Shortly before Christmas, the Labour Movement for Europe (LME), a quaint party group of 48 MPs with a self-explanatory purpose, met for one of its regular off the record meetings in parliament about how Britain might move closer to the European Union. There was a shiver of excitement when Tom Watson, Labour’s former deputy leader, rose to announce that he had a new singular political mission: putting Britain back at the heart of Europe.
Watson – a veteran party organiser who is now a Labour peer – has only sporadically intervened in frontline politics since stepping down as an MP in 2019 after enduring what he called “brutality and hostility” during his time as Jeremy Corbyn’s number two. Now he has a renewed purpose. And he is not alone.
On paper, the 2024 general election gave Britain its most pro-European parliament in at least two decades, with an overwhelming majority of broadly Europhile Labour MPs bolstered by the largest Liberal Democrat cohort in history. And yet, in this parliament so far, Europe is the dog that hasn’t barked.
The Labour government, with a manifesto commitment to create “an improved and ambitious relationship with our European partners”, has outsourced this work to the quietly capable Cabinet Office minister and confidant of the Prime Minister, Nick Thomas-Symonds. The government has been reluctant to shout about it. At the time of the EU “reset” summit last spring, the right-wing papers wrote predictably about “Brexit betrayal”, yet it barely registered with voters and government comms was focussed elsewhere. This week that began to change.
On Monday, Thomas-Symonds and fellow minister Chris Ward (also close to Starmer) invited Labour MPs to the PLP room of the parliamentary estate for “drop in sessions” about the government’s position on Europe. The invitation caused a buzz of excitement among a parliamentary party that is still – after being crushed by Boris Johnson in the “Brexit election” of 2019 – sheepish about its real views on the EU. The drop-in was so oversubscribed that one attendee likened it to “political speed dating” and more time had to be allocated.
Two MPs who separately attended the sessions told me they interpreted it as an offer of “express permission” from the government to proselytise about Labour’s pro-European position. They were gleeful.
The openly pro-EU caucus in the PLP has been growing in recent months. “The conversation about Europe is now resurging,” one admittedly Europhile MP told me of the mood among colleagues. The LME itself has been running seminars and workshops for Labour MPs on “the scope of the damage done by Brexit”.
This political education is intended both to build the case for a closer relationship and to familiarise MPs, many of them elected after Brexit, with the key European issues. A leading LME MP told me that their central message to the PLP is: “Brexit is a terrible idea and you can’t make it work.”
We have had some glimmers of evidence about the strength of pro-European sentiment in the party. There were the 62 MPs who wrote to Starmer asking for a youth mobility scheme with Europe last year (it seemed a no-hoper at the time, now they’re getting one). There is the group of Labour MPs on the dully named “UK Trade and Business Commission”, a non-governmental body run by the pro-EU Best For Britain campaign group, who spend their time in continental capitals talking to European diplomats about how Britain can come in from the cold, all the while apologising for the “scarring” effect of Brexit.
Of course it is worth saying that there are also those Labour MPs who would prefer to avoid the issue altogether. There are also those who think to do so would be a dereliction of duty (though they are often in Remain facing seats where such pronouncements come more easily).
And among the Europhiles there are further divisions about how far the case should be pushed. They could be broadly summarised as the introverts and the extroverts.
The introverts, who have been rather well-represented at the top of government, want to move closer to Europe without really talking about it. This is the path of gradualism. One Europhile MP in a Leave-voting swing seat told me that their argument for Europe would be based on the price of butter and energy after Thomas-Symonds’ negotiations, which they could sell to their voters, rather than on grand notions of reversing Brexit which would only dredge up the semi-forgotten horror of the late twenty-teens.
An example of the extroverts would be the 13 Labour MPs who voted for a Lib Dem 10 Minute Rule Bill at the end of last year calling for Britain to rejoin the EU Customs Union. Such a move would essentially rip up Starmer’s trade deals with India and America. And there are further arguments on the Customs Union question, which has been bandied about by senior ministers including David Lammy and Wes Streeting.
One new intake MP told me they hoped Labour would include a pledge to rejoin it in the next manifesto “to show we are the opposite of Reform and the Tories”. Another similarly minded MP said such bold commitments were “good politics as well as good economics” because it would create a decisive break with Reform and rally progressive voters to Labour.
But hardline pro-Europeans are disdainful of this “not serious” chatter. “What we should put in the manifesto is to go for a Swiss-style deal, not repeat the debates of 2019 over a customs union or the single market,” said one.
A Swiss-style deal would technically reintroduce freedom of movement, one of the Labour leadership’s “red lines” on Europe, but would come with a series of emergency brakes the like of which Nigel Farage himself has supported in the past. Economically, supporters claim it would bring the greatest economic benefits to Britain and its heavily services-based economy.
The LME has recently been circulating a paper titled “Thinking Swiss on the EU-UK Reset” which calls for the party to reject the Customs Union as “the only idea around” and go much further in its engagement with the EU. How might this internal debate break into the political mainstream? The government’s forthcoming bill on dynamic alignment with the EU could be their way in, say the radical Europhiles. “We will look to lead on the legislation that is coming on the reset. It will create momentum on what can be done next, it will offer a big opportunity for us,” said a leading pro-EU MP, raising the prospect of radical backbench Labour amendments to the bill. Brace for some constructive mischief.
[Further reading: Jenrickism has arrived]
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Subscribe here to commentEurope will never accept the UK back into Europe as long as Farage is able to get into Downing Street on as little as 30% of the vote. FPTP has to go before any serious change can take place. As long as Labour continue to support FPTP and, therefore, refuse to work with other pro-EU parties, the progressive vote will be forever split greatly increasing the chances of a Reform majority government
About time – for what did we elect a Labour Government if not to bring us much closer to Europe. Most British people are now pro-European so we need to act now if we are to deal with the existential threat of Reform