Labour’s Brexit reset should be an easy win for Starmer – shame it’s too late

Just for a change, a Labour manifesto promise is going to be fulfilled. The Brexit “reset” Keir Starmer has long promised has been, mostly, done. The broad outlines are clear, even if the details of the youth mobility scheme and British access to the newly enlarged European defence market are yet to be finalised.

It is exactly as Labour promised in its election campaign last year: “Labour will work to improve the UK’s trade and investment relationship with the EU, by tearing down unnecessary barriers to trade.

“We will seek to negotiate a veterinary agreement to prevent unnecessary border checks and help tackle the cost of food; will help our touring artists; and secure a mutual recognition agreement for professional qualifications to help open up markets for UK service exporters.

“Labour will seek an ambitious new UK-EU security pact to strengthen cooperation on the threats we face.”

Most of those boxes have now been ticked, and there is no realistic prospect that the government will seek to rejoin the European Union, its single market or the customs union, again as stated in the manifesto.

A pedant – and they are numerous in the Eurosceptic community – might interpret the youth mobility scheme as a breach of the Labour pledge that there would be “no return to free movement”.

However, given that the scheme will be capped, time-limited, linked to a visa, have no rights attached – least of all for dependants – and no social security, and require a prepaid NHS surcharge, it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be a free-for-all. A few thousand Italian kids won’t tear the fabric of British society apart.

Indeed, the only “sacrifice” the British appear to be making is to allow European trawlers more access to the UK’s waters than they already enjoy under Boris Johnson’s deal.

In simple terms, this means that the EU fishing fleets will be able to take more of the fish that the British don’t want to eat anyway, and that can’t be sold into the EU market by British fisherpeople because of, erm, Brexit.

But even if that is a loss – and it is arguable – the British “wins” far outweigh the price of unwanted piscine produce.

British young people will regain access to the Erasmus scheme, and the opportunity to work in Europe. We will have closer defence and security cooperation at a time when America has openly declared its intentions to downgrade Europe and put Nato on a more transactional basis.

So we can stand up to Russia rather better than we can on our own. Passport queues will be shorter. Artists and performers will be able to tour Europe again more easily.

British defence firms can sell into the EU defence fund. British farmers and food producers will regain lost markets on the continent, and the great British sausage will be able to make its pioneering culinary journey across the Channel again. The Europeans ask that we respect their food standards as they evolve, and we’ve agreed to do so.

Arguments can be resolved by the European Court, but the UK can reject them – because if, at some point, we find them unacceptable, we can scrap the deal; and in reality, we should be able to exercise some influence before things come to such a pass.

The Brexit reset isn’t perfect, as no trade deal can be. Compromise is essential, and sovereignty is never absolute and always available to be used, or “pooled”, to achieve mutual advantage. Give and take. That’s what’s happened in all of the post-Brexit agreements – Australia, New Zealand, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, India, and the US-UK Economic Prosperity Deal.

But the Brexit reset has even wider ramifications. Politically, it is consonant with British public opinion, which increasingly sees Brexit for the false hope it always was.

If Brexit is being “betrayed”, many people in the UK will say: “Good job, too.” They want a closer, more friendly, cooperative relationship with our closest neighbours, and are unconcerned about abstract notions of sovereignty.

They do not feel that their sovereign rights are impinged if phytosanitary standards in meat are harmonised. They aren’t wound up by exchange students from Finland. They are, in fact, increasingly anti-Brexit, and the only reason they don’t want to rejoin the EU is because they dread reopening the painful wounds inflicted in the Brexit civil war of 2016-19 (as well as the fact that the old terms of UK membership are no longer available).

It is, then, a mistake for the Tories to be so strident about the reset, rejecting it before it’s published, and talking, so foolishly, about surrender and betrayal. It makes Kemi Badenoch and her colleagues sound cranky, and in any case, they can never be as pro-Brexit as Nigel Farage.

As for Starmer, the sad thing is that his latest international success won’t do him that much good, at least immediately. It will certainly make him look more statesmanlike, and a better Brexit deal is undoubtedly a positive, as is a manifesto promise delivered; but it’s only when (or if) living standards and public services improve that he will restore his own popularity, as well as that of his government and his party.