pictureAll Prime Ministers are lip service speakers: “Reset” is Starmer's favourite word. He visited Berlin last week. To pave the way for a bilateral cooperation treaty, the prime minister said he was here as part of a “wider reset” of Britain's relations with Europe – a message he echoed as he travelled to Paris for handshakes, smiles and conversation at the Elysee Palace. With Emmanuel MacronIt's easy to see why he likes the word: “Reset” communicates a new mindset, a fresh start, a shift in priorities, but is conveniently vague about the exact direction or ultimate destination.
Downing Street was highly pleased with the positive reception these cross-Channel excursions had received: meetings with the German Chancellor and the French President created a lighter mood than the rest of the summer, which saw violent unrest on British streets, controversy over the invitation of Labour cronies to Whitehall, and internal turmoil in the party over restrictions on Labour. Winter fuel payment And Sir Keir warned in the rose garden at Number 10 that “winter is coming”.Things will get worse before they get betterIt was too pessimistic even for those sympathetic to the strategy of managing expectations, blaming the Conservatives for being behind such depressing statements.
On a basic diplomatic level, it makes sense for Sir Keir to seek to improve relations between the UK and its neighbours, in pursuit of shared geostrategic interests and to please many of his own party's supporters. There are signs that he thinks the efforts are paying off. At a joint press conference, fellow centre-left German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed disappointment that relations between the two countries have weakened since Brexit, declaring:We want to take this outstretched hand.“With a succession of Conservative prime ministers, Britain once famously unreliable and unpredictable now seems a fixed point in a turbulent world. Sir Keir is a healthy man in his early 60s with an overwhelming majority in Parliament and looks very likely to remain in power for the foreseeable future.”
This gives his European peers a much stronger incentive to invest in building trust with him than with his Conservative predecessors, who were here today and gone tomorrow, and whom they distrusted anyway.Turning Brexit around“The EU should say, 'We don't need to keep emphasizing that the UK made a terrible choice eight years ago, because it's now obvious. Majority of British voters express Bregle's sentimentsDowning Street and the Foreign Office are trying to rebuild the personal and institutional connections that withered under the bitter hostility to all things European during the post-referendum Conservative governments. Our government is now made up of people who understand the damage that has been done to Britain by our rupture with the world's largest trading bloc. Office for Budget Responsibility In the long term, they estimate a 15% decline in trade and a 4% shrinkage of the economy. International negotiations have a new team of ministers who understand, in the words of one of them, that “geography matters” in trade.
Russian aggression is a threat to the values and interests of both the UK and the EU. With less than 70 days to go until the elections when Americans choose their next president, Donald Trump's return to the White House will send shivers through London, Berlin and Paris. When I spoke to former Prime Minister Tony Blair in an interview published today, he surprised me by appearing unfazed by a second Trump term. “I'm not worried about that,” he said of the threat that the US would abandon NATO and leave Europe to fend for itself. “I don't think that's going to happen.” While Sir Keir shares his predecessor's view that the UK Prime Minister must try to work with whoever the US puts in the Oval Office, Sir Tony's optimism about Trump 2.0 is not at all shared by those still in leadership positions in Europe. Sir Keir, Macron and Scholz have a common enemy in the far right, The “fake medicines” of populism and nationalismAs the Labour Leader said.
The atmosphere in dialogue with neighbours has certainly warmed since Starmer moved into No. 10, but veteran observers still warn against reading too much into it. “The British public doesn't realise how bad Britain's reputation is within the EU,” says Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform. “There's a lot of work to be done to rebuild trust and confidence and to convince people that Starmer isn't just a nicer version of Rishi Sunak.”
Shaking hands in front of the cameras is easy. The real test is signing a substantive agreement. Sir Keir has been far more clear about what he doesn't want to achieve than what he does. Though polls suggest the majority of voters think Brexit was a mistake, he says he can't imagine the UK rejoining “in my lifetime”. The Labour manifesto promised to reduce friction by “removing unnecessary barriers to trade”. But he has flatly ruled out trying the big move of negotiating a return of the UK to the EU customs union and/or single market. Some ministers have suggested that's “something for a second term” – if there is a second term at all. But colleagues have heard the Prime Minister extremely downplay what he mocks as the “hot-water” argument that returning to the EU's free trade area is the surest way to improve prosperity and help achieve the goal of making Britain the G7's fastest-growing economy.
Any real improvement in economic relations must be worked out in negotiations with the European Commission. The failed EU withdrawal deal agreed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson is up for review in 2025-2026. Breaking Brussels' resistance to a fundamental review will take a lot of effort, and a lot of trust. The Prime Minister and his entourage seem particularly nervous about joining any cooperation agreements or schemes that involve contributions to the EU budget. Her portrait may have been removed from one of Number 10's studies, but the ghost of Margaret Thatcher still haunts the building.
In terms of what Sir Keir wants to get on the commercial side, his publicly stated ambitions are modest: a veterinary agreement to reduce barriers to food trade, the removal of obstacles for touring musicians and other artists, and the mutual recognition of professional qualifications.This is a rather odd choice of goal, to say the least.Anand Menon, director of Britain in a Changing Europe, said: “Rather than setting an easily achievable target, the government appears to have opted for one that is neither low nor particularly attractive.”
After newsletter promotion
Even these relatively small steps will be hard to secure. The EU has so far rejected British attempts to secure favourable terms for touring musicians on the grounds that unrestricted access for non-members would violate the single market and customs union. While Sir Keir maintains cordial relations with continental countries, Britain has not yet shown much willingness to accept EU goals and win favour. Britain has been particularly aloof about a youth mobility deal, which Germany wants, that would allow Britons under 30 to live and work in the EU for a certain period of time, and vice versa. Even if the government were able to achieve its limited targets, the impact on the UK's overall economy would be minor.
It suits the Prime Minister’s methodological temperament to try to improve relations incrementally and pragmatically. Some progress may be made, but there are drawbacks to trying to move forward from an early stage rather than taking more ambitious steps. Negotiations mean compromise. To get something from the EU, you need to give something in return. It will draw accusations of “betrayal” from Brexit extremists. Nigel Farage’s Reform Party remains in second place out of the 89 seats held by Labour, which is irritating Downing Street. Sir Keir will be accused of timidity and a lack of imagination, for disappointing those who hope he will be more bold in addressing the damage caused by the break with the EU. The risk of being too cautious is that he will infuriate both euro supporters and euro haters, leaving most of the benefits of further growth unrealized. There may come a time when his current approach calls for, how should I put it – a reset.
