Brussels will refuse to move forward with Keir Starmer’s programme for a Brexit “reset” unless the Labour prime minister backs down on his formal opposition to free movement, a new document has revealed.
Brussels, like Starmer himself, is quite prepared to ride roughshod over the decision of millions of Britons to leave the European Union—a choice ratified in a national referendum in 2016 and at every subsequent general election.
Starmer’s team has been using the stock phrase that it has “no plans” to accept a ‘youth mobility scheme’—which would allow adults from the EU under the age of 30 to remain in the UK (and vice versa) for a certain period of time—whenever it has been pressed on the issue in recent weeks.
But a leaked codex of EU positions says the bloc sees such an agreement—described to The European Conservative by one migration expert as “literally synonymous with freedom of movement”—as “an indispensable element” of negotiations with London. The document also puts youth mobility down as “essential for our future relationship.”
Politico, to whom the document was leaked, was also told by one EU diplomat that representatives of different member states have raised the securing of a youth mobility scheme with the UK as a number one demand.
Labour officials are unlikely to lose any sleep over inevitably backing down from their position. Many of them have long supported such a plan anyway. And Starmer himself was just a few years back campaigning for Britain to remain in the EU, with the full freedom of movement that brought, and soon after pushed for the Brexit vote to be reversed.
Given how much time they have devoted to putting the “Brexit years behind us” and working in “lockstep” with Brussels (Starmer’s own words), it is particularly hard to picture Labour dropping all their reset plans over a mobility scheme many of them support anyway.
It is worth noting, too, that Michel Barnier, the EU’s former Brexit negotiator, said before Labour got into power that the bloc would reject a future Labour government’s Brexit plan unless it eventually agrees to a return to free movement. If Starmer was genuinely opposed to a youth mobility scheme, he would have made less of his UK-EU “reset” plans earlier, too.
The PM may continue with his act for some time yet. But other pro-EU campaigners can see clearly what is currently on the horizon. Former EU official and current advisor to the European Movement UK campaign group Mark English posted happily online after this document leak that “youth mobility will happen.”
