After the UK general election on the Fourth of July, the first since leaving the European Union, British voters returned the Labor Party in power after 14 years in opposition. According to analysts, the loss of the Conservatives is due in no small measure to Brexit. In many respects, the dream for him “is already dead”, notes the publication “Politico” in a commentary on the political attitudes of the Island.
All the key characters who called for a vote to leave have now left the political scene, writes the publication and recalls that five years after he won the election convincingly “Boris Johnson is out of parliament, earning millions from speeches and newspaper columns , Michael Gove gave up politics rather than suffer a life in opposition, and Dominic Cummings spends his time blogging about Dostoyevsky, “TikTok“ and the CIA”.
„Politico“ also commented that what was promised by the conservatives did not happen. “Radical plans to remove EU regulations en masse from British law have now been abandoned. The benefits of faltering free trade agreements have proved elusive. British public services, far from receiving the promised boost, have in many cases almost ceased to function. The number of people migrating from abroad to Great Britain is higher than ever, the publication writes.
What are the expectations for Starmer?
The 2020 Trade and Cooperation Agreement allowed for duty-free trade with the EU, but trade barriers are still higher than before Brexit, raising the price of food and other goods in the UK and increasing discontent among British citizens . However, the leader of the Labor Party and the country's new Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, has made it clear that he has no intention of trying to re-join Britain with the European Union.
“The United Kingdom will not join the EU, the single market or the customs union in my lifetime”, the prime minister was categorical in response to questions from journalists, quoted by the “Guardian”.
Moreover, ahead of the Fourth of July election, Labor promised to leave the current Brexit deal largely unchanged and raised the slogan of “Making Brexit Work”.
After the vote, however, one of the first things the new prime minister signaled he would do was to improve the current Brexit deal negotiated by Boris Johnson, recalls the “Independent”. Just three days after the vote, during a visit to Edinburgh on Sunday, Starmer said she had already started work on building closer ties with the European Union.
Areas of cooperation with the EU
After the UK left the EU, Britons' rights to travel and work within the bloc - and vice versa - were restricted. This has had a huge impact on many industries, and passport queues could increase further in the coming months if Brussels introduces the long-delayed automated EU entry/exit system, which will require Britons to take biometric photos and fingerprints to enter Schengen space, commented “Independent“.
On this occasion, the new business minister, Jonathan Reynolds, said that removing some barriers “makes sense”, such as the “perfectly reasonable” idea for the UK and the EU to recognize each other's professional qualifications. "If you are in the creative industries, you can really suffer from the limited opportunities to move around the European Union. These are practical questions," Reynolds explained to Sky News. on Sunday.
In an article on "Local Europe" The foreign minister in the new Labor government, David Lammy, for his part, wrote: “We need to do more to support the links between our people and our culture,”, pointing to “holidays, family ties, school and student exchanges, the arts and sports“.
On the issue of free movement of people, Labor is adamant. “We are not open to the free movement of people, this is something that is part of the membership of the European Union and, as I said, we will not revise it”, emphasized Minister Reynolds.
Defense and Security
Another area where the new British government wants better interaction with the EU is in the field of defense and security. Although London and Brussels continued to cooperate in this area after Brexit, last year a parliamentary committee warned of “significant losses of capabilities”, including lost access to the EU's largest security database and more than ten member states of The Commonwealth who have stopped extraditing suspects to the UK.
Labour has pledged to seek a new security deal with the EU “which will ensure access to real-time intelligence and enable our police teams to conduct joint investigations with their European counterparts”.
Regarding defense, the party promised: “Our commitment to NATO as a cornerstone of European and global security is unwavering. We are confident in our status outside the EU, but again (we must be) a leading nation in Europe, with improved and ambitious relations with our European partners.”
The British edition “Express“ also recalled that Lammy had admitted that he wanted a new security agreement with the EU as part of a “reboot” of relations with Brussels and points to security, support for Ukraine and climate change as areas in which London could forge closer relations with the EU.
The foreign minister has already made his first trip abroad as a senior diplomat, which he used to explain to his colleagues in Germany, Poland and Sweden the chance to “take advantage of the opportunity to restart” and to work “even more closely together to address common challenges”. “We are in an unstable world where war is returning to Europe for the first time in a generation. Ensuring security requires us to work more closely together. That's why I traveled to Germany, Poland and Sweden this weekend. These countries are among the biggest European supporters of Ukraine. They are long-standing friends of the United Kingdom. I want to strengthen our relationship and work with them on a new security pact between the UK and the EU,” he noted.
Lamy also spoke with the head of the EU's foreign policy, Josep Borrell, and the two agreed to meet “as soon as possible”. The foreign secretary has also been invited to attend the September meeting of the EU's Foreign Affairs Council, even though the UK is no longer a member of the bloc.
As part of the new government's plan to realign its relationship with the EU and end the “Brexit era”, Lammy told the “Guardian” that a broadly defined security arrangement would not undermine Labour's commitment to remain outside the EU's single market and customs union, but will allow the UK to work more closely with the bloc in a number of security-related areas without the need for legally binding treaties, which could take years to conclude.
Distrust
The Conservatives are leery of Labour's plans to restart relations with the EU. Daniel Hannon, a Tory MEP for more than two decades and a fierce Eurosceptic, fears Labor will go further.
"Note that Labour's plan is not for mutual recognition - it is a proposal for Britain to follow everything the EU does,'' Hannon told Politico. “Remember how Keir Starmer kept pushing for a second referendum? ... The only question is what price will Labor pay”, he adds and expresses his expectations that the new government will “give up on deregulation completely” and to bring the UK “back into EU standardisation”.