Starmer's post-Brexit reset offers clear benefits – but there is political risk too

The Guardian

19-05-2025

There were two moments at the UK-EU summit where it felt like a corner had truly been turned. It was not on agrifoods, nor youth mobility, defence or fishing.
When Keir Starmer said the UK had changed, the most symbolic evidence of that came in a press release from No 10 that set out the terms of the agreement brokered at Lancaster House.
It acknowledged, for the first time, what successive British governments have spent years denying – that Brexit has damaged Britain. It laid out the figures, the UK has suffered a '21% drop in exports and 7% drop in imports'. Finally, the charade is over.
And the British public know that. Half of Britons now say the decision to leave the EU was the wrong one and significant numbers of those who did not vote or were too young to vote think Brexit was the wrong decision. Poll after poll suggests the British public believe the UK is now worse off – although often that stops short of a demand the UK rejoin.
Secondly, and equally symbolic, was the acknowledgement that the changes proposed would require a vote in parliament. That confirmation came from No 10 almost as an afterthought.
But there was a time not so long ago when the prospect of a vote in parliament on a deal like this would have been the top line of every news story. Gone are the days when Steve Baker or Bill Cash would be on the bulletins crying foul at every line of compromise.
Starmer is the first prime minister in more than a decade who doesn't have to worry about that vote at all, despite some Labour MPs who, in red wall seats facing Reform, feel nervous. But most of Starmer's parliamentary party would probably prefer to see a deal that went even further.
There will be no anguished briefings from rebel Conservative Eurosceptics who once effectively held Downing Street hostage and who brought down two prime ministers. Kemi Badenoch's vow to oppose all the changes was irrelevant.
It is that radically changed approach and circumstance – referred to time and again by Ursula von der Leyen as she praised 'dear Keir' at Monday's press conference – which has seen this EU reset over the line less than six months after Starmer set the date.
But that stability in parliament certainly does not mean that there is no political risk to this deal. There will be a battle on the front pages and the airwaves to set the narrative. Starmer's main political rival now is not a wounded Tory party but the godfather of Brexit, Nigel Farage.
For Starmer, it will be a race to sell the benefits of his agrifoods and energy deals – cheaper food and cheaper energy bills – combined with quicker queues at the airport for frustrated Britons trying to placate their children as they land from their holidays.
From Farage and Badenoch, there are cries of betrayal on two fronts. The first is fishing, a 12-year deal to keep the status quo when the industry had hoped for better terms from 2026. That was the price of a permanent agrifoods deal, worth so much more to the economy but potentially at the expense of such a symbolically important British industry.
And the second is the sense that Britain has crossed the Rubicon that makes it a rule-taker, agreeing dynamic alignment on standards and a role for the European court of justice.
No 10 is gambling that the public has lost interest in much of the technical aspects of the trade talks, as long as Brexit negotiations do not dominate the media discourse or are not seen to be distracting senior politicians from domestic matters.
But there is also a risk to a distracted public, that voters already inclined to feel angry towards the government will see headlines about a 'Brexit betrayal' and assume the worst, without reading the details. It is this arena where Farage has always had his greatest success.