Sir Keir Starmer is not trying to pursue such radical goals, but he would still have to deal with the EU constantly on a string of intractable issues. Level-playing field clauses hang permanently like the Sword of Damocles. The TCA trade deal comes up for review in 2025 and that will have echoes of what happened during the Brexit talks, with the EU marking the UK’s homework in a one-sided process, all the while holding a gun to its head.
There is much talk in Labour and Westminster circles of renegotiating the Brexit deal and securing associate membership of the single market. I fail to see how that can be done without running into the Norwegian trap of de facto EU membership with voting rights, but it is not for the UK to decide anyway.
Brussels might be slightly gentler with a Starmer government, but I doubt that it would last long. The Commission says the EU is sick of Brexit and that better terms will not be on offer in 2025. “It’s a review, not a revision, not a renewal or even amendment of any sort,” said Stefan Fuehring, head of the TCA unit.
“The British left will be confronted by a very hard reality,” said prof Lapavitsas. If so, this will test the loyalties of large numbers of activists, commentators, and tribal progressives who have got into the habit of applauding the EU almost gleefully every time it cuts rough with Britain.
How long will they feel this way if it is their own Labour government on the receiving end, and if the EU Council dishing it out has become a menagerie of far-right nationalists?
I have long thought that the UK’s profound split over Brexit will not heal until the left is in power and has political skin in the game. Only then will it stop rooting for the other side. And only once national unity is reestablished in foreign policy will Britain re-find itself. A fundamental realignment is drawing closer.
