Sir Keir Starmer will signal on Monday that Labor is ready to take on Boris Johnson over his Brexit legacy at the next election, setting out a five-point plan to deal with the economic pain caused by Britain’s exit from the EU.
In a major tactical shift, Starmer will use a speech to decry the “mess” created by the UK prime minister’s 2020 Brexit deal and the breakdown of trust with the EU caused by the dispute over Northern Ireland trade deals.
The Labor leader has so far shied away from talking about Brexit, fearing it would alienate Leave voters, but he was encouraged by emerging evidence of the blow Leave would have on the economy.
He will argue that Labor can “make Brexit work”, arguing that Johnson’s Brexit deal has contributed to a sense of a country that is “stuck”, with stagnant wages and growth and broken public services.
“They have created a huge ‘fat berg’ of bureaucracy,” he will say in a speech, comparing Brexit to a “wet wipes island” found in the River Thames. “It’s blocking the flow of British business – we’re going to break that barrier down.”
Brexit has become something of a taboo subject for the Labor leadership: a third of Labor supporters voted to leave in 2016 and Starmer was associated with the ill-fated campaign to overturn that result.
But new data has begun to separate the economic effects of Brexit from the Covid pandemic, showing the UK’s poor performance for trade and investment compared to other G7 countries.
An Ipsos UK poll found last week that the proportion of Britons who think Brexit has made their daily lives worse has risen from 30 per cent in June 2021 to 45 per cent; only 17 percent said their lives had improved.
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Starmer will insist that a Labor government would not seek to rejoin the EU’s single market or customs union or reintroduce freedom of movement – let alone seek to reverse the 2016 vote to leave.
“Nothing about revisiting these disputes will help boost growth or reduce food prices, nor will it help British business thrive in today’s world – it would just be a recipe for more division,” he will say.
Labor will push for a vet deal with the EU to reduce burdensome agri-food inspections, mutual recognition of product standards and a mobility deal to facilitate short business trips and help artists tour Europe.
Starmer will use the food deal to remove most checks on trade between Britain and Northern Ireland and negotiate a trusted trader scheme to end a stand-off with Brussels over rules contained in the Brexit part of the deal. called the Northern Ireland Protocol.
The Labor leader said business leaders wanted to protect the protocol which leaves Northern Ireland in the single market for goods. “The solutions are there, the desire is there – what’s missing is the trust,” he will say.
The foreign ministers of Germany and Ireland wrote an opinion piece in The Observer on Sunday, accusing Johnson of failing to engage with Brussels on the protocol “in good faith”. They wrote that there was “no legal or political justification” for his decision to introduce legislation to tear up parts of the agreement.
Starmer will say Labor will negotiate mutual recognition of professional qualifications and keep Britain in EU science programmes, including the €95 billion Horizon scheme, which is prized by British researchers.
Data adequacy rules will be aligned, but Starmer will follow Johnson in pursuing a different course on City regulation, he said in an address to the Center for European Reform.
The plan will also include more cooperation with the EU on justice and policing, including a new “security pact”.
Johnson is likely to present Starmer’s speech as evidence that Labor wants to reverse Brexit, a policy that has been embraced by many working-class voters in the former “red wall” of northern England.
Some senior Labor figures, including London Mayor Sadiq Khan, want Starmer to go further and commit to rejoining the EU single market, but this has been ruled out by party strategists.
Even the Liberal Democrats, who back a return to the single market, have set no timetable for the move, reluctant to re-engage the British public in a debate whose scars remain unhealed.
Video: Is the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill a breach of international law?
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