One of the many complaints levied against Keir Starmer is that he is fundamentally bad at politics; he doesn’t know how to win people over, keep voters on his side. But on current showing he is a darned sight better at the game than is Andy Burnham. Whatever possessed the leadership hopeful at the weekend to suggest that he favoured rejoining the EU? Even the most basic research on Makerfield, the constituency he must win before he can make a bid to become Labour leader and prime minister, would have told him that it voted Leave in 2016 by a margin of two thirds to one.
Having failed to find that out, he was forced into a hasty retreat yesterday, saying that he ‘respects’ Brexit. I fear it may be too late; he has already energised the Reform UK campaign. Given that Burnham starts with only a 5,000 majority over Reform UK – which was won during Labour’s 2024 landslide – it is not looking good for Burnham.
Whatever possessed the leadership hopeful at the weekend to suggest that he favoured rejoining the EU?
But it isn’t just Makerfield. Across the country, there are rather fewer votes in a policy of rejoining the EU than the polls might suggest. Notionally, there is a healthy majority in favour of rejoining the EU. A YouGov poll last month found the country 55 per cent in favour of rejoining and 38 per cent against. Among Labour voters it was 74 per cent in favour and 16 per cent against. How tempting, then, for a Labour leadership candidate to do what Streeting has done and what Burnham seemed to do initially: suggest that they would make rejoining the EU official Labour party policy, perhaps being included in the next manifesto.
But here’s the thing: while large numbers say they would like Britain to rejoin the EU, when they are presented with candidates promising to do just that they fail to back them. If a majority of Britons had really wanted to stop Brexit, Chuka Umunna’s Change UK would have soared in the polls when it was founded in February 2019. Instead, it flopped badly, struggling to sustain poll ratings much above 1 per cent. Failing Change UK, why didn’t Remainers vote for Jo Swinson and the Lib Dems in the 2019 general election? She was offering to cancel Brexit, but she, too, flopped badly.
There is a paradox at work. There are large numbers of people who theoretically back rejoining, yet come the hour, they can’t quite bring themselves to vote for it. Why not? Maybe they fear, as Lisa Nandy intimated on Sunday, that it would reopen old wounds and rekindle the same kind of sectarian divide which saw Leavers cancelled from book clubs and families broken apart. Or maybe they fear that the EU would drive Britain to such a bad rejoin deal that it wouldn’t be worth it (such people, I would suggest, have really become Leavers, whatever they tell the pollsters).
Either way, Starmer was as ardent a Remainer as they come, spending much of his time as shadow Brexit secretary campaigning for a second referendum. Yet he showed that he understood the British electorate better than either Streeting or Burnham. His policy was to drive Britain ever closer to the EU without ever mentioning the word ‘rejoin’. Only on Monday did he imply that a debate on Brexit ‘might happen years down the line’ –perhaps as a way of undermining Burnham’s chances in Makerfield.
Starmer’s previous approach was that of the fabled boiled frog: chuck the amphibian into a pot of boiling water and it will jump out. Gradually raise the temperature, on the other hand, and it won’t realise what is happening – and sit still and be boiled alive. By the same token, Starmer figured, Britain might become de facto member of the EU without Leavers protesting too much.
Wherever you stand on Brexit you have to acknowledge that was quite a crafty plan. When Starmer is finally defenestrated, the Labour party might well miss his – relatively good –political skills.
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