Starmer's secret agenda on forging closer links with EU

While 2019 was undoubtedly the Brexit election, 2024 is doomed to be the non-Brexit one.

- ANDREW GRICE

The Conservatives will make a few ritual claims about exploiting Brexit freedoms. But they won't want to remind the 60 per cent of voters who now regret it and would rejoin the EU that they are the architects of the UK's act of economic self-harm. Predictions of a 15 per cent decline in trade and 4 per cent hit to GDP are on track.

Labour has radical plans to overhaul the EU relationship but doesn't want to talk about them for fear of alienating Leave voters, notably in the red wall. (The Liberal Democrats, burned by being the anti-Brexit party in 2019, now merely talk vaguely about rejoining the single market one day).

I previously assumed that if Labour has a secret plan, it would be to raise taxes after finding that "the books are even worse than we thought". That might still happen - even though Keir Starmer told Times Radio yesterday that "where there are tax rises, we've [already] set that out."

Now I think Labour's best kept secret is the extent to which it would forge a closer relationship with the EU. To be fair, Rishi Sunak has stabilised it, winning private plaudits from EU officials who hated Boris Johnson. But Starmer would go much further: he rightly judges the UK would not secure enough economic growth to rescue public services without breaking down the barriers with its biggest trading partner.