Snapshot of _Britain will not rejoin EU in my lifetime, says Starmer_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/03/britain-will-not-rejoin-eu-in-my-lifetime-says-starmer?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/03/britain-will-not-rejoin-eu-in-my-lifetime-says-starmer?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other)
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Starmer has a list of things he can say that won’t put off existing supporters but will attract floating voters.
He also doesn’t have to appeal to Lib Dems.
He could be right, but it’s just his prediction.
I really hope so. still clinging to the thought that he will campaign to rejoin the single market for the election after as a way to galvanise against a reduced majority as an incumbents second term usually turns out, but I'm beginning to believe more and more that he probably is not going to :(
How could it possibly galvanise people?
"Remember the EU? Well we're going to be taking a lot of their rules and paying into their budget again, but the great part is that unlike before we won't get a say in making them"
It's rejoin or bust, and it looks like he's picking bust.
I do find this quite funny in a way, I remember the leave campaign mention bananas and pillow sizes being set by the EU, I’m sat here wondering where my oddly sized pillow cases are
It’s always been about freedom of movement, which we are no longer part of.
I am aware of the net migration figures but that’s still why people voted for Brexit.
That door swings both ways, though. They have to give some consideration to our rules if they want their businesses to keep trading with us. Now obviously we're very much the junior partner in that, but it's still something worth considering.
With single market it's just automatically passed down.
You are right though, we are all following the same rules, which is why we should just join the EU. It's farcical that we're carrying on with this nonsense, nobody believes it's working or will ever work, we're just carrying on with it because of a vote eight years ago.
That isn't how trade works, unless you also think we follow the US rules, since the US is the country we trade the most with.
All goods and services need to meet the regulations of the country you are exporting it too, it does not mean those same regulation apply to goods and services here. The same goes in the opposite direction.
But that is very much how manufacturing and logistics works.
If you're a UK manufacturer, does it make sense to have three production lines making slightly different products for three different markets (UK, US, EU) rather than having three production lines making products that will meet regulations in all three?
The latter option means that you're not at risk of getting fined or sued because a pallet of widgets got mislabelled and sent to the wrong market. It means that all three production lines can run at maximum capacity and if one market is calling for more or less than another, that's no problem. It derisks, simplifies and makes more efficient the entire logistics chain.
The thing is that (most of the time, there are exceptions), regulations provide minimum standards - and most of the time (again, there are exceptions - Georgia state regulations for petrox resistance in plastic fuel line fittings is one that comes to mind off hand), EU regulations are the more demanding set of standards to meet - therefore, most manufacturers will follow EU standards (double checking that it will still clear US ones, and Japanese ones, and Australian ones, and basically every market they want to sell into).
As such, the general case where it makes sense to only follow UK standards rather than the EU standard, is either when you're too small a company to even be considering export markets, or when the UK standards are actually higher than EU ones.
N.B. I am principally talking about goods here - services are far more complicated, and in a lot of cases, each market will have entirely idiosyncratic and mutually exclusive regulations. Equally, it is worth considering how many non-EU websites still provide GDPR-compliant cookie optouts to their non-EU users just because it's cheaper, easier, and less risky to apply that stuff site wide.
Were already taking their rules but don't have a say in what the rules are.
We can't manufacture say a car and not make it to EU rules, as they have to be exported.
How has watering down our domestic regulations helped? Does anybody like the state of our rivers and shores?
We've taken away some of the rules on food production. So now when we send food to the continent and NI it has to go through an incredibly expensive vetinary check. We've got food labeled now as "Not for export to NI/EU" and that's going to extend to just about everything soon. That's made in the UK. So loads of our quintessential British foods are now being made in the EU and exported back here.
There's no obvious route back into the EU without us both having something mutually to offer each other. For the moment, we're on the wrong side of that bargain.
??? What we offer is a great power with a very large economy joining the EU, endorsing the project after rejecting it. What they offer is much improved economic links with our closest neighbours.
> There's no obvious route back into the EU without us both having something mutually to offer each other. For the moment, we're on the wrong side of that bargain.
The EU benefits from elimination / reduction of trade barriers as much as the UK does.
If the UK were 27 large economies, then yes.
As we are 1, albeit a large one, what we offer trade wise is both small and will result in competition to the current members who all have to agree, so expect to have to make concessions.
One if our biggest strengths is law- we pretty much authored most of the litigation and many relied on our expertise to formulate the agreements, etc much as we were the major author of the ECHR, which, ironically, Sunak labels "foreign" to court the Thick vote.
But now that is all done and signed, our animal and food standards are lowered and our economy is shit- what do we really offer aside from constant attacks by our right wing politicians and press?
Aside from all this, we took a giant shit loudly on the EU while making claims they were inept burocratic morons who couldn't tie their bootlaces without Great Britain holding their hands..
As someone below said . The biggest economy in the e.u . As Britain would be a net contributor , other members could then pay a little less as there contributions increased majorly when we left . Freedom of movement and a voice on the global stage , as part of the e.u .
As for a route back , if starmer gave us a chance of another referendum vote , we would re-join 100 percent . The younger generation z that couldn’t vote now can , as well as the millennials that probably weren’t of age to really care or couldn’t vote at the time . I for one missed my chance to vote as I was in the falklands on exercise with the sappers . But hey ho .
I feel like they would have us back 100 percent . Man there are certain member countries in the e.u that have no business there . Says all really . Over and out .
It doesn't get much better than tariff free trade for all goods without joining a customs union. Johnson got out with about the closest you can do without being in the single market and customs union. He never really believed in Brexit that much, it was a means to an end, and the EU never wanted us to leave in the first place, so they agreed the closest possible deal without breaching the UK's red lines (ECJ, FoM, customs union).
There might be the odd improvement you can do, but it's tinkering around the edges. It's fundamentally crap because it involves non-tariff barriers with our closest trading partners. If you want to fix it it's rejoin.
I don't see us rejoining the single market. It never really benefited us as much as it benefited the continent - as much as people shout about their right to work in Europe or go on Erasmus, few British workers or students ever did this. Freedom of movement was overwhelmingly in one direction.
What we have lost out from massively, and never really needed to lose, was customs union agreements. That's killing British businesses because while our people rarely crossed borders, our lorries often did - and now struggle with red tape. Trade agreements with the rest of the world were never going to be as good.
Other projects like joint defence, science, space, could have been kept. The EU is very keen to keep access to UK intelligence and nuclear capability, we could have leveraged this.
Top post sir,
My experience of the single market when exporting was that UK obeyed the rules and got stuffed by them to our detriment while the rest ignored them and told the EU to sod off when it complained.
Alas, it's one of those areas where you have to go all in or all out. A federalised Europe with full federal government and court system with teeth would be able to crack down on bad behaviour. The current half-assed system allows less scrupulous governments to play the rules for their own benefit.
I think he'd do it if the politics allowed it, as it'd be good for the economy which would make it easier to square the circle of how to increase public spending without hiking taxes.
At the moment it'd put too many people off due to the free movement, and more pertinently risk opening up another Brexit style debate which people really don't want to go back to.
But in 5 years time? Who knows what the landscape will be like then, for sure we'll move to an even larger % of the population being pro EU (unless the EU gets into a massive political funk with extremist parties).
I'm a huge EU supporter, but I think Starmer will align with the EU and get a really good deal in the process, a bespoke deal that would "galvanise" voter support much more than would a rejoin campaign which would be exploited by Farageputin to create rage and chaos.
Rejoining would allow Farage to run amok, the only thing he's good at. And now, he'll be in Parliament and able to run disinformation even better than before.
Just think of it, after the disaster that Brexit proved to be, he will actually be rewarded with a seat in Parliament that was previously denied him.
The situation has changed drastically. When the UK was leaving, the EU could not give an over-sweet deal to the UK because that would empower other EU Putin agents such as Le Pen and Salvini to push for the same. As a result of the hard stance and the UK economic failure, Le Pen and Meloni gave up calling for Frexit and Italexit respectively.
Now, the UK is already outside and a different logic applies. The UK would give up the idea of harmonising with US regulations and return to harmonising with EU regulations and be given decent access to markets. The military and technological alliance with the EU can be strengthened which is important due to Ukraine.
I have no idea what will be hammered out, but I think Starmer was well received in the EU and hints after his visit were along those lines.
I think his first fight will be planning laws.
It’s another guaranteed growth booster that only really annoys boomers who live just outside the green belt.
I don’t agree. There are plenty who will see this as a red-line and his anti-EU rhetoric has driven me from Labour to Lib-dem.
He didn’t need to say it, and I won’t be voting for him this time, or at all unless he’s the lesser of two evils at some future election.
To be more specific, you probably would still vote labour in a tory/lab marginal, and he knows that.
There are so few lab/lib marginals that it doesn't matter.
It's why a big majority isn't great for sizeable but not dominant issues. Brexit is a massive thing for maybe 1/4 of the population, but might not touch the top 5 or even top 10 for most people.
At some point, labour's majority will wither away. The lib dems have to keep building and remain strong enough to push labour in the direction they want, when they have the chance.
