Ding-ding! We were surfacing from the Channel Tunnel and our phones collectively pinged to inform us we had entered France. Arable expanses and shops promising vins et campagne surrounded us, and the EU relations minister Nick Thomas-Symonds was one hour ahead of his government’s meltdown back at home. If there is a Labour heartland any more, then here it is. Welcome to Europe, the UK government’s new and last-remaining comfort zone.
It wasn’t so long ago that the European Union was, rhetorically, a no-go zone for Labour politicians. After Brexit, some self-flagellated in internalised disgust at the metropolitan elite; others shopped around for a rerun with the bizarre People’s Vote campaign, a sort of Waitrose-branded despotism. Most glimpsed the 4 per cent wiped from Britain’s long-term productivity by Brexit and chose, for electoral expediency, not to look directly at it. They just repeated “make Brexit work” and cringed.
But there was no such squeamishness amid the calm, upholstered grey of Eurostar Plus, where I found Thomas-Symonds preparing for the next stage of negotiations for a new UK-EU deal over a café au lait. A copy of the latest New Statesman was positioned politely on the table, alongside his red Elizabeth Regina-embossed government folder. He had just finished a lunch of Eurostar chicken and a Coke Zero – eschewing, I was assured by two separate aides, the first-class staple of a glass of champagne. He was preparing to meet his opposite number in the European Commission, Maroš Šefčovič, in Brussels the next day.
Thomas-Symonds, 45, was first elected to parliament alongside his fellow barrister Keir Starmer ten years ago. The two have been close over their decade in the Commons; the Prime Minister was considered rather ruthless for waiting three days after the election to tell his old friend that he wasn’t getting a place in the cabinet. Still, Thomas-Symonds has plenty of jobs, as paymaster general, minister for the Cabinet Office and minister for the constitution and European Union relations – and he has an office in 9 Downing Street with an adjoining door to No 10.
The Welshman, who represents his birthplace of Blaenavon – the old coal-mining and steel-making town in his South Wales constituency of Torfaen – is also a historian, known for his biographies of Clement Attlee, Nye Bevan and Harold Wilson. With his neatly cropped hair, wrinkle-free shirt and striped tie, he looked businesslike, but his demeanour was that of the academic he once was (he taught politics at Oxford): “Unflashy, not shy but kind of unassuming,” in the words of one EU official. He spoke so softly I occasionally couldn’t hear him beneath the whoosh of the 300km-an-hour train.
On my way to the carriage – where my entrance was briefly blocked by a cross French butler with his lunch trolley – I’d staggered through rows of inter-railers with barrel-fat rucksacks, tourists sipping from micro-bottles of wine and parents with their increasingly Eurosceptic infants. I also glimpsed a number of newspaper front pages declaring Keir Starmer’s leadership “on notice”, predicting he’d be out of No 10 by May, or even by Christmas.
Recent scandals have gouged key figures out of the government: the former deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, British ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson and political strategy director Paul Ovenden. The deputy leadership election now underway is airing tensions between the soft left and the slightly-harder-boiled left.
Is the government in crisis? “No,” Thomas-Symonds replied. “But, look, I’m not going to pretend: there’s obviously been some turbulent events over the past week. I’m not going to insult your readers’ intelligence by suggesting other than that.”
How is Starmer doing? “I know him very well, and I don’t doubt he will rise above it. Look, I’ve seen him today, in fact, before I came, and he is absolutely focused on delivery.” They had discussed the new Hillsborough Law bill, which would mandate criminal punishments for officials covering up state wrongdoing, that morning.
In his House of Commons speeches, Nye Bevan – architect of the NHS and Thomas-Symonds’ political hero – married forensic legislative detail with an overall vision. Starmer, in contrast, is often accused of lacking the second part. In fact, the very word “vision” irritates him. Without it, I suggest, his leadership feels wobblier by the day. “I don’t really accept this analysis of the Prime Minister, having known him for many, many years,” said Thomas-Symonds. “He’s always had absolute determination to improve the lives of working people as long as I’ve known him.”
