“Brexit did deep damage.” With those words at her Mais lecture on Tuesday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves made it clear that there has been an important shift within the Labour Party – one that government ministers have been signalling for some time.
“Let me say this directly to our friends and allies in Europe. This government believes a deeper relationship is in the interest of the whole of Europe,” she said, while at the same time insisting that the government was not trying to “turn back the clock” on Brexit.
Speaking in such overt terms about Brexit’s perceived harms in part reflects a belief that, as the government attempts to turn around the country’s persistently sluggish economic performance, it must be more ambitious in its attempt to “reset” the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU.
Labour’s 2024 election manifesto did propose some renegotiation of the Trade and Co-operation Agreement that Boris Johnson negotiated on leaving the EU in 2020. In particular, it wanted to end EU customs checks on exports of food and agricultural products by aligning Britain’s regulations of such products with those of the EU.
However, it also drew clear red lines: no return to the single market, the customs union, or freedom of movement.
Of the possibility of rejoining the EU there was no suggestion whatsoever.
This stance was the product of the party’s heavy defeat in the 2019 election. After that calamity, Labour accepted the decision to leave the EU and voted for Johnson’s Trade and Co-operation Agreement.
However, Labour’s tone has been changing. Shortly after last autumn’s Budget, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer declared that “Brexit had significantly hurt our economy” and that Britain needed to “keep moving towards a close relationship with the EU”.
Although the red lines in Labour’s manifesto were apparently still to be kept intact, his speech suggested that Labour was coming to the conclusion that, if it was going to turn around Britain’s ailing economy, it needed to be more ambitious in its approach to the reset.