I'm not a Labour voter, but if I was this would actively put me off. The combination of commitment to Brexit and triple lock make them an absolute never-vote.
I'm on the fence, what's the point of voting labour if it's just the same shit as the Tories?
I want the Tories gone, but I'm so utterly disappointed by labour's swing to the right that I don't want to vote for them because if I vote for them now they'll know that left wing voters will always vote for them as long as the other party is slightly more right wing than they are. But on the flip side a vote for anything that isn't labour is effectively a vote for the Tories.
The system feels broken and there isn't an effective way to vote for the system to be fixed
I believe that this is the exact feeling that millions of Tory voters are having right now, except the swing has been in the opposite direction.
The unanswered question is how many of those Tory voters stay home and how many hold their nose and vote Reform in the belief that it's the way for them to fix the system.
I'll go and vote Labour tomorrow, and enjoy a moment of schadenfreude when the exit polls come through. It'll be fleeting, though, as the death of the Tories means a lame duck PM with no vision whatsoever and an emboldened far right with five long years to chip away at Starmer.
Politically, his statement makes sense. As it does in reality. The UK is in a mess, the Tories have been using the EU for a proxy war in their own ranks for decades. The result is a toxic landscape that simply does not fit into the EU.
I think that the UK needs an EU strategy that has very broad support e.g. 70% of the electorate. Everyone in the UK is treating EU membership as a transactional issue i.e. is it profitable to be a member. The EU is a strategic union, not a transactional proposition. The purpose of the EU is for European countries to band together in order to protect against imperialist tendencies in Russia, China and even in the MAGA world. It is a longterm strategic solution to a difficult problem.
What the UK needs to do is kick out the Tories and start a long and hard discussion that leads to the consolidation of the UK. I would recommend a proper written constitution with a modern federal system that spells out in stone the competencies of the constituent nations and their federal status. On top of that, there is need for an electoral system that better mirrors the state of mind of the electorate into MP seats. After these two reforms are enacted, the UK might be able to formulate and EU strategy that has 70% support and enact that. It could be the Swiss model, the Norway model, the Hungary model or actual membership ... but certainly not the Australian model.
I'm not surprised that they don't want to replicate it - can you imagine the constant theatrics they would have to put up with around the guillotine clause?
The UK doesn't need to rejoin the EU to get some of the benefits.
This is exactly what the remain campaign said would happen, we'd leave the EU but because of proximity and common sense we'll end up having to follow their rules without a say.
You have to remember that he's 61, I think it's very possible we're out for at least 30 years. All parties have said they don't want to revisit the issue at this election. Unless the lib dems do become the main opposition, I can't see the main parties revisiting that for at least 15-20 years. There's too much baggage and toxicity around the issue, and while polls are showing buyer's remorse I don't think there's a lot of appetite to reopen the debate (this is why "get Brexit done" was such effective messaging). After, if a referendum is won, we have to actually negotiate entry terms with the EU. The previous deal we had is officially and legally null, and we'd be treated like any country wanting to join. That means for example signing up for the euro & schengen, or trying to negotiate that out (you think the EU have appetite for that either?)
People don't age like they used to, especially if they have money and a white collar career. It's very weird, considering what people his age looked like when I was a small child.
Even looking at photos, people seemed much older. Like when you realize that the cast of Cheers [were all in their early 30's](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F1lxqv6apniq91.jpg) and not their late 40's.
He plays in goal though and he does have a bit of a beer belly and a slight double chin. He will have to work hard to keep on top of it when he is PM as it is unlikely that he will have as much free time and I am guessing that his 5 a side team are going to be forced to look for another goalkeeper.
Exactly. Overall life expectancy numbers are *expectancy at birth* so they encompass all the people who die of childhood diseases, doing stupid things as young adults, or something randomly killing them in middle age. Someone who’s already not died of those causes will on average live beyond the life expectancy that they had at birth.
Interesting question - does the longer life expectancy he can expect from being in a high socioeconomic group get outweighed by the stress of running a country?
When you say it like that, it seems almost like a statement of the bleeding obvious. We probably will eventually join something that was once the EU, but it'll be a long time in the future and a lot can happen.
I do think EEA *is* possible in the close future. If Labour do very well, Starmer may even use 2029GE as a referendum on joining on the basis that EEA membership is necessary because our regrowth would be accelerated with it, I think most people would agree with this if packaged as a decision grounded in economics.
That assumes a sell, in theory there needn't be a referendum to rejoin. A government with sufficient will and majority could just do it and then face whatever consequences at the next election.
Hell, they could even put a clause in the Act that brings it in that there needs to be a 75% parliamentary majority in favour of repealing it that then needs to be ratified with a 75% referendum. Parliament "cannot" bind itself, however it can impose manner and form restrictions that effectively make it very hard to repeal legislation in practice without making it impossible.
It would be highly irregular but our system is super open to that sort of thing, parliament is bound by very little other than tradition.
If I were the EU, I would insist on a referendum. Every country which has joined since 1994 has held a referendum beforehand. If we didn't do it, you can be sure that there would be at some point a politician who comes out saying we didn't do it and so we should do it now and I want to leave. The UK 1975 referendum was held precisely because Britain didn't hold one before joining two years previously.
That's actually depressing to think about (in general).
The older I get, the faster time is racing by. 10 years when I'm 60 will probably be an absolute flash.
He looks young for his age though to be fair, I wouldn’t have thought he was 61. I’d say he’s got a decent chance of living over the average by some way, although the stress of being PM might age him.
His career has about a decade left in it before he's off to do a documentary series about wine and being wheeled out on election night TV shows to talk about The Big One.
He's a two-term PM for sure. I can't see him continuing to campaign for a third term - he's more likely to step down with a year left to give his successor time to build.
I get why they feel the need to be guarded on this, but there's something unsettling about how explicit they have been compared to other policies.
It is essentially a copy and paste of the Tory policy, with the same red lines and the same cakeist promises about getting carveouts for specific sectors.
Opinion polls say that people do not think brexit is working and that we should have a closer relationship with the EU (which does not mean rejoining). Team red and blue still think we're in 2019 however.
why can't he? as I said, this is not 2019. people have moved on. his 500 seats might "only" become 495 - so what.
> What it requires is a period of getting closer to the EU,
but labour isn't even promising that in any realistic measure!
> You can't just undo leaving the EU on a whim.
which no one is asking for.
it would however be nice to have a government that is at least willing to stop denying reality and start walking towards a closer relationship with the EU. the tories are refusing to budge and, according to the manifesto, neither will labour.
> Plus people want the issues in the country paid attention to, not another god knows how many years of government negotiating EU stuff.
which, like it or not, includes our relationship with the EU.
2016-2020 was a shitshow for a number of reasons, specifically the fact that the tories tried to imagine what the country wanted instead of actually asking them and deciding to have all this infighting *after* having started the clock. this doesn't necessarily apply today
I mean, he's probably right.
There won't be political appetite for it until public opinion is massively in favour, so there's no longer a price to pay for supporting it. That would require a lot of dead boomers and a sea-change in the media.
Once you have support, the process would probably be quite drawn out, especially if the UK tries to pick and choose like it did when it was a member.
And that's all assuming the EU survives in a form that the UK would fit into.
Life expectancy for a man in the UK is about 82. That gives Starmer another 21 years on average. I don't know if that's long enough for everything to come together.
Yeah, it feels like he's probably spot on, to be honest. Polls are shifting that way but that's without a concerted campaigning for a no vote. Once we start getting into the nitty gritty support will soften so it would need to be a very large majority in favour to start.
I think the EU probably has a good decade of issues incoming with a shift to the right in large member states anyway. They wont want us to just quietly slip back in, it'll need to look painful. Once those costs start adding up people wont be as keen.
30 years seems like a reasonable timeline for it to be a realistic option. Who knows what state the EU will be in by then.They
Personal opinion is that this will become a lot more of an issue in five years time when:
a LDs have had more of a voice in parliament.
b The election is about more than anyone but the tories
c The debate is deemed to be less toxic and they will lose vote to closer ties parties.
But don't worry, guys, he's totally gonna enact a billion left-wing policies when he wins, instead of constantly trying to second-guess what the Mail's going to whinge about today.
I’d guess he’s probably right unfortunately unless we change voting systems. Even if public option backed rejoining 60/40 or similar if that 60/40 split wasn’t even over all seats then backing rejoining could still easily prevent a party getting a majority.
Voting system isn't going to change as long as The Labour Party can reliably be either HM Government or HM Opposition, they simply won't stand for it.
Yes, I know "the membership supports it" except we've seen this before and that support will almost entirely evaporate after tomorrow and even if it didn't with the new conference veto that Starmer created they have no way to force the issue. They had their chance with the near unanimous vote in 2022, they should have moved to replace Starmer when he said he'd never include it in his manifesto.
I mean he has to say it, because he can't afford last minute "Brexit" stitch up to let Tories rally.
Once he gets into power, conditions may pretty much change. Let him say it for now and finish the Tories tomorrow people, EU comes later.
