This article originally appeared in our Elevenses newsletter.
From the moment Sir Keir Starmer took charge of the Labour Party, the chief charge levelled against his leadership has been that nobody can quite work out what he stands for. To date, he has played the role of the former human rights lawyer who dared not speak out about attempted Rwanda deportations, the former shadow Brexit secretary who is terrified to touch Europe and the son of a toolmaker who is nonplussed by worker’s rights, turning juxtapositions into the trademark of his brief time at the top. But recent appearances suggest he could finally be ready to show his cards, and not before time too.
Starmer chose The Hague to make his grand policy entrance last week, suggesting that under a Labour government, hotels, barges and former military sites would no longer be used to house asylum seekers in the UK. His plan to achieve that feat is to bring in Home Office caseworkers. Thousands of them, in fact, who will do the thing that this government has been incapable of achieving; processing claims, namely, and not cutting their nose off to spite their face. A new returns unit, again backed by 1,000 staff, would also be created to triage and fast-track removals (Dublin Agreement, anybody?) while applications from “safe” countries such as Albania and India would be fast-tracked by “Nightingale asylum courts” to speed up legal challenges.
In Montreal, meanwhile, Starmer confirmed he will be seeking a closer trading relationship with the European Union which he would seek to orchestrate when the Trade and Cooperation Agreement comes up for review in 2025. “Almost everyone recognises the deal Johnson struck is not a good deal”, he said, adding that it’s “far too thin”. Labour has ruled out rejoining the customs union or the single market, but says a “closer trading relationship” is something they would very much be up for. Whether the EU would be game for that is an entirely separate question, of course, given that in their eyes (quite rightly) the two are synonyms.
Usually these sorts of policy announcements require significant preparation to lay the ground before they appear in the public domain, but Starmer has been buoyed by the fact that Rishi Sunak has been quietly doing a lot of the leg work for him. News that the UK will re-join the EU’s Horizon scientific research and Copernicus Earth observation satellite programmes came hot on the heels of announcements that a preliminary agreement with the bloc to access its border agency Frontex has been reached. Ministers also revealed they will be keeping the EU’s CE product-safety mark after industry and manufacturers complained about the extra costs and red tape they would face in complying with a proposed new UK alternative, and a plan to re-join the Pan-Euro Mediterranean convention has been launched by the British Chambers of Commerce, easing the so-called rules-of-origin trade issues.
Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly obvious that Brexit is no longer the political hot potato it once was, freeing up Starmer to think more pragmatically about the big issues facing the country. Sunak may not realise the irony in that most of his top priorities are achievable through closer realignment with the continent, but Starmer certainly does, and thanks to the sorry state the UK now finds itself in, most of the electorate do too.
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