September 2, 2024

After the general election, we need to talk about re-joining the EU – an autumn message from Rejoin EU Party leader Brendan Donnelly

In the past six weeks, it's become clear that in one respect at least, Keir Starmer is a man of his word. When he said he had no intention of taking the UK back into the EU, he meant it. Those who thought he was only striking a Eurosceptic pose to court Europhobic commentators and Red Wall voters – “playing the long game” as some described it – were deceiving themselves. For Starmer, Brexit means Brexit, just as much as it did for Theresa May.

Starmer has admittedly attempted to conceal his commitment to Brexit with soothing talk of a “re-set” in EU/UK relations, unrelated to any prospect of re-joining the EU. Ironically, the only ones to have taken this mantra seriously are obsessive Eurosceptics, always on the lookout to claim betrayal of their fluky victory in 2016. Everyone else has looked at the Labour government's contemptuous dismissal of the European Commission's proposals for youth mobility, its indifference to the Erasmus project and its bizarre enthusiasm for trade with countries on the other side of the world and drawn the only possible conclusion – that Starmer's government is no less committed to Brexit than was that of Rishi Sunak.

Among Labour's membership and MPs, there will be many uneasy at Starmer's attempt to pursue Brexit with a human face. But their capacity to make a difference will be negligible. Starmer and his cronies rule Labour with a rod of iron. A prime minister with such a large parliamentary majority will always have the potential to resist internal opposition to his favoured policies.

There are, however, two clouds gathering on the Brexit horizon for Starmer: public opinion and economic reality. Even without any national party's making the case for re-joining the EU, a majority of British voters now tell the opinion pollsters they want to re-join the EU. This majority can only increase as greater barriers to travel and trade between the UK and the EU loom in the next 18 months. More importantly, economic pressure will grow in the next two years for Labour to reinforce its flimsy economic policies with a realistic European dimension. Starmer has already warned of economic difficulties at the beginning of his premiership. If, as seems likely, those difficulties persist in two years' time, a volte-face on European policy will begin to seem very tempting to a beleaguered prime minister.

It's increasingly obvious Brexit can't be “made to work.” The coming years will prove this to Starmer beyond any doubt. The great unresolved question of British politics is whether and how soon he will draw the correct and inevitable conclusion from this failure and recognise Brexit must be reversed as quickly as possible. He's much more likely to reach this conclusion if there's political pressure on him to do so. His party and the UK's other leading parties have until now failed to apply this pressure. Nor is there any reason to believe they'll do so in the near future. There's a gap in the political market, a gap for a party saying the UK needs to re-join the EU and it needs to do so now.

While the general election is behind us, the Rejoin EU Party will be doing its utmost over the coming months and years to fill that gap by contesting further elections as they arise, particularly at the local level. We'll also be at forthcoming events such as the March for Rejoin in London later this month, so please do join us there if you can – further details of where and when we'll be meeting to follow. And please do support us in any other way you can by clicking on the links below – let the battle to re-join the EU commence in earnest.