First, a simple question. After almost a month of the new government, can you imagine that in five years’ time Britain will still be estranged from Europe?
There are reports at every level that links between this country and the EU are open again – and working in relieved satisfaction. Keir Starmer appears to embrace the EU almost literally. His meetings with EU leaders – and there have been a number even in this short time – have been enthusiastically and almost ostentatiously positive. Guy Verhofstadt gleefully (and no doubt mischievously) suggests Britain could be back in the EU within this parliament. Impossible, perhaps, but certainly this chummy attitude certainly captures the zeitgeist.
Starmer’s brutal dismissal of the hopes of millions
Yet we are stuck with Starmer’s seemingly deliberate brutal dismissal of the hopes of much of his electorate. We are stuck with a prime minister who appears utterly unaware of the unending fury and grief that his comments will cause to many, who still wake every morning with a visceral sense of loss. Can he honestly not know of the real hurt his remarks cause to so many, who would like to be his supporters?
Sue Gray (she of the report fame) is Starmer’s new chief of staff. It is understood that she has drawn up a “shit list” of six issues which must be addressed before anything else can be achieved. Those issues are apparently the possible collapse of Thames Water, public sector pay, prison overcrowding, possible bankruptcy of universities, the same for local authorities, and of course the NHS.
‘Make Brexit work’ remains their albatross
All of them are huge and potentially intractable, nobody can deny that – and a hat tip to Wes Streeting for making strides already with at least one of them. But you will notice that they do not include Brexit, which may seem odd. Brexit is on everybody else’s shit list, except Starmer’s. The one issue which could help to solve – or at least dramatically begin to come to terms with – the others does not feature. There is a whole herd of elephants in the cabinet room and his majesty’s appointed secretaries of state collectively can’t hear themselves speak for their trumpeting.
Yet as this first month has demonstrated, they show every symptom of being competent. So what’s up? The election is won, they don’t have the excuse of that albatross hanging around their necks anymore. So do they seriously believe they can stick to the ‘make Brexit work’ line and still succeed in turning round the fortunes of the country?
Coming into government already gaslighting the voters isn’t a good look
Gaslighting is what governments tend to do when they are on the defensive, when reality is perceived as a threat – when is it not? – and not at all what they want it to be. But it isn’t what we should expect from a government just coming to power, and that sense of defensive alarm about their untenable position gives away that Labour knows its position on Brexit can’t hold.
Here is the conundrum. Starmer is not a stupid man. He is not surrounded by stupid people, (unlike at least one of his recent predecessors who seemed to choose incompetents deliberately, as offering no threat). So how did he get himself in this hole?
This writer claims only limited inside knowledge but has sat through enough meetings to watch incredulously as group dynamics has led to some perfectly absurd decisions. So from close observation through this horrible post-referendum period, here is a suggested scenario.
Accepting Brexit was giving up on progressive ideals forever
The whole body politic was shocked by the referendum outcome. Immediately after it and in the subsequent couple of years, any suggestion of anything other than devoted obeisance to the Brexit idea seemed political suicide. So after the defenestration of Corbyn, one of the first gut decisions was never under any circumstances even to mention Brexit.
This is the decision which has returned to bite them in the bum. It can be seen in the same light as that by Nick Clegg at the beginning of the coalition to be fully supportive partners to the Conservatives in government. In effect of course, that one decision overruled others in the future. It meant willingly giving up any influence on the direction taken, however against Liberal Democrat ideals, and led to the cataclysm which confronted them in 2015.
Starmer’s Brexit declarations have betrayed his better angels
Starmer seems a collegiate man who listens to his advisers. Among his close confidants at that time were two already established euro-sceptics, Rachel Reeves and Lisa Nandy. (Both incidentally represent northern constituencies, which voted heavily for Brexit, and neither have sought to deny that they were simply following the views of their local voters, however uninformed.)
But just as Clegg’s gut instinct to stay close to the Tories in the end utterly betrayed his better angels, so has Starmer’s position on Brexit. Throughout, it has never been necessary, tactically, to dismiss the idea of ‘ever’ returning to some kind of close union with the EU: it was a choice he made to keep away the bogey man – just as in Lord of the Rings it was never permitted to mention Sauron, or how Harry Potter and his friends were fearful of mentioning Voldemort. That first gut decision, among people who believed one false step would mean the end of progressive politics in this country, has proved to be a massive misjudgement, but now they can’t see a way back.
There is one, of course. More than one. But having burned their boats, Starmer et al can’t face all the turmoil and grinding work – perhaps over a decade – to make us seaworthy again. We have written before about how Brexit represented a catastrophic failure by the entire political class: not just those who were its protagonists. The great challenge, to prove the credentials of progressive politics, is to come clean. We need honesty, and though Starmer’s government already shows their refreshing preparedness to tell it like it is on most issues, that attitude still does not apply to our relations with the EU.
One particular dishonesty must be addressed, regarding the old wives’ tale about another referendum. But that must wait for another occasion.
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