19-05-2025
Keir Starmer has re-opened the wounds of Brexit
One of the defining moments of the EU referendum, which occurred in the closing days of the campaign, was when pop star Bob Geldof was seen goading fishermen who had arrived on the Thames to demand a Leave vote in order to protect their industry.
The sight of a very wealthy Remain-supporting celebrity mocking working people for their entirely legitimate concerns about the future of their livelihoods did not go down well with the voters, as was demonstrated a week later when the results came through.
And now, displaying his acute political skills for which he is rightly famed, Keir Starmer has reopened the whole issue of fishing in his much-anticipated 'reset' of relations with the EU. French trawlers are to be given unlimited access to British waters once again, not for the next year, but for the next 12. That other pariah of Europe, Norway, which remains outside the EU but is part of the single market, gets to negotiate foreign fleets' access to its waters every single year. But Britain will have to deal with Starmer's new deal for more than a decade before the deal comes up for another renegotiation.
To most people, none of this really matters. Despite the short-term outrage at Geldof's politically disastrous intervention in 2016, fishing rights don't occupy much head room for UK voters, so long as sufficient fish are available on supermarket shelves. And it appears that such apathy is well represented among our political leaders. For what is the UK to get in return for our beleaguered fishing communities? Quicker progress through passport control when you pop over to mainland Europe, apparently. Complaints from fishing organisations about Boris Johnson's trade deal back in 2020 centred on a reduction of access to EU markets for UK fish; none of that seems to have been addressed by this deal.
Instead, the priorities of the people to whom Starmer listens most will be addressed: Remainers who constantly complain of young people's futures being 'stolen' by the end of freedom of movement will be somewhat placated if this reset results in Britain rejoining the Erasmus scheme for international students. And, of course, nothing irritates them more than having to wait a bit longer at the airport when visiting Tuscany. So if those issues can be sorted, or at least improved, what does it matter that a few thousand people living along the coast and who we never encounter at our local Waitrose anyway get the sharp end of the stick?
The wider problem for Starmer isn't just that his reset threatens to reopen a national debate that was endlessly toxic and divisive, but one in which he personally helped make it even more so. A man who is already struggling to convince voters that he has hard and unshakeable principles, even if he can't quite identify them at the moment, should not want to remind those same voters, however they voted in the referendum, of his cynical manoeuvrings at the time.
This is a man who, in direct disobedience to his then friend and leader, Jeremy Corbyn, promised Labour conference that he would ensure a rerun referendum giving the country a chance to overturn Brexit before it was finalised. My, how the conference hall cheered their saviour. Starmer had, in one fell swoop, guaranteed that he would succeed Corbyn as leader as soon as the next electoral calamity was out of the way.
This was after Starmer's party had repeatedly promised to honour the result of the referendum, whether Remain or Leave triumphed.
And here we are, back talking about issues we had all hoped had been put to bed. The scars on a country from the unnecessary divisions of Brexit have only just begun to heal and now they are re-opening – and just at the time when Nigel Farage's new party is running amok through council chambers and opinion polls.
Great timing, Keir. No, really. Well done. What could possibly go wrong?
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