If offering the public some “breathing space” in the cost of living crisis was the mantra of last month’s budget, the political space it created to revisit our relationship with the European Union may prove more defining.
I’ve spent what feels like much of the past decade immersed in the Brexit debate – first as an adviser, then helping to craft the red lines that shaped Labour’s 2024 manifesto, and latterly as a Cabinet Office minister working on the EU-reset. In truth, the discussions we have had as a country and within my party on this issue have not really moved on since the moment we left on 31 January 2020.
There’s good reason for this. The red lines we drew up in the aftermath of the Labour leadership contest in 2020 – ruling out rejoining the EU, the single market, the customs union or restoring freedom of movement – were designed precisely to close down the debate and to narrow the target that Brexit had become for Labour. They enabled us to fight the 2024 election on a manifesto that was both pro-EU, by advocating a closer relationship, but also clearly stopping short of anything that looked like rejoining the bloc or relitigating the 2016 referendum. Schrödinger’s Brexit.
I still believe that strategically this was the right course for Labour, and the reset deal that – touch wood – will get over the line at this month’s UK-EU summit will demonstrate that real benefits can be delivered within those red lines, whether cheaper prices for businesses, a youth mobility scheme or the return of the Erasmus+ scheme.
By the next general election, however, those red lines will have served their purpose. They should be given a well-earned and dignified retirement. Frankly, they no longer speak to the world as it is in 2026, let alone as it may be over the years to come.
The major reason for this is not, in my view, an economic one. The economic case for rejoining either the EU or the single market (I personally have never understood the argument for the latter without the former) is basically the same as it was in 2016: that it will boost GDP, raise living standards, go some way to heal our public finances, and open access for British businesses to a market of 500 million people. All that comes, of course, with accepting freedom of movement and the other rules of the club. So far, so 2016. But pinning the case for a new relationship on old arguments risks both the same result and missing what has really changed.
Instead, it’s the huge geopolitical shifts and, above all, the new security and cyber threats the UK and Europe now face day in, day out, that demand we now reassess the depth and nature of that relationship. We should be in no doubt that – whether from Russia, China, Iran or elsewhere – these are of a different order and immediacy to in 2016. At the same time, the reliability of the US as our primary security partner can no longer be taken for granted. Donald Trump’s second term – which saw a British prime minister forced to twice scramble “coalitions of the willing” precisely because we could no longer rely on the Americans – should be seen as confirmation of this, not an aberration. It would now be brave in the extreme to continue to pin our future security – and that of Europe – on the outcome of US elections, or the false hope that, whoever is in the White House, we can still bank on the US as we did in 2016, let alone 1945.
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And so it is this question – how to ensure peace and prosperity in a time of growing global threats and US retrenchment – that should drive our foreign policy, our geostrategic choices and our domestic priorities for the years to come. That question was unthinkable in 2016, but it is unavoidable in 2026. It, of course, demands much greater urgency in increasing domestic defence spending, but it should also drive our future discussions with the EU.
The minimum we should now seek with the EU is a deep and enduring defence and trade partnership – pooling and rebuilding our defence and security might, and aligning our economic interests where possible.
Our primary goal should be to ensure that we are, together, better able to protect ourselves, and less dependent on a volatile US. Mark Carney’s push by Canada for “associate membership” and “the deepest possible partnership short of accession” with the EU stems from precisely this realisation. The very least Britain should now seek is a future relationship with the EU that is as ambitious.
Whether, ultimately, that deep security and economic partnership can only be achieved through formally rejoining the EU or through an associate deal should, of course, be part of the debate that has now been opened. But to fully capitalise on the political space we now have, we need to be clear as to why now is the right time to reopen the Brexit debate, what we are seeking, and why it is so important to our national interest. A re-run of the tired arguments of 2016 won’t do that. Defending red lines designed for 2020 won’t do that either. But appreciating the urgent strategic challenges of the decades to come just might.