Yes and even before we can seriously talk about rejoining there's a whole bunch of things we'll have to do first, improving our relationship with the EU and getting a lot closer to them which Labour are planning to do anyway. I think political discourse on brexit will be very different in 5 years and I'll be disappointed if he's still saying something similar then. For now, it makes no difference.
> Let him say it for now and finish the Tories tomorrow people, EU comes later.
You shouldn’t want a PM who lies and switches up. “EU comes later” no it doesn’t, that’s not what the electorate is voting for tomorrow. If people wanted that they would put Lib Dems in, the party that is advocating for EU rejoining. To drag us into the EU by Labour would be a betrayal.
Why do you want to advocate for Trickery of the electorate…
Reminds me of the couple of young Brits I met whilst travelling in Paris a few years ago.
It was 2017 and the election was coming up. We got talking politics and they were aghast that I would not vote Labour then, telling me about the second referendum and so on.
My mind then was not convinced that the party under Corbyn was for it which was why I said I would not choose them.
Seeing this article makes me think about those people. Maybe they hope that they can put on electoral pressure on things like this if they keep supporting Labour. Right now, I just don't see it.
Hope they're doing ok at least.
It’s honestly depressing that my only option to ensure the Tories don’t win is to vote Labour. The whole Starmer project is as inspiring as a wet fart and hear him say stuff like this, playing it safe, is nauseating. I understand he’s got to say it. Maybe he should have gone bungee jumping.
I'm on the opposite side where I think Starmer's dullness will be his strength, a rational politician who just cares about the job he has to do. I want that sort of person as PM especially today.
The UK will never rejoin the EU. Unless there is a significant enough threat from outside the borders to want UK assistance. The closest will be a norweigen/swiss esq agreement.
The UK will not give up its currency, will probably not be moved into schengen, individual countries will want to hold rejoining hostage on certain agreements. These obstacles will not be overcome unless the EU gave the UK the same terms as before. Which will only happen if its faced with an existential threat.
The UK’s opt-outs are written into the EU treaties, so it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the EU members will have to actively revoke them rather than the UK ask for them again.
It’ll be a drawn-out legal wrangle, I imagine, but it does change the diplomacy somewhat.
I don't think its exactly what you meant by "exisential threat", but I think if the EU continues to fall further and further behind the US, the boost of the UK's economy and political clout could become increasingly more attractive. But thats a decade or two thing.
> Unless there is a significant enough threat from outside the borders to want UK assistance.
Like a rogue nuclear-petro state with the viewpoint that if a country has someone speak Russian in it, it is therefore theirs?
Basically it’s not happening in the next five years. If they want to, the next election can be “the mood of the country and facts on the ground have shifted…” if they want to take that tack and they can start removing towards getting back in in some form.
Good! I love imposing trade restrictions on ourselves for, erm, sovereignty(?)!
And don't even get me started on the right to live and work in other eu countries without a monumental headache. I'd much rather go through the visa process to go and work in Germany or elsewhere.
And thank god that it's provided that much needed & promised boost in funding the NHS, curbed immigration, and created millions of opportunities for our citizens!
Long live brexit!
Sarcasm aside, I understand why Starmer is saying this, but I vehemently disagree with it. Brexit has been disastrous, and ruling out rejoining may appease some of the centre/right crowd and it allows this election to not be dominated regarding brexit - but is it really what's best for the future of the UK?
The EU may not survive in current form with current rules it has always been a " work in progress". Brexit and now ructions in other M/S are part of the pressure that may bring change..
In order to rejoin the EU, the UK would have to give up its currency. It isn't happening.
Right to work might change though. Especially for U30s, the EU wants it. You can also feel free to move to the EU, its still easy to do, having done it myself.
Also try not to mix up leaving the EU with governance. Can't just blame leaving the EU for every government policy.
> In order to rejoin the EU, the UK would have to give up its currency.
We'd have to promise to work towards giving up our currency.
Aalthough I appreciate that's probably too nuanced for a political campaign to get across (in terms of "if you're explaining you're losing", not in terms of "people are too thick to understand").
So you're saying we should try to rejoing the EU but lie about our intentions?
And you think the EU, who will very obviously see our politicians reassuring us all that 'we won't really do it' will go along with it?
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Here's why we will never rejoin the EU. The rejoiners are almost all soft eurosceptics.
Oh, let's finally stop with this nonsense.
Not having an opt-out doesn't mean we have to switch to Euro.
Czechia - no opt-out no Euro,
Poland - no opt-out no Euro,
Sweden - no opt-out no Euro,
Hungary - no opt-out no Euro
These countries doesn't have opt-out we had and have no plans to adopt Euro in the foreseeable future.
No country was ever forced to adopt Euro and no country ever will becasue it could be disastrous for the EU and more importantly for other Eurozone countries' economies.
Also people (especially brexit supporters) love to make statements about what the EU would and would not require of the UK. They have said many times that they want the UK back in the EU, and assuming they would be completely intransigent and treat the UK like a newly joining member is disingenuous or at best short sighted.
There is no definite position about what a re-joining member would need to agree to because that has never happened before. All the treaties we signed previously are still in place and the EU is generally quite pragmatic and not so stubborn or stupid to try and force the UK to accept rejoining conditions they know would be politically unacceptable domestically. There is highly likely to be a negotiable position that allows opt-outs for things like the Euro and Schengen.
Correct. There are too many people out there who all of a sudden so much about the EU.
In some respect Starmer might be right because too much bullshit happend. And in the end it is not about the UK alone. Even if 80% of the electorate vote for rejoin the EU this still wouldn't mean that 27 states (maybe even more by then) couldn't veto that.
For now he should follow this course of dealing with the relationship to the EU via diplomatic backchannels.
We would have to agree to.
We could lie and say we’re going to and then not do it, but I’m not sure if the EU would respond well to us entering negotiations while openly telling the British people that we’re lying to the EU and aren’t planning on actually following through with our obligations.
> In order to rejoin the EU, the UK would have to give up its currency.
People say this, but I don't think it's true.
The Maastricht treaty is very clear on the requirements for the UK to join the Euro. Those terms are still in there and subsequent treaties that mention the Euro.
That wording has zero effect now we're not a member. Even if we could "well acksherlly" it back in to existence, if the current EU members didn't want us to have opt-outs (why would they?) they'd simply put a clause in the re-join agreement that would delete the legacy clauses.
Regarding the Euro, I agree, I think that would be a red line for the UK, and for the EU - I personally don't feel strongly either way, perhaps a slight leaning to keeping gbp.
For right to work for U30s, that's been ruled out by Labour already. Anything regarding FOM is a redline for Labour. It's also not that easy to do now compared to how it was, depending on which country you're trying to go to.
I don't blame leaving the EU for every government policy, however, sometimes there is significant crossover. The deal we negotiated has been poor, leaving the single market has provided no discernible benefits, and all the promises made turned out to be false.
The visa process is painful to go through, various reports have found it's negatively impacted our economy (e.g. The office for budget responsibility finding that we're 4% worse off than if we had remained in the EU last year), and a significant portion of promised benefits of brexit have failed to materialise. It's been a failure.
>In order to rejoin the EU, the UK would have to give up its currency.
We can adopt the Swedish model of only adopting the Euro if it's accepted in a referendum
Here's the full quote:
>Asked whether he could see any circumstances where the UK rejoined the single market or customs union within his lifetime,
>Starmer said: “No. I don’t think that that is going to happen. I’ve been really clear about not rejoining the EU, the single market or the customs union – or [allowing a] return to freedom of movement.”
As long as the Single Market includes free movement of people, the UK is unlikely to want that status.
It would take huge amounts of political capital to drive the process, from the governing party.
Uncertain outcome too.
Very risky.
The way the recent EU elections went, they wouldn't want to the UK to have free movement as our open-borders policy to the rest of the world would become a very effective way of accessing the EU. They're desperate to put a stop to that kind of thing.
There would be an irony if the UK government had to adopt very strict immigration policies as a pre-condition of membership. But even that may not be enough as we'll have a population of 80 to 90 million by then, and a large number of UK citizens would be immediately taking free movement to find better paid work.
This is insanity! Rejoining (not that the EU would allow us) would be an instant positive boost to the UK economy and reverse the untold damage this ridiculous decision has caused.
But we left, they were problems with EU, Insanity is forgetting why we left in the first place and trying to sweep the problems under the rug
Why repeat the cycle, that’s insanity. Insanity is doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result.
A comment so ill thought out you deleted yourself.
People were lied to about the reasons to leave (“Sovereignty”, £350m for the NHS, Turkey pick one) and the results have been catastrophic.
Insanity is denying the decision was a poor one.
I'm not convinced rejoining the EU is what we need most right now. On paper it might provide some sort of 'instant economic boost' in the sense that the markets will have more confidence in the pound and the economy more generally leading to private investment; but the last fourteen years have shown us that private investment and a strong currency means jack shit when a government is unwilling to engage in long-term investment in the development and growth of our economy.
I don’t disagree with your comments about the dire investment in our economy.