Donald Trump’s state visit, which took place a few days after our meeting, pulled focus from the chaos within No 10. Ironically, since Labour took power, what looked like the toughest political challenges – navigating a Trump-led White House, rapprochement with Europe without relighting the Brexit fuse – have become rare wins. Nine years on from the referendum, most Brits think it was wrong to leave the EU, and blame the Conservatives, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage for what they see as Brexit’s failure. Almost two-thirds want to see a closer relationship with the EU, including 60 per cent of Leave voters.
“Broadly speaking, public opinion seems to be almost exactly where the government is. People are not interested in revisiting the past, but they are certainly interested in a closer, more productive relationship,” Thomas-Symonds told me. “I think this strand of work really is one of the examples of success stories in the government’s foreign policy.”
In a speech in August at an event hosted by the Spectator – warmly introduced by the editor, and devoted Brexiteer, Michael Gove – Thomas-Symonds talked up the merits of “dynamic alignment” (keeping up with EU regulations). This would have been anathema during the Brexit wars, but didn’t muster a squeak from the excitable Leaver beside him. The minister even felt comfortable enough to joke about the “Brexit tackle” – football slang among schoolkids for clattering a player out of the match. There is no longer a Labour front-bench omertà on the idea that Brexit may have been ill-conceived.
A May summit that reset the UK’s relationship with the EU pissed off a few fishermen, but barely stirred Nigel Farage from his holiday en France. Kemi Badenoch may have said something about “surrender”. Since then, Thomas-Symonds has sounded ever more confident on areas that were until recently taboo: special visas for young EU citizens, for example (which Yvette Cooper initially refused to back as Home Secretary, on the grounds of “no return to free movement”).
But the negotiations in spring were mainly talks about talks – bar the security and defence partnership, and a 12-year extension of reciprocal fishing rights. Now the two sides will have to wade through the details on emissions, energy, streamlining food and agricultural trade, access to EU defence procurement and youth mobility.
For Thomas-Symonds, however, this is the easy part. Ever since he was given the EU brief in opposition in 2023, he has been shuttling to and from Brussels and other European capitals, trying to fix the ragged relationship between Britain and the continent. “I definitely saw the harder bit as the opening bit,” he said. “The hard yards of the diplomatic work that was going to create this new, more constructive relationship.”
Next comes what he calls “the delivery phase” – of “actually showing these material, tangible benefits to people”. Labour is in desperate need of noticeable improvements to voters’ daily lives. But it is hard to see how this new deal will bring such relief any time soon. The plan to reduce red tape on trading food and animal products, for example, is slated for 2027 (a timeline some deem optimistic). Will that really lower supermarket prices by the next election, likely to be in 2029?
Thomas-Symonds thinks so. He cited the costs businesses have to pay – including £61 on identity checks, and £200 per consignment on certain food and drink exports – that the deal will scrap. “That is very good for growth, but it’s also great for prices.” Major supermarkets have suggested it would help lower bills.
He seems undeterred by the political vulnerability of a youth mobility scheme, which risks – despite being capped and time-limited – cries of a return to freedom of movement. (Hence why they insist on calling it a “youth experience scheme”.) “I’m very proud that it’s been negotiated,” Thomas-Symonds said. “It will of course be capped.” He refuses to say how long young Europeans will be allowed to stay in Britain, or what the quota will be. “But listen, this is about opportunities. Yes, of course young Europeans will come here, and I hope they will take away a great experience here in the United Kingdom and be a source of soft power for us, but it’s also a great experience for young British people as well.” Oh, and “by the way”, he adds, “it’s popular”.
This part of the deal seems personal. “One of my regrets in my education is I never took a year out to go travelling, and I didn’t because I come from a very traditional working-class background. My father worked in Llanwern steelworks, my mother worked in a factory in Blaenavon. I went to the local school, then I was lucky when I won a place at Oxford… My parents always wanted me to keep going with my education. I think they always feared that if I’d taken a year out, I might never have come back. So that’s why I didn’t.
