Labour has put the EU back on the agenda. Will the party regret it?
Photo byEver since Labour's landslide victory last summer, the party has discussed plans to reset Britain's relationship with the European Union. It seems the UK is condemned to be locked in a cycle of constant re-negotiation with the bloc – voters wanted out, but the economic logic of a closer union is too tempting. The hardest of all Brexits never really conferred the benefits its biggest champions suggested it might.
As my colleague Rachel wrote on Tuesday, Kemi Badenoch's reaction to this run-of-the-mill trade negotiation was a bit histrionic: 'We've got to be a little bit more realistic and a lot less naive,' she told a press conference on Monday afternoon, flanked by Victoria Atkins and Priti Patel for emotional support, shortly after saying she was gobsmacked by Starmer's reset. She called him 'a failure of a Prime Minister' too. The Tory existential doom spiral continues to whirl.
Meanwhile Labour is selling the deal as something that will deliver cheaper food and energy prices for British people. As it should: the party's re-election will hinge entirely on the cost of living. Pretty much everything else – save a completely unforeseen ruction – is window dressing.
But hold on a minute. Labour is polling several points behind the Reform-led right at the moment. That is, the pro-Brexit right. Led by Brexiteer-in-chief Nigel Farage, no less. In fact, Farage said on Monday he would tear up the deal if he made it to Downing Street. On what planet would you trumpet the success of an ever-closer union at a time when your main opponent argues for the very opposite?
This one, surprisingly. Here are the things you need to know about Brexit, the electorate and Labour's political calculations, in numbers.
Brexit regret is real, but inflated
Most Brits believe the vote to Leave in 2016 was the wrong decision. Though a caveat is important: until recently the number of Brexit 'Regretters' was probably inflated. Leave-leaning voters have been feeling pretty apathetic lately, disenchanted with the Conservatives after 14 years. People like this don't tend to be keen on commenting on political surveys, hence the slightly warped figures. Reform's rise has reversed that, and the numbers are steadying at a more reliable point.
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Brexit salience is waning
More than one in ten of those that voted in the EU referendum are now dead. And one in ten eligible voters today were not of age for the 2016 referendum. Young people are overwhelmingly for Remain (or rather, Rejoin) which we might expect to shift the needle and give Rejoin a default majority. This isn't quite the case – these young people are not quite as shaped by 2010 loyalties, the passing of time has numbed them and the EU question is just less relevant now. But this situation still makes it hard to whip up a sense of 'Leaver's grievance' that Brexit wasn't done right, as Farage is trying to do.
All of this is laid out in the graph below. A have-three-cakes-and-eat-them approach was not the position I expected from Reform's disparate support base. But it speaks to the dulled feelings over Brexit, even among the most enthusiastic of Nigel Farage fans.
What now?
It is in Reform's blood to stamp its feet over this EU reset stuff. But Brexit wasn't what rallied its voters. The party, then, will continue what it's been doing already: focus on immigration, on boats, and on a perceived cost-of-living betrayal (winter fuel, for example, despite Starmer's hinted-at U-turn yesterday).
As you can see above, when you poll these voters on what they want you'll find incoherence: they want closer relations, to keep things as they are, and to loosen ties. We can only assume that they like the sentiment of Brexit, but that we are all too far gone from the Brexit wars to care about specifics. Up to one tenth of the current Reform vote looks to be historic Remain voters, by the way.
What Starmer's reset deal can do is rally the middle classes, who are not too stressed by the cost of living, and remind them of their pro-European bent. Labour could exploit this as a means to outpace the growing number of the Reform-curious middle class. Just because the EU is low salience now, it does not mean it won't be exploitable as a fault line in the future.
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South Wales Argus
18 minutes ago
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Fact check: Reform UK migrants claim and minister's inflation mix-up
Has Labour 'allowed the biggest influx of migrants in British history'? Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice MP claimed in a newspaper column a few weeks ago that 'the statistics show without a doubt that this Labour government has allowed the biggest influx of migrants in British history'. It's not clear which figures Mr Tice was basing this claim on – we've asked him and Reform UK, and haven't had a response. But the statistics we've been able to check – both those available at the time Mr Tice made his claim, and those published since – don't appear to support it. And when we asked Oxford University's Migration Observatory about Mr Tice's claim, it told us: 'We cannot identify any data that support the assertion that the current government has been responsible for the biggest influx of migrants in British history, and we are unclear how Mr Tice came to this conclusion.' Mr Tice referred only to 'migrants' and did not specify that he was talking about any particular group of migrants, but some on social media have suggested he intended to refer solely to Channel crossings, which have been at record levels this year and hit the headlines again this weekend after almost 1,200 migrants were recorded as arriving via small boat on Saturday. Between January 1 2025 and April 27 2025 (the day Mr Tice's article was published), government statistics show 9,885 migrants were detected crossing the English Channel in small boats, and between January 1 and May 31 this figure was 14,812. Both these figures are higher than for equivalent periods in other years going back to 2018, when statistics for this measure began. But they don't support the claim Mr Tice made – firstly because they only refer to a small proportion of all migrants, and secondly because they don't cover Labour's full time in office. 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South Wales Argus
18 minutes ago
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Tories brand blaming weather ‘lazy' as likely days for Channel crossings double
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Time Out
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Could this east London borough really split from the capital?
It's well known that London is a huge city made up of slightly smaller towns. Each borough brings its own unique identity to the capital, but one is currently trying to break free from the city and instead become part of Essex. The London borough of Havering is the city's easternmost point. It's mostly suburbs, is home to places like Romford, Upminster, and Hornchurch, and, according to Andrew Rosindel, the Tory MP for Romford, is 'geographically Essex'. Andrew Rosindell stated his case for Havering to return to its Essex roots in parliament last month. He said: 'We are historically Essex. We are culturally Essex and our social, sporting and commercial connections have always looked towards the county of Essex'. He continued: 'My constituents and I are proud of our Essex identity, which transcends local government or administrative boundaries that are forever changing—as they are again today'. This comes after Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, announced plans last year to increase devolution to local authorities and streamline local services. Currently, different responsibilities, such as bins and schooling, are often managed by different levels of local government – the current Labour government wants to see all council responsibilities come under a single, centralised form of leadership. For some smaller authorities, this could mean merging to form a larger, unitary council. This is part of what Rosindell is worried about. With only 260,000 residents, Havering would need to combine with another similarly sized borough to form a big enough authority to stay in London. Instead, he argues that the preferable option would be taking the 'once-in-almost-a-century chance to look afresh at the old boundaries of Greater London that were constructed six decades ago.' He added: 'It is also very costly for us to be part of Greater London, as we pay tens of millions of pounds per year to the Greater London Authority. 'That equates to […] an exorbitant amount of money that my constituents simply cannot afford.' The move, dubbed 'Hexit' by some local supporters, is unlikely to happen in the near future, though. Jim McMahon, the Minister for Local Government and English Devolution, who Rosindell was addressing in his speech, has stated that; 'It is currently not envisaged that the boundaries of Greater London will be changed.' However, he did also say that the area covered by the Essex local mayor could be expanded in future 'should it be locally desired and should statutory tests be met', so all hope is not lost for you loyal Hexiteers. As it stands, Havering will remain in London, at least for now. However, now that the cat is out of the bag, it is not difficult to envisage a future where it returns to its rural roots and officially embraces the Essex way of life once again.