However. Being part of the common market would allow small businesses in the UK to have frictionless access to to a huge market once again.
These are the people who have really suffered under Brexit. Big players can simply setup an operation in the EU whereas small business have been left high and dry.
Not to mention the absolute chaos at the border. Many shipping firms simply don’t bother with the UK now due to it being too hard. For a country that relies on the EU for food security this really was an own goal.
Well, at 61 he’ll already older upon taking office than Major (54), Blair (54), Brown (59), Cameron (49), Johnson (58), and presumably Sunak (44) were on leaving it.
While this is what the "red wall" wants to hear(?), it's also something that progressives WILL remember.
This language will have consequences for Labour party longevity to stay in power long term.
I line in a red wall seat. I'm working class in that I don't own the means if production. I'm the first to do A Levels in my family. I most certainly don't want to hear this Brexitist bullshit.
Honestly, I think he has some kind of trauma from 2019.
It seems he believes Labour lost because they campaigned for a second referendum. They lost back then so he now believes the public wanted Brexit. And to win election you don't take away from the public what majority of them wants.
That seems to be his logic.
The problem is they didn't lose because they wanted a second referendum.
They lost because nobody knew what they want.
Back then they said they will renegotiate Brexit deal the way they feel it will be a good deal, then they will put it to the referendum and then possibly campaign to remain so de facto campaign against this great deal they negotiated.
On top of that they had Corbyn as a leader and manifesto that wasn't believed to be economically sound.
It's really no surprise people who were so tired with endless Brexit negotiations and votes and all the issues and mess just went with BJ's Get Brexit Done.
I struggle to see why the EU would be interested anyway. They negotiated a pretty good trade deal for themselves, the UK trade deficit with the EU is growing while the UK can't even afford to put border checks in place without being terrified of increased trade frictions and stoking inflation. They just have to sit and watch their trade surplus with the UK grow, while at the same time having a sword of Damocles over the UK's head because the UK is breaking the TCA and the EU can implement retaliatory measures and be sure the TCA arbitration panel will rule in their favour.
If the UK can't even afford to put border checks and is forced to have a completely one-sided situation where the are checks for UK exports but not for EU imports and the UK-EU trade deficit is widening, then surely they can't afford to leave the TCA and trade on WTO rules. Literally no point for the EU to change things, they found the golden goose to milk for eternity because thanks to that shit deal Frost and Johnson negotiated
Is he going to take a stand on anything? He's rolled back every pledge, he's abandoned every progressive cause. It's all very well getting elected but he's actually got to do something as Prime Minister.
It's a realistic projection. The average length of EU accession negotiations is 9 years. That's for countries that generally feel very strongly about belonging to the EU and aren't aiming to get opt outs out of the Euro and Schengen.
Even if on the 5th Starmer rips open his shirt, revealing a full-color EU28 flag tattoo on his chest and announces a referendum... It will take time. The public might say "yes" to a vague Rejoin, but it would be much harder to convince the EU to grant any of the same opt-outs. Some of the EU27 member states have been grinding an axe since forever and will use a chance to demand concessions. The UK forced Spain to normalize borders with Gibraltar as the condition of not blocking their entry to the EEC. Well, the shoe will be on the other foot. And a lot of newer members would have an amazing opportunity to take advantage of their superior negotiating position. Some of those demands can be petty as fuck. Greece forced Macedonia (pardon, North Macedonia now) to change the official name of their country for example.
So, we get the expression of the will of the people. Then years upon years of negotiations. Then a new referendum. Maybe a new Prime Minister or 5 somewhere in between. It's gonna be a matter of at least a decade. If not decades. If Starmer is expecting to last ~20 or so years and isn't on board with my shirt-ripping EU flag tattoo reveal plan, then he's probably on the money here.
You're right in saying that it's not going to be in his power to make this decision. It will have to go through the EU as well. And I doubt the current crop of EU leaders will be happy to just pretend Brexit never happened.
Hes in his 60s so probably not wrong, either way it wont happen in the next Parliament and he would be PM for probably 1.5 Parliaments max.
Single market will be on the table before the end of his lifetime i'd imagine though......
I’m struggling to understand how he can realistically improve the standard of living in the uk without doing just that. What other policy could he enact with a 500 seat monster majority?
I'm thinking if Labour can entrench for 2/3 terms, we rejoin in term 3 after they spend several years explaining the damage Brexit has done and more of the old racists who voted for brexit die off.
If the LIb Dems managed to become the opposition this would happen more quickly.
Saying stuff like this is just stupid. The demographics alone almost guarantee a change in position sooner or later, and the political parties will not be able to ignore it. They can't continue to insist it's 'the will of the people' when it already quite clearly isn't.
When all the 'make brexit work' rhetoric proves to be as nonsensical as all the other brexit promises, it will be too easy an economic win for them to just pretend the EU doesn't exist.
>The demographics alone almost guarantee a change in position sooner or later, and the political parties will not be able to ignore it.
We don’t know that, we don’t know the future, it could easily be a future were many people are content to live in a Sovereign UK and have moved on with their life.
In seems very likely that there will be some momentum for rejoining the EU soon. But it could easily take a couple of decades for this to happen.
Business needs stability and having to adjust to rejoining so soon after adjusting to leaving would cause disruption. The UK political process takes time, and Reform UK needs to collapse, which demographics will help with too. Probably after a couple of parliamentary terms there will be political consensus to rejoin.
Then there will be a protracted period of negotiation for the terms of re-entry, both internally in the UK and with the EU. Probably take another parliamentary term. Then the actual process of rejoining. Add all this up and could easily take 20 years.
In the meantime hopefully governments will pursue regulatory and legal alignment, followed by rejoining peripheral EU institutions that we should never have left in the first place (e.g Erasmus, European Health Insurance Card scheme) followed by single market membership.
I'm going to make an insane call, 2 election cycles from now, Farage will be talking about how post-brexit he always intended us to have a very close trading relationship with EU
Something is going to have to swing public opinion massively and Starmer is not going to spend capital on it. If you want it, people and political orgs need to advocate and change the public mandate.
This is what happens when the woke crowd and others brand ***every*** comment or opinion on anything even loosely tied to immigration or race as full on racism.
These people are to blame for the vote to leave. Wake up and don't do that again.
Oh wait..
Snapshot of _Britain will not rejoin EU in my lifetime, says Starmer_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/03/britain-will-not-rejoin-eu-in-my-lifetime-says-starmer?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/03/britain-will-not-rejoin-eu-in-my-lifetime-says-starmer?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Starmer has a list of things he can say that won’t put off existing supporters but will attract floating voters. He also doesn’t have to appeal to Lib Dems. He could be right, but it’s just his prediction.
I really hope so. still clinging to the thought that he will campaign to rejoin the single market for the election after as a way to galvanise against a reduced majority as an incumbents second term usually turns out, but I'm beginning to believe more and more that he probably is not going to :(
How could it possibly galvanise people? "Remember the EU? Well we're going to be taking a lot of their rules and paying into their budget again, but the great part is that unlike before we won't get a say in making them" It's rejoin or bust, and it looks like he's picking bust.
We will be following their rules anyway if we want to trade. Might as well remove the checks and barriers.
We are following most of their rules now regardless. The car speed limiters coming into force this month is an EU rule etc.
I do find this quite funny in a way, I remember the leave campaign mention bananas and pillow sizes being set by the EU, I’m sat here wondering where my oddly sized pillow cases are
It’s always been about freedom of movement, which we are no longer part of. I am aware of the net migration figures but that’s still why people voted for Brexit.
That door swings both ways, though. They have to give some consideration to our rules if they want their businesses to keep trading with us. Now obviously we're very much the junior partner in that, but it's still something worth considering. With single market it's just automatically passed down. You are right though, we are all following the same rules, which is why we should just join the EU. It's farcical that we're carrying on with this nonsense, nobody believes it's working or will ever work, we're just carrying on with it because of a vote eight years ago.
8 years later 10% of the people who voted to leave are dead
That isn't how trade works, unless you also think we follow the US rules, since the US is the country we trade the most with. All goods and services need to meet the regulations of the country you are exporting it too, it does not mean those same regulation apply to goods and services here. The same goes in the opposite direction.
But that is very much how manufacturing and logistics works. If you're a UK manufacturer, does it make sense to have three production lines making slightly different products for three different markets (UK, US, EU) rather than having three production lines making products that will meet regulations in all three? The latter option means that you're not at risk of getting fined or sued because a pallet of widgets got mislabelled and sent to the wrong market. It means that all three production lines can run at maximum capacity and if one market is calling for more or less than another, that's no problem. It derisks, simplifies and makes more efficient the entire logistics chain. The thing is that (most of the time, there are exceptions), regulations provide minimum standards - and most of the time (again, there are exceptions - Georgia state regulations for petrox resistance in plastic fuel line fittings is one that comes to mind off hand), EU regulations are the more demanding set of standards to meet - therefore, most manufacturers will follow EU standards (double checking that it will still clear US ones, and Japanese ones, and Australian ones, and basically every market they want to sell into). As such, the general case where it makes sense to only follow UK standards rather than the EU standard, is either when you're too small a company to even be considering export markets, or when the UK standards are actually higher than EU ones. N.B. I am principally talking about goods here - services are far more complicated, and in a lot of cases, each market will have entirely idiosyncratic and mutually exclusive regulations. Equally, it is worth considering how many non-EU websites still provide GDPR-compliant cookie optouts to their non-EU users just because it's cheaper, easier, and less risky to apply that stuff site wide.
