A single step
Sir Kier Starmer is heading to Paris and a meeting with the French President, but what should he say?
The UK government and its supporters will portray anything he says as a betrayal of Brexit and kowtowing to the EU. Since they will do that even if he announced he was tearing up the TCA and putting the UK on WTO trade terms, he doesn’t have that much to lose domestically.
There are far more people who would like us to have a sensible balanced relationship with our neighbours, far more than those who continue to scream and shout about betrayal and BRINO.
But what can he say that will impress or move the French and the rest of the EU who will be listening very carefully?
Sir Keir has already made it clear that he wants to renegotiate the TCA in 2025 when it comes up for review. This is wishful thinking as the EU sees this totally as a technical exercise only, not the chance to re-open years of tense negotiations. They also hate the idea of cherry picking, getting benefits from the Single Market without paying the costs. So instead Sir Keir should be asking what would happen if the UK changed its tone, and its actions.
What if he and the UK promised to stay in the ECHR and support it?
What if it agreed to stick to EU food and agricultural standards?
What if it relaunched the scheme to stop illegal immigration?
Just making the right collaborative, sensible noises now will help, if that works then maybe, just maybe, when and if Labour is in government the UK can move on to.
Can we have EU wide visas for artists and musicians?
How can we stop queues at passport control?
What if we paid to rejoin REACH, the chemical standards system?
It has to portray this not as cherry picking but as mutually beneficial common sense.
EU tourism industries don’t want queues at passport control any more than UK tourists, REACH is a worldwide environmental leader, why not let others join to spread its good works? Cultural exchanges will improve EU/UK relations.
These and a thousand other little details, concessions and oiling of the wheels would help. The UK won’t get all of them, it may not get any of them but by asking it is showing it knows Boris Johnson negotiated a terrible deal and that it wants and needs to try to make things work better, for both sides.
It is not returning to the Single Market and no matter how much some people might want that, the UK won’t and can’t return to the SM, not for a very long time.
But foreign politicians, diplomats and observers and not just those from the EU, miss the pragmatic, realistic, sensible, calm, law and rule abiding, well informed, and well led UK the country was before 2016.
Restoring some of that reputation and promising to promote it remorselessly when in power, is about the best that Sir Keir can do for now.
We have, to be frank, fallen that far.
It is a long, slow, difficult and tortuous journey back, but even the longest journey starts with a single step.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media