Amidst the rubble of this Government, the challengers for the Labour leadership see an opportunity. There is one cause, one mission, one crusade which they believe can re-unite their supporters and re-energise the nation.
Is it bringing the ballooning welfare budget under control and cutting taxes for working people? Or strengthening our borders, controlling migration and making our streets safer? Or even reforming the public services on which so many of us rely, making the NHS more responsive, building on the improvements in our schools and fixing our creaking transport system?
Tragically, or perhaps even comically, it is none of the above. Instead, the rallying cry Keir Starmer's wannabe successors have decided to make their principal and pre-eminent aim is re-opening the Brexit debate and rejoining the European Union.
Wes Streeting, freed from the strictures of collective Cabinet responsibility, was at last able to tell us what really moves him at the weekend. And the love whose name he had not dared to speak before was a passion for Brussels. The former health secretary is a skilled political operator. He calculates that by positioning himself as the most pro-EU of all the contenders for the Labour leadership, he will appeal to the pro-European sentiment of Labour members, who are notably more anti-Brexit than the rest of the country. After all, he thinks, that strategy helped Keir Starmer secure the crown.
His principal rival, Andy Burnham, has also previously signalled he would wish to rejoin the EU. But before he can run for the leadership he first has to win the by-election in resolutely pro-Brexit Makerfield. Streeting calculates that by positioning himself as the most pro-EU of all the contenders for the Labour leadership, he will appeal to the pro-European sentiment of Labour members, writes Michael Gove. Andy Burnham, who is also making moves to challenge Starmer, has previously signalled a desire for Britain to rejoin the EU. So Wes sees a chance to use the intervening period to wrap himself in the fetching blue and gold of Brussels. And his supporters whisper that even though Wes may be seen as the favourite son of the Blairites, on the Right of the party, a pro-EU Labour movement under his leadership would be better placed to win back younger, Leftier, voters who have deserted them for the Greens.
But if Labour's pretenders to the leadership believe that EU membership is popular with the voters they need to win back, I wonder who they have been listening to. When Sunderland, Wigan and Barnsley voted en masse for Reform, was this a cri de coeur to Ursula von der Leyen to rescue them from nativism? Did the Greens win Muslim votes in Birmingham and hipster support in Hackney by pledging to emulate the budgetary discipline of the European Central Bank (ECB)? Were the local elections last week really evidence of a surging desire in British hearts for more power to be wielded by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats? The local elections were, if anything, a rejection of an out-of-touch political class who have proved persistently distant from the struggles faced by most voters. How can the answer be shifting power further away from local communities and handing it back to the Brussels apparatchiks who have shown themselves unresponsive to migration concerns, blithe about globalisation and convinced there is no problem that cannot be resolved without a technocratic fix, hammered out by lawyers and lobbyists?
Those Brexit sceptics who argue on principle, rather than political calculation, maintain that the EU is the answer to our growth problems. But that is like believing Dunkin' Donuts is the answer to your weight problems. The EU is to growth what Tottenham Hotspur is to Premiership football – a fallen giant inspiring pity from competitors. The major EU economies do not enjoy, and have not enjoyed since Brexit, growth any higher than the UK. As the former ECB chair, Mario Draghi, has pointed out, the continent is an innovation desert scarred with the bleached bones of failed enterprises. Britain's growth problems stem from high energy costs, a historic over-reliance on migrant workers, an increasingly rigid labour market, high taxes, over-regulation and burgeoning welfare costs. More Europe means more of that.
It is, of course, always possible in any negotiation to outdo expectations, to wrestle advantage by guile and resist loss by obstinacy. But does anyone truly believe that Labour would approach talks with Brussels from a position of strength, underpinned by resolution of steel? As Kemi Badenoch has argued, whenever Labour negotiates, Britain loses. Consider the fate of Diego Garcia, the British dependency in the Indian Ocean, where this Government ceded sovereignty to Mauritius, an ally of China, and paid billions for the privilege of surrendering. The EU recognises that this Labour Party is not serious about standing up for British interest. It does not see a resolute government but a desperate supplicant that has made clear it needs, yearns for, will pay almost any price, to secure approval. That is why the EU will require us to pay to access the single market – costing billions of pounds – even though European nations sell more to us than we sell to them. And any deal would benefit their businesses yet further in comparison to ours. It would be the equivalent of the landlord paying rent to the tenant.
This is why the EU is so keen on the proposed youth mobility scheme – a means by which European nations can export their young unemployed to take the jobs that British school-leavers are already struggling to secure. Such a scheme is not only economically self-harming, it is also a direct insult to British voters who, whenever they have been asked, have voted for less immigration not more. And, perhaps most harmful of all, any EU deal would involve dynamic alignment with European rules – depriving Britain of regulatory freedom in those areas – financial services, gene editing, AI and tech – where we retain a competitive advantage. As a minister in the Cabinet office and as environment secretary I fought for those freedoms and recognised they could make our country a model for others. Just last week, our Brexit flexibilities allowed the UK to license a new gene-edited crop which promises higher yields and greater resilience for farmers, the first in what could be a burgeoning harvest of growth. The EU wants to salt the earth for innovation in Brexit Britain and this Government appears ready to let them.
The drive towards rejoining is not just acceleration into an economic cul-de-sac, it is also a betrayal of the democratic vote which politicians promised would be honoured and respected. After the agonies of the 2017-19 Parliament when establishment voices tried to overturn the clear instruction from the people, it would only further undermine people's belief that those who govern us respect our instincts. Our political system is already under strain. Voters, particularly those in towns such as Makerfield, that have been overlooked and undervalued in the past, are increasingly alienated from our democratic institutions. Is the best way to halt disaffection and polarisation to tell them that they, not politicians, are responsible for our malaise and they should learn to love Brussels?
The best future for Britain is not less Brexit, but more. An acceleration away from the gravitational pull of the innovation blackhole that is the EU. We need smarter regulation of financial services, a more flexible labour market, an end to the bureaucracy stifling technological breakthroughs and better training for British workers, not subsidies for idleness. Is there anyone in the Labour Party who recognises this? Or must Britain wait as more of our economy is reduced to rubble and the march of folly continues?