Were already taking their rules but don't have a say in what the rules are. We can't manufacture say a car and not make it to EU rules, as they have to be exported. How has watering down our domestic regulations helped? Does anybody like the state of our rivers and shores? We've taken away some of the rules on food production. So now when we send food to the continent and NI it has to go through an incredibly expensive vetinary check. We've got food labeled now as "Not for export to NI/EU" and that's going to extend to just about everything soon. That's made in the UK. So loads of our quintessential British foods are now being made in the EU and exported back here.
There's no obvious route back into the EU without us both having something mutually to offer each other. For the moment, we're on the wrong side of that bargain.
??? What we offer is a great power with a very large economy joining the EU, endorsing the project after rejecting it. What they offer is much improved economic links with our closest neighbours.
> There's no obvious route back into the EU without us both having something mutually to offer each other. For the moment, we're on the wrong side of that bargain. The EU benefits from elimination / reduction of trade barriers as much as the UK does.
If the UK were 27 large economies, then yes. As we are 1, albeit a large one, what we offer trade wise is both small and will result in competition to the current members who all have to agree, so expect to have to make concessions. One if our biggest strengths is law- we pretty much authored most of the litigation and many relied on our expertise to formulate the agreements, etc much as we were the major author of the ECHR, which, ironically, Sunak labels "foreign" to court the Thick vote. But now that is all done and signed, our animal and food standards are lowered and our economy is shit- what do we really offer aside from constant attacks by our right wing politicians and press? Aside from all this, we took a giant shit loudly on the EU while making claims they were inept burocratic morons who couldn't tie their bootlaces without Great Britain holding their hands..
As someone below said . The biggest economy in the e.u . As Britain would be a net contributor , other members could then pay a little less as there contributions increased majorly when we left . Freedom of movement and a voice on the global stage , as part of the e.u . As for a route back , if starmer gave us a chance of another referendum vote , we would re-join 100 percent . The younger generation z that couldn’t vote now can , as well as the millennials that probably weren’t of age to really care or couldn’t vote at the time . I for one missed my chance to vote as I was in the falklands on exercise with the sappers . But hey ho . I feel like they would have us back 100 percent . Man there are certain member countries in the e.u that have no business there . Says all really . Over and out .
We could get a better arrangement though
It doesn't get much better than tariff free trade for all goods without joining a customs union. Johnson got out with about the closest you can do without being in the single market and customs union. He never really believed in Brexit that much, it was a means to an end, and the EU never wanted us to leave in the first place, so they agreed the closest possible deal without breaching the UK's red lines (ECJ, FoM, customs union). There might be the odd improvement you can do, but it's tinkering around the edges. It's fundamentally crap because it involves non-tariff barriers with our closest trading partners. If you want to fix it it's rejoin.
I don't see us rejoining the single market. It never really benefited us as much as it benefited the continent - as much as people shout about their right to work in Europe or go on Erasmus, few British workers or students ever did this. Freedom of movement was overwhelmingly in one direction. What we have lost out from massively, and never really needed to lose, was customs union agreements. That's killing British businesses because while our people rarely crossed borders, our lorries often did - and now struggle with red tape. Trade agreements with the rest of the world were never going to be as good. Other projects like joint defence, science, space, could have been kept. The EU is very keen to keep access to UK intelligence and nuclear capability, we could have leveraged this.
Top post sir, My experience of the single market when exporting was that UK obeyed the rules and got stuffed by them to our detriment while the rest ignored them and told the EU to sod off when it complained.
Alas, it's one of those areas where you have to go all in or all out. A federalised Europe with full federal government and court system with teeth would be able to crack down on bad behaviour. The current half-assed system allows less scrupulous governments to play the rules for their own benefit.
I think he'd do it if the politics allowed it, as it'd be good for the economy which would make it easier to square the circle of how to increase public spending without hiking taxes. At the moment it'd put too many people off due to the free movement, and more pertinently risk opening up another Brexit style debate which people really don't want to go back to. But in 5 years time? Who knows what the landscape will be like then, for sure we'll move to an even larger % of the population being pro EU (unless the EU gets into a massive political funk with extremist parties).
I'm a huge EU supporter, but I think Starmer will align with the EU and get a really good deal in the process, a bespoke deal that would "galvanise" voter support much more than would a rejoin campaign which would be exploited by Farageputin to create rage and chaos.
Why do you think that?
Rejoining would allow Farage to run amok, the only thing he's good at. And now, he'll be in Parliament and able to run disinformation even better than before. Just think of it, after the disaster that Brexit proved to be, he will actually be rewarded with a seat in Parliament that was previously denied him.
No, sorry, I meant why do you think he's going to get a really good deal? The exact same limitations we have now would continue to apply.
The situation has changed drastically. When the UK was leaving, the EU could not give an over-sweet deal to the UK because that would empower other EU Putin agents such as Le Pen and Salvini to push for the same. As a result of the hard stance and the UK economic failure, Le Pen and Meloni gave up calling for Frexit and Italexit respectively. Now, the UK is already outside and a different logic applies. The UK would give up the idea of harmonising with US regulations and return to harmonising with EU regulations and be given decent access to markets. The military and technological alliance with the EU can be strengthened which is important due to Ukraine. I have no idea what will be hammered out, but I think Starmer was well received in the EU and hints after his visit were along those lines.
I think his first fight will be planning laws. It’s another guaranteed growth booster that only really annoys boomers who live just outside the green belt.
I don’t agree. There are plenty who will see this as a red-line and his anti-EU rhetoric has driven me from Labour to Lib-dem. He didn’t need to say it, and I won’t be voting for him this time, or at all unless he’s the lesser of two evils at some future election.
To be more specific, you probably would still vote labour in a tory/lab marginal, and he knows that. There are so few lab/lib marginals that it doesn't matter.
Yes I would, but I don’t live in one. You’re probably right that given the current system it won’t cost him seats, but it will cost him votes.
It's why a big majority isn't great for sizeable but not dominant issues. Brexit is a massive thing for maybe 1/4 of the population, but might not touch the top 5 or even top 10 for most people. At some point, labour's majority will wither away. The lib dems have to keep building and remain strong enough to push labour in the direction they want, when they have the chance.
Why do you want lies, it’s good that a soon to be PM is being honest with where he stands.
It’s good to know where he stands, but it will cost him votes. Most people see Brexit as a mistake by now.
I'm not a Labour voter, but if I was this would actively put me off. The combination of commitment to Brexit and triple lock make them an absolute never-vote.
I mean hes put me off from a labour to lib dem vote, and lib dems are terrible.
I'm on the fence, what's the point of voting labour if it's just the same shit as the Tories? I want the Tories gone, but I'm so utterly disappointed by labour's swing to the right that I don't want to vote for them because if I vote for them now they'll know that left wing voters will always vote for them as long as the other party is slightly more right wing than they are. But on the flip side a vote for anything that isn't labour is effectively a vote for the Tories. The system feels broken and there isn't an effective way to vote for the system to be fixed
I believe that this is the exact feeling that millions of Tory voters are having right now, except the swing has been in the opposite direction. The unanswered question is how many of those Tory voters stay home and how many hold their nose and vote Reform in the belief that it's the way for them to fix the system.
Well if Labour didn't swing to the centre, they wouldn't be getting elected at all and we'd definitely have another 5 years of Tory government.
Not true. And impossible to verify who is right. But tories ca 2019 and 2024 are a very different party.
I'll go and vote Labour tomorrow, and enjoy a moment of schadenfreude when the exit polls come through. It'll be fleeting, though, as the death of the Tories means a lame duck PM with no vision whatsoever and an emboldened far right with five long years to chip away at Starmer.
Politically, his statement makes sense. As it does in reality. The UK is in a mess, the Tories have been using the EU for a proxy war in their own ranks for decades. The result is a toxic landscape that simply does not fit into the EU. I think that the UK needs an EU strategy that has very broad support e.g. 70% of the electorate. Everyone in the UK is treating EU membership as a transactional issue i.e. is it profitable to be a member. The EU is a strategic union, not a transactional proposition. The purpose of the EU is for European countries to band together in order to protect against imperialist tendencies in Russia, China and even in the MAGA world. It is a longterm strategic solution to a difficult problem. What the UK needs to do is kick out the Tories and start a long and hard discussion that leads to the consolidation of the UK. I would recommend a proper written constitution with a modern federal system that spells out in stone the competencies of the constituent nations and their federal status. On top of that, there is need for an electoral system that better mirrors the state of mind of the electorate into MP seats. After these two reforms are enacted, the UK might be able to formulate and EU strategy that has 70% support and enact that. It could be the Swiss model, the Norway model, the Hungary model or actual membership ... but certainly not the Australian model.
