row festering inside the Labour Party. One Labour Party member said: “I feel like we’ve really gone wrong with not wanting to push back on Brexit, even after the event, and say, actually, it did make us poorer.”
Jonathan Hinder, a rising star of Labour’s 2024 intake, fired back: “We can create a fantastic, re-wired economy outside the EU.”