“But years later, especially [considering] what I’ve ended up doing with my life, it is one of my regrets, that I never had the chance to take a year out and travel.” He travels now, of course, but only really experiences Europe through a car or train window.
When we pulled in to Brussels, the minister stayed alone on board, while his team waited on the platform to film an arrival video for the Cabinet Office’s Instagram account. He alighted looking purposeful, opposite an off-puttingly fleshy ad for chicken fillets. Lindsay Croisdale-Appleby, the jolly UK ambassador to the EU, bounced up to him on the station gangway: another video, this time of a handshake in front of some lifts.
Imagining a future election, Thomas-Symonds often says he would “relish” a debate with Farage or Badenoch saying they’d reverse his deal. His argument is that this would hit jobs, burden businesses, threaten border security and push up food prices.
But the prospect of a Reform government worries EU diplomats. Privately, they were delighted to see Thomas-Symonds take on Farage in his Spectator speech, accusing him of wanting “Britain to fail”. He elaborated to me: “Nigel Farage wants to stoke grievance, because that’s what he feeds off. What he’s never prepared to do is give some sort of properly thought-out plan of how he’s going to deal with the underlying cause of the grievance.” He called Farage’s pledge to stop small boats within two weeks “fantasy politics”.
Labour’s response to the politics of grievance, however, is muted. After Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech in 1968 came a less-remembered intervention. The then prime minister Harold Wilson – another of Thomas-Symonds’ biographical subjects – told a rally in Birmingham: “I am not prepared to stand aside and see this country engulfed by racial conflict… This country must be clear where it stands.” He was not “prepared to be a neutral”. This was an “underrated speech”, in Thomas-Symonds’ view.
There was a lot more public support for Powell (74 per cent agreed with him at the time) than there is for his equivalents in Britain today. Yet Labour’s main party line has been to defend the free speech of a far-right rally that involved calls for violence, injured police officers and chants of “from the river to the sea, let’s make England Abdul-free”.
“Harold Wilson was talking about decent people up and down the country with British values, and similarly, when we talk about the [13 September demonstrations] – firstly it’s an expression of freedom of assembly, of freedom of speech, and I would always be the first to stand up for the right of people to protest – I think it’s a very fine British tradition,” said Thomas-Symonds. “What most certainly isn’t in the British tradition is this tiny minority of people who are out attacking our police. The Prime Minister voiced exactly that point, and I think it’s very similar to the point that… Wilson was making.”
When I suggested Britain’s wave of open racism had gone beyond a fringe of thugs, he added: “The Prime Minister has openly said that celebrating our diversity as a country is something that we’re really, really proud of. I’m very proud of it.”
Our last stop was Bruges, where Thomas-Symonds would be the first British minister to address students at the College of Europe since David Miliband in 2007. The most famous of these addresses, though, is Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 Bruges speech, when she told the audience she had “not embarked on the business of throwing back the frontiers of state at home only to see a European superstate getting ready to exercise a new dominance from Brussels”. It was seen as the moment the Tories turned away from Europe.
As horse-drawn carts trotted over cobbles and dusk dusted the gabled medieval houses outside, students wandered into the hall – scribbly moustaches, elegant chignons secured with biros, a burble of French, English, Italian. Thomas-Symonds gave them his post-Brexit Thatcher remix: “We have not taken down barriers to cooperation and trade to make people safer and more prosperous, only to see them reimposed by those driven only by narrow ideology in the UK.” But that may well be the outcome if Labour cannot win back voters – even if they are, for now, relaxed about Europe.
[Further reading: Nick Clegg saves the internet]
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This article appears in the 25 Sep 2025 issue of the New Statesman, “Are you up for it?” – Andy Burnham’s plan for Britain
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