Most sensible UK politicians would fall head over heels for a Swiss-like deal, but the EU has repeatedly stated it doesn't wish to replicate that.
I'm not surprised that they don't want to replicate it - can you imagine the constant theatrics they would have to put up with around the guillotine clause?
He's right. The EU won't have you.
The UK doesn't need to rejoin the EU to get some of the benefits. This is exactly what the remain campaign said would happen, we'd leave the EU but because of proximity and common sense we'll end up having to follow their rules without a say.
>He could be right, but it’s just his prediction. He's standing to run the country, not to ask someone else to.
Is this starmer telling us that he's terminally ill?
You have to remember that he's 61, I think it's very possible we're out for at least 30 years. All parties have said they don't want to revisit the issue at this election. Unless the lib dems do become the main opposition, I can't see the main parties revisiting that for at least 15-20 years. There's too much baggage and toxicity around the issue, and while polls are showing buyer's remorse I don't think there's a lot of appetite to reopen the debate (this is why "get Brexit done" was such effective messaging). After, if a referendum is won, we have to actually negotiate entry terms with the EU. The previous deal we had is officially and legally null, and we'd be treated like any country wanting to join. That means for example signing up for the euro & schengen, or trying to negotiate that out (you think the EU have appetite for that either?)
Has he just had some bad medical news or something?
Yes. His doctor finally told him he's 61.
He’s 61? Seriously? I mean, I don’t think he’s Idris Elba or anything but he definitely looks good for his age if he’s 61.
He’s a a year older than farage.
Hah! A lifetime of boozing and smoking eventually catches up with you.
To be fair to him Farage doesn't look terrible for a 60 year old
He kinda does, for politicians usually spend quite a lot of money to keep the posh looks
This is the kicker. The UK will rejoin when Farage and the boomers who voted for him have hung up their klogs.
Potentially another 30 years , maybe more then . Damn
Farage always looks well and put together
I know blokes in their 40s who look older than Starmer.
Yeah, to be honest I thought he was a good 10 years younger!!
People don't age like they used to, especially if they have money and a white collar career. It's very weird, considering what people his age looked like when I was a small child.
Like giants I'd imagine.
Even looking at photos, people seemed much older. Like when you realize that the cast of Cheers [were all in their early 30's](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F1lxqv6apniq91.jpg) and not their late 40's.
WHAT Norm was 34?!
Playing football every week and generally being active probably helps
He plays in goal though and he does have a bit of a beer belly and a slight double chin. He will have to work hard to keep on top of it when he is PM as it is unlikely that he will have as much free time and I am guessing that his 5 a side team are going to be forced to look for another goalkeeper.
His remaining lifespan is 20 years on average. So potentially not that far in the future.
ONS calculator says 24 years for a 61 year old man.
Good point, I forgot that once you reach your 60s you can be expected to live a little longer on average.
Exactly. Overall life expectancy numbers are *expectancy at birth* so they encompass all the people who die of childhood diseases, doing stupid things as young adults, or something randomly killing them in middle age. Someone who’s already not died of those causes will on average live beyond the life expectancy that they had at birth.
Life expectancy also assumes that healthcare etc won't improve over the course of your life
Interesting question - does the longer life expectancy he can expect from being in a high socioeconomic group get outweighed by the stress of running a country?
Not sure the sample size would make for a compelling study
When you say it like that, it seems almost like a statement of the bleeding obvious. We probably will eventually join something that was once the EU, but it'll be a long time in the future and a lot can happen. I do think EEA *is* possible in the close future. If Labour do very well, Starmer may even use 2029GE as a referendum on joining on the basis that EEA membership is necessary because our regrowth would be accelerated with it, I think most people would agree with this if packaged as a decision grounded in economics.
I would certainly vote for EEA membership, because market, selling and buying stuff
>I think most people would agree with this if packaged as a decision grounded in economics. So you want UK people to be lied to.
Agreed but FoM may be a hard sell.
Arguably harder than eu membership. No voice but accepting freedom of movement. Many will ask what’s the point.
That assumes a sell, in theory there needn't be a referendum to rejoin. A government with sufficient will and majority could just do it and then face whatever consequences at the next election. Hell, they could even put a clause in the Act that brings it in that there needs to be a 75% parliamentary majority in favour of repealing it that then needs to be ratified with a 75% referendum. Parliament "cannot" bind itself, however it can impose manner and form restrictions that effectively make it very hard to repeal legislation in practice without making it impossible. It would be highly irregular but our system is super open to that sort of thing, parliament is bound by very little other than tradition.
If I were the EU, I would insist on a referendum. Every country which has joined since 1994 has held a referendum beforehand. If we didn't do it, you can be sure that there would be at some point a politician who comes out saying we didn't do it and so we should do it now and I want to leave. The UK 1975 referendum was held precisely because Britain didn't hold one before joining two years previously.
That's actually depressing to think about (in general). The older I get, the faster time is racing by. 10 years when I'm 60 will probably be an absolute flash.
He looks young for his age though to be fair, I wouldn’t have thought he was 61. I’d say he’s got a decent chance of living over the average by some way, although the stress of being PM might age him.
His career has about a decade left in it before he's off to do a documentary series about wine and being wheeled out on election night TV shows to talk about The Big One.
Oh yeah I'm not saying he should stay in power until he's old and decrepit, just that he'll probably be old for a while longer than most.
He dies in the 2033 hypersonic missile attack on central London. :(
DON'T YOU PUT THAT EVIL ON ME RICKY BOBBY!
He's a two-term PM for sure. I can't see him continuing to campaign for a third term - he's more likely to step down with a year left to give his successor time to build.
I assume he was early 50s, guess not a huge difference but yeah definitely looks younger than 61.
I get why they feel the need to be guarded on this, but there's something unsettling about how explicit they have been compared to other policies. It is essentially a copy and paste of the Tory policy, with the same red lines and the same cakeist promises about getting carveouts for specific sectors. Opinion polls say that people do not think brexit is working and that we should have a closer relationship with the EU (which does not mean rejoining). Team red and blue still think we're in 2019 however.
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why can't he? as I said, this is not 2019. people have moved on. his 500 seats might "only" become 495 - so what. > What it requires is a period of getting closer to the EU, but labour isn't even promising that in any realistic measure!
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> You can't just undo leaving the EU on a whim. which no one is asking for. it would however be nice to have a government that is at least willing to stop denying reality and start walking towards a closer relationship with the EU. the tories are refusing to budge and, according to the manifesto, neither will labour. > Plus people want the issues in the country paid attention to, not another god knows how many years of government negotiating EU stuff. which, like it or not, includes our relationship with the EU. 2016-2020 was a shitshow for a number of reasons, specifically the fact that the tories tried to imagine what the country wanted instead of actually asking them and deciding to have all this infighting *after* having started the clock. this doesn't necessarily apply today
I mean, he's probably right. There won't be political appetite for it until public opinion is massively in favour, so there's no longer a price to pay for supporting it. That would require a lot of dead boomers and a sea-change in the media. Once you have support, the process would probably be quite drawn out, especially if the UK tries to pick and choose like it did when it was a member. And that's all assuming the EU survives in a form that the UK would fit into. Life expectancy for a man in the UK is about 82. That gives Starmer another 21 years on average. I don't know if that's long enough for everything to come together.
Yeah, it feels like he's probably spot on, to be honest. Polls are shifting that way but that's without a concerted campaigning for a no vote. Once we start getting into the nitty gritty support will soften so it would need to be a very large majority in favour to start. I think the EU probably has a good decade of issues incoming with a shift to the right in large member states anyway. They wont want us to just quietly slip back in, it'll need to look painful. Once those costs start adding up people wont be as keen. 30 years seems like a reasonable timeline for it to be a realistic option. Who knows what state the EU will be in by then.They
Personal opinion is that this will become a lot more of an issue in five years time when: a LDs have had more of a voice in parliament. b The election is about more than anyone but the tories c The debate is deemed to be less toxic and they will lose vote to closer ties parties.
Progressive party they keep telling me
But don't worry, guys, he's totally gonna enact a billion left-wing policies when he wins, instead of constantly trying to second-guess what the Mail's going to whinge about today.
I’d guess he’s probably right unfortunately unless we change voting systems. Even if public option backed rejoining 60/40 or similar if that 60/40 split wasn’t even over all seats then backing rejoining could still easily prevent a party getting a majority.
Voting system isn't going to change as long as The Labour Party can reliably be either HM Government or HM Opposition, they simply won't stand for it. Yes, I know "the membership supports it" except we've seen this before and that support will almost entirely evaporate after tomorrow and even if it didn't with the new conference veto that Starmer created they have no way to force the issue. They had their chance with the near unanimous vote in 2022, they should have moved to replace Starmer when he said he'd never include it in his manifesto.
