Keir Starmer can’t build a stronger European partnership by stealth. He has to declare it aloud | Rafael Behr

NA lot of Britain’s relationship has been settled after Britain’s exit from the European Union, but Keir Starmer can claim that it was “reset.” This word was brilliantly chosen before the elections last year to wear low ambition as a high diplomacy. There are 10 days of negotiation before Summit in LondonAs a new partnership is scheduled to be revealed in the United Kingdom and the European Union. It will be more planned than the material. But there is progress in the fact that the British ruling party believes that Brussels is a partner, not a parasite.
Of course, the old European goalkeeper will condemn any deal as a betrayal of Brexit. If there are plans for limited time, Youth exchange visaIt will be criticized as a return to freedom of movement at the back door. If there is an agreement to align the regulations so that the goods can cross the border more efficiently and the European Court of Justice participates in the judgment of compliance, then the priests of sovereignty will be presented to them for heresy. Any common denominators will be drawn on the carbon fees or the renewed permission of the French hunting in British waters in shadows of surrender.
However, the inaccuracy of the side lines will be resolved to a large crowd of fanatics. Most Britons see the possibility of better relations with the European Union as desirable, or at least not controversial. This was already true in 2023, when Rishi Sonak Windsor frame To fix errors in the way that Britain’s exit from the European Union applies to Northern Ireland, and when he agreed that British scientists can Join the European Union horizon scheme. This was true when Kimi Badnouch, as Minister of Trade and Business in Sonak, The deadline has decreased The automatic completion of thousands of European Union regulations kept in the UK law. This residence was with the dilution of Brexit Brexit. Sonak enjoyed friendly relationships with Ursula von der Lin, head of the European Commission. I called himDear Rishi“At a press conference.
If the most warmer re -discourse is defined and commitment to stop doing really stupid things, the process was ongoing even before Starmer entered Downing Street. Monitoring continuity is not to reduce the difference made by the labor government. The axis of the Starmer Plan is an alliance for defense and security framed in terms of continental solidarity, by pressure, hedge against American strategic treason. It was possible to be taboo for any conservative party leader. The same applies to something clear like an agreement to keep it Regular peaksParting the formal nature of the UK-European Union Dialogue.
In important aspects, Starmer abandoned the European spirit that directed Johnson Britain’s exit from the European Union. But in more fundamental ways, he stuck in the speech of the deal that Johnson has already signed. Its basic functions are maintained in red lines that exclude a return to the unified market or customs union.
If there is value in this ban, it is only formed in electoral tactics. As economic policy and strategic sites, it defines the self without success. Perhaps it was necessary to neutralize Britain’s exit from the European Union as a toxic issue in the election campaign. We can only impose the opposite scenarios where exhaustion Keep more options open and punished by voters or won a large majority anyway. But the maneuvering room inside these red lines is measurable, which are small. It is good to have a veterinary agreement, which is to reduce the border friction of agricultural export, for example, but it will not stimulate the growth reward.
Refusing to deviate from the Orthodoxy in the era of the Conservative Party is a double limit. By excluding the ambitious models of future integration, and doing this for a transparent fear of a local violent reaction, Starmer encourages Brussels negotiations from flexibility even in the areas where discussion is allowed. He sends the indication that the British policy, under the warmth of the new surface of the work government, maintains a deep and cold cultural suspicion of the European project. It transmits systematic ignorance, familiar with Britain’s exit negotiations from the European Union. How is an alliance governed by laws and treaties that are learned with countries, not political parties.
Starmer obtained the distribution of goodwill profits by virtue of not being the Conservative Party, but it exaggerates the estimation of the leverage that gives it as an engineer for future relations when he can succeed him Nigel Varage is supposed to be.
Also, the supporters of Europe from the Prime Minister of the Labor Party cannot overcome the Brexit of Johnson, who was conceived in aggression against Brussels but has caused more harm to Britain. The European Union’s side did not leave a lot. Starmer has a play cards. In the European League, France is only equivalent to defensive and security capabilities in the United Kingdom. The Russian aggression in Ukraine, along with the anti-Europe-opposing Donald Trump series, makes the issue of embracing Britain-but not if the British exit virus from the European Union is just asleep.
the The commercial deal Starmer may not explicitly agree with the US President on Thursday with the goals he follows simultaneously in Brussels, but the balance law is unstable by its nature. Trump hates the European Union for its geopolitical independence as a continental commercial bloc. He wants it broken. This is understood in Brussels as an existential threat.
Soon or later, a crisis forcing Starmer will come to choose between solidarity with Europe and Vassalage to Washington. His terrible efforts to maintain equal being vulnerable to its interpretation in Brussels as other symptoms from Britain’s exit from the European Union of deep tissue in the UK political body.
You should not disturb the prime minister if his ambitions are in a relationship in the European Union in the future More modest than it looks; If its definition of the new strategic partnership is a slow amendment, it grinds the technocratic for the current situation. But if he really has something more essential and transforming, he must announce this loudly, not only in Brussels but at home.
Getting a good deal from the European Union and gaining public support is part of the same process. The leader who seemed able to change the conditions of discussion and pre -emptive challenge to the European Union’s exit hose, would open fame in negotiations and get a better deal. A supportive agenda can be presented so far by hiding. At some point, time must come to win the argument. This could not happen under the pretext that has never been made.