Labour came to power with no big idea for relations with the EU, according to Ivan Rogers, Britain's EU ambassador from 2013 to 2017. Rogers stated that the party's ideas did not 'remotely measure up' to the challenge.
Labour's EU Approach Criticized
Ivan Rogers, a former top diplomat, said Labour presented 'a ragbag of issues' on the EU in its manifesto, which would 'make no measurable difference to the UK macroeconomy.' He argued that the party was 'unprepared' and lacked 'a serious, thought-through set of propositions' to fix what it had called 'a botched Brexit.'
A decade after the UK's vote to leave the EU, Rogers described it as 'close to incomprehensible' that Keir Starmer, a former shadow Brexit secretary, had sought a single market for goods, an option the EU is always bound to reject. The Guardian revealed last month that the government sent a senior official to Brussels to seek a single market for goods without free movement of people, an approach likened to Theresa May's doomed Chequers plan.
EU Red Lines Remain
Rogers noted that the EU is no more likely to agree to 'pick and choose' alignment for Labour than for the previous government. He highlighted Labour's red lines—no single market or customs union—as 'massively constraining' what could be delivered with key trading partners. The EU has said it is ready to consider British membership of the European Economic Area, but Rogers acknowledged the political complexity around free movement of people and opposition from UK financial institutions to being rule-takers.
Rogers, who resigned in January 2017 after a Conservative backlash over his Brexit advice, recalled feeling 'enormous sympathy' for David Cameron after the leave vote. He said the EU was 'ready to roll' with its response, but Whitehall was in shock. At the June 2016 summit, EU leaders agreed red lines that remain fixed a decade later.
Rogers described Labour's promises of a veterinary agreement, help for touring artists, and mutual recognition of professional qualifications as 'worthy technocratic fare' but 'irrelevant' to the question of where the UK sees itself in the coming decades. He concluded: 'I find it quite depressing that we're still here after 10 years and still going around the same loops with the same level of misunderstandings.'