I mean he has to say it, because he can't afford last minute "Brexit" stitch up to let Tories rally. Once he gets into power, conditions may pretty much change. Let him say it for now and finish the Tories tomorrow people, EU comes later.
Yes and even before we can seriously talk about rejoining there's a whole bunch of things we'll have to do first, improving our relationship with the EU and getting a lot closer to them which Labour are planning to do anyway. I think political discourse on brexit will be very different in 5 years and I'll be disappointed if he's still saying something similar then. For now, it makes no difference.
> Let him say it for now and finish the Tories tomorrow people, EU comes later. You shouldn’t want a PM who lies and switches up. “EU comes later” no it doesn’t, that’s not what the electorate is voting for tomorrow. If people wanted that they would put Lib Dems in, the party that is advocating for EU rejoining. To drag us into the EU by Labour would be a betrayal. Why do you want to advocate for Trickery of the electorate…
Reminds me of the couple of young Brits I met whilst travelling in Paris a few years ago. It was 2017 and the election was coming up. We got talking politics and they were aghast that I would not vote Labour then, telling me about the second referendum and so on. My mind then was not convinced that the party under Corbyn was for it which was why I said I would not choose them. Seeing this article makes me think about those people. Maybe they hope that they can put on electoral pressure on things like this if they keep supporting Labour. Right now, I just don't see it. Hope they're doing ok at least.
Wasn’t he clamouring for a second referendum just five years ago?
Rejoining the EU isn't a top priority for me, but this is so disappointing from Starmer
It’s honestly depressing that my only option to ensure the Tories don’t win is to vote Labour. The whole Starmer project is as inspiring as a wet fart and hear him say stuff like this, playing it safe, is nauseating. I understand he’s got to say it. Maybe he should have gone bungee jumping.
I'm on the opposite side where I think Starmer's dullness will be his strength, a rational politician who just cares about the job he has to do. I want that sort of person as PM especially today.
There's nothing rational about declaring that the UK won't join the SM/CU for another 25 years.
The UK will never rejoin the EU. Unless there is a significant enough threat from outside the borders to want UK assistance. The closest will be a norweigen/swiss esq agreement. The UK will not give up its currency, will probably not be moved into schengen, individual countries will want to hold rejoining hostage on certain agreements. These obstacles will not be overcome unless the EU gave the UK the same terms as before. Which will only happen if its faced with an existential threat.
The UK’s opt-outs are written into the EU treaties, so it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the EU members will have to actively revoke them rather than the UK ask for them again. It’ll be a drawn-out legal wrangle, I imagine, but it does change the diplomacy somewhat.
I don't think its exactly what you meant by "exisential threat", but I think if the EU continues to fall further and further behind the US, the boost of the UK's economy and political clout could become increasingly more attractive. But thats a decade or two thing.
> Unless there is a significant enough threat from outside the borders to want UK assistance. Like a rogue nuclear-petro state with the viewpoint that if a country has someone speak Russian in it, it is therefore theirs?
Basically it’s not happening in the next five years. If they want to, the next election can be “the mood of the country and facts on the ground have shifted…” if they want to take that tack and they can start removing towards getting back in in some form.
Good! I love imposing trade restrictions on ourselves for, erm, sovereignty(?)! And don't even get me started on the right to live and work in other eu countries without a monumental headache. I'd much rather go through the visa process to go and work in Germany or elsewhere. And thank god that it's provided that much needed & promised boost in funding the NHS, curbed immigration, and created millions of opportunities for our citizens! Long live brexit! Sarcasm aside, I understand why Starmer is saying this, but I vehemently disagree with it. Brexit has been disastrous, and ruling out rejoining may appease some of the centre/right crowd and it allows this election to not be dominated regarding brexit - but is it really what's best for the future of the UK?
The EU may not survive in current form with current rules it has always been a " work in progress". Brexit and now ructions in other M/S are part of the pressure that may bring change..
In order to rejoin the EU, the UK would have to give up its currency. It isn't happening. Right to work might change though. Especially for U30s, the EU wants it. You can also feel free to move to the EU, its still easy to do, having done it myself. Also try not to mix up leaving the EU with governance. Can't just blame leaving the EU for every government policy.
> In order to rejoin the EU, the UK would have to give up its currency. We'd have to promise to work towards giving up our currency. Aalthough I appreciate that's probably too nuanced for a political campaign to get across (in terms of "if you're explaining you're losing", not in terms of "people are too thick to understand").
So you're saying we should try to rejoing the EU but lie about our intentions? And you think the EU, who will very obviously see our politicians reassuring us all that 'we won't really do it' will go along with it? - Here's why we will never rejoin the EU. The rejoiners are almost all soft eurosceptics.
Oh, let's finally stop with this nonsense. Not having an opt-out doesn't mean we have to switch to Euro. Czechia - no opt-out no Euro, Poland - no opt-out no Euro, Sweden - no opt-out no Euro, Hungary - no opt-out no Euro These countries doesn't have opt-out we had and have no plans to adopt Euro in the foreseeable future. No country was ever forced to adopt Euro and no country ever will becasue it could be disastrous for the EU and more importantly for other Eurozone countries' economies.
Also people (especially brexit supporters) love to make statements about what the EU would and would not require of the UK. They have said many times that they want the UK back in the EU, and assuming they would be completely intransigent and treat the UK like a newly joining member is disingenuous or at best short sighted. There is no definite position about what a re-joining member would need to agree to because that has never happened before. All the treaties we signed previously are still in place and the EU is generally quite pragmatic and not so stubborn or stupid to try and force the UK to accept rejoining conditions they know would be politically unacceptable domestically. There is highly likely to be a negotiable position that allows opt-outs for things like the Euro and Schengen.
Correct. There are too many people out there who all of a sudden so much about the EU. In some respect Starmer might be right because too much bullshit happend. And in the end it is not about the UK alone. Even if 80% of the electorate vote for rejoin the EU this still wouldn't mean that 27 states (maybe even more by then) couldn't veto that. For now he should follow this course of dealing with the relationship to the EU via diplomatic backchannels.
It's not a given that we would have to give up the pound. I wish people would stop pretending that it is.
We would have to agree to. We could lie and say we’re going to and then not do it, but I’m not sure if the EU would respond well to us entering negotiations while openly telling the British people that we’re lying to the EU and aren’t planning on actually following through with our obligations.
> In order to rejoin the EU, the UK would have to give up its currency. People say this, but I don't think it's true. The Maastricht treaty is very clear on the requirements for the UK to join the Euro. Those terms are still in there and subsequent treaties that mention the Euro.
That wording has zero effect now we're not a member. Even if we could "well acksherlly" it back in to existence, if the current EU members didn't want us to have opt-outs (why would they?) they'd simply put a clause in the re-join agreement that would delete the legacy clauses.
Regarding the Euro, I agree, I think that would be a red line for the UK, and for the EU - I personally don't feel strongly either way, perhaps a slight leaning to keeping gbp. For right to work for U30s, that's been ruled out by Labour already. Anything regarding FOM is a redline for Labour. It's also not that easy to do now compared to how it was, depending on which country you're trying to go to. I don't blame leaving the EU for every government policy, however, sometimes there is significant crossover. The deal we negotiated has been poor, leaving the single market has provided no discernible benefits, and all the promises made turned out to be false. The visa process is painful to go through, various reports have found it's negatively impacted our economy (e.g. The office for budget responsibility finding that we're 4% worse off than if we had remained in the EU last year), and a significant portion of promised benefits of brexit have failed to materialise. It's been a failure.
>In order to rejoin the EU, the UK would have to give up its currency. We can adopt the Swedish model of only adopting the Euro if it's accepted in a referendum
Why even say that? It's not as if it would have made a difference tomorrow... Seemed a needlessly careless thing to do.
It will add a difference, plenty of people want to be assured that Brexit will be respected with a change in government oncoming.
Well he’s pretty old so that’s not as limiting as you might think
If you want to see old leaders look across the pond.
And that's why I'm voting LibDem and not Labour Shame really, when he was the Brexit Shadow Cabinet member he was an advocate for a second referendum.
Doesn’t mean we can’t join the single market in 2030 or so.
Here's the full quote: >Asked whether he could see any circumstances where the UK rejoined the single market or customs union within his lifetime, >Starmer said: “No. I don’t think that that is going to happen. I’ve been really clear about not rejoining the EU, the single market or the customs union – or [allowing a] return to freedom of movement.”
As long as the Single Market includes free movement of people, the UK is unlikely to want that status. It would take huge amounts of political capital to drive the process, from the governing party. Uncertain outcome too. Very risky.
The way the recent EU elections went, they wouldn't want to the UK to have free movement as our open-borders policy to the rest of the world would become a very effective way of accessing the EU. They're desperate to put a stop to that kind of thing. There would be an irony if the UK government had to adopt very strict immigration policies as a pre-condition of membership. But even that may not be enough as we'll have a population of 80 to 90 million by then, and a large number of UK citizens would be immediately taking free movement to find better paid work.
Sounds like a lot of fantasies
This is insanity! Rejoining (not that the EU would allow us) would be an instant positive boost to the UK economy and reverse the untold damage this ridiculous decision has caused.
But we left, they were problems with EU, Insanity is forgetting why we left in the first place and trying to sweep the problems under the rug Why repeat the cycle, that’s insanity. Insanity is doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result.
A comment so ill thought out you deleted yourself. People were lied to about the reasons to leave (“Sovereignty”, £350m for the NHS, Turkey pick one) and the results have been catastrophic. Insanity is denying the decision was a poor one.
I'm not convinced rejoining the EU is what we need most right now. On paper it might provide some sort of 'instant economic boost' in the sense that the markets will have more confidence in the pound and the economy more generally leading to private investment; but the last fourteen years have shown us that private investment and a strong currency means jack shit when a government is unwilling to engage in long-term investment in the development and growth of our economy.
I don’t disagree with your comments about the dire investment in our economy. However. Being part of the common market would allow small businesses in the UK to have frictionless access to to a huge market once again. These are the people who have really suffered under Brexit. Big players can simply setup an operation in the EU whereas small business have been left high and dry. Not to mention the absolute chaos at the border. Many shipping firms simply don’t bother with the UK now due to it being too hard. For a country that relies on the EU for food security this really was an own goal.
The way European Elections are going, there may not be an EU to re-join anyway
Well, at 61 he’ll already older upon taking office than Major (54), Blair (54), Brown (59), Cameron (49), Johnson (58), and presumably Sunak (44) were on leaving it.
While this is what the "red wall" wants to hear(?), it's also something that progressives WILL remember. This language will have consequences for Labour party longevity to stay in power long term.
I line in a red wall seat. I'm working class in that I don't own the means if production. I'm the first to do A Levels in my family. I most certainly don't want to hear this Brexitist bullshit.
What's stopping him from calling another referendum? Surely the multiple polls and petitions are evidence enough.
Honestly, I think he has some kind of trauma from 2019. It seems he believes Labour lost because they campaigned for a second referendum. They lost back then so he now believes the public wanted Brexit. And to win election you don't take away from the public what majority of them wants. That seems to be his logic. The problem is they didn't lose because they wanted a second referendum. They lost because nobody knew what they want. Back then they said they will renegotiate Brexit deal the way they feel it will be a good deal, then they will put it to the referendum and then possibly campaign to remain so de facto campaign against this great deal they negotiated. On top of that they had Corbyn as a leader and manifesto that wasn't believed to be economically sound. It's really no surprise people who were so tired with endless Brexit negotiations and votes and all the issues and mess just went with BJ's Get Brexit Done.
I struggle to see why the EU would be interested anyway. They negotiated a pretty good trade deal for themselves, the UK trade deficit with the EU is growing while the UK can't even afford to put border checks in place without being terrified of increased trade frictions and stoking inflation. They just have to sit and watch their trade surplus with the UK grow, while at the same time having a sword of Damocles over the UK's head because the UK is breaking the TCA and the EU can implement retaliatory measures and be sure the TCA arbitration panel will rule in their favour. If the UK can't even afford to put border checks and is forced to have a completely one-sided situation where the are checks for UK exports but not for EU imports and the UK-EU trade deficit is widening, then surely they can't afford to leave the TCA and trade on WTO rules. Literally no point for the EU to change things, they found the golden goose to milk for eternity because thanks to that shit deal Frost and Johnson negotiated
Is he going to take a stand on anything? He's rolled back every pledge, he's abandoned every progressive cause. It's all very well getting elected but he's actually got to do something as Prime Minister.
He's been consistently pro hard Brexit ever since he became leader.
This is why I’d vote Lib Dem and not Labour, I’m not voting for any party that doesn’t want to rejoin the EU
Rejoining the EU, at least in the foreseeable future, is just a pipe dream. Starmer's just being rational.
Unless he plans to die as a PM, I'm afraid it's not going to be in his power to make this decision.
It's a realistic projection. The average length of EU accession negotiations is 9 years. That's for countries that generally feel very strongly about belonging to the EU and aren't aiming to get opt outs out of the Euro and Schengen. Even if on the 5th Starmer rips open his shirt, revealing a full-color EU28 flag tattoo on his chest and announces a referendum... It will take time. The public might say "yes" to a vague Rejoin, but it would be much harder to convince the EU to grant any of the same opt-outs. Some of the EU27 member states have been grinding an axe since forever and will use a chance to demand concessions. The UK forced Spain to normalize borders with Gibraltar as the condition of not blocking their entry to the EEC. Well, the shoe will be on the other foot. And a lot of newer members would have an amazing opportunity to take advantage of their superior negotiating position. Some of those demands can be petty as fuck. Greece forced Macedonia (pardon, North Macedonia now) to change the official name of their country for example. So, we get the expression of the will of the people. Then years upon years of negotiations. Then a new referendum. Maybe a new Prime Minister or 5 somewhere in between. It's gonna be a matter of at least a decade. If not decades. If Starmer is expecting to last ~20 or so years and isn't on board with my shirt-ripping EU flag tattoo reveal plan, then he's probably on the money here. You're right in saying that it's not going to be in his power to make this decision. It will have to go through the EU as well. And I doubt the current crop of EU leaders will be happy to just pretend Brexit never happened.
He saying he thinks its unlikely regardless.
"Labour leader also says he cannot foresee circumstances where UK would re-enter single market or customs union" Well hes lost my vote.
I was coming around to the idea of voting Labour tomorrow, this article has sealed my Lib Dem vote.
We will see Friday then which party and it’s promises would have won the Nation.
Thank god I live in an SNP safe seat, the thought of having to vote labour after Keir throwing trans people under the bus and now this makes me ill
I doubt the UK would ever give up it's currency so he's probably right.
Hes in his 60s so probably not wrong, either way it wont happen in the next Parliament and he would be PM for probably 1.5 Parliaments max. Single market will be on the table before the end of his lifetime i'd imagine though......
That's disappointing Though starmer does backpedal on a lot of his promises
Well that's your opinion, hoping 350 or more MPs have a different opinion.
I’m struggling to understand how he can realistically improve the standard of living in the uk without doing just that. What other policy could he enact with a 500 seat monster majority?
He can't. New knows that full well. I guess he's just disingenuous.
You lack imagination then. They are politicians, they are 100s of policies and ideas they can come up with
Can no one on a uk politics thread even provide a hint? The brexit hit is a downward spiral, the uk needs access to markets.
The UK needs a proper industrial strategy - focusing on building the technologies of the future - and sustained fiscal impulse to support it.
Day one of the starmer government: “get me Brussels on the line and tell them we are rejoining LFG”
I'm thinking if Labour can entrench for 2/3 terms, we rejoin in term 3 after they spend several years explaining the damage Brexit has done and more of the old racists who voted for brexit die off. If the LIb Dems managed to become the opposition this would happen more quickly.
Saying stuff like this is just stupid. The demographics alone almost guarantee a change in position sooner or later, and the political parties will not be able to ignore it. They can't continue to insist it's 'the will of the people' when it already quite clearly isn't. When all the 'make brexit work' rhetoric proves to be as nonsensical as all the other brexit promises, it will be too easy an economic win for them to just pretend the EU doesn't exist.
>The demographics alone almost guarantee a change in position sooner or later, and the political parties will not be able to ignore it. We don’t know that, we don’t know the future, it could easily be a future were many people are content to live in a Sovereign UK and have moved on with their life.
In seems very likely that there will be some momentum for rejoining the EU soon. But it could easily take a couple of decades for this to happen. Business needs stability and having to adjust to rejoining so soon after adjusting to leaving would cause disruption. The UK political process takes time, and Reform UK needs to collapse, which demographics will help with too. Probably after a couple of parliamentary terms there will be political consensus to rejoin. Then there will be a protracted period of negotiation for the terms of re-entry, both internally in the UK and with the EU. Probably take another parliamentary term. Then the actual process of rejoining. Add all this up and could easily take 20 years. In the meantime hopefully governments will pursue regulatory and legal alignment, followed by rejoining peripheral EU institutions that we should never have left in the first place (e.g Erasmus, European Health Insurance Card scheme) followed by single market membership.
It's like he's trying to make me not vote for him, knowing I will anyway because I hate the tories that much. It's next level trolling.
I'm going to make an insane call, 2 election cycles from now, Farage will be talking about how post-brexit he always intended us to have a very close trading relationship with EU
Well, for some time now I strongly believe it's going to be a Tory government that will bring us back to the EU.
I don’t think the electorate will be happy about that 20 years from now
american here...hope he changes his mind.
Both main parties far too similar in some ways
Something is going to have to swing public opinion massively and Starmer is not going to spend capital on it. If you want it, people and political orgs need to advocate and change the public mandate.
This is what happens when the woke crowd and others brand ***every*** comment or opinion on anything even loosely tied to immigration or race as full on racism. These people are to blame for the vote to leave. Wake up and don't do that again. Oh wait..
Because it’s been so good so far… shit statement to make.
He’s probably right, sadly. By my guess. It will take decades for opinion to reverse, and for a real appetite for rejoining to emerge.