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Hi everyone, This week we are back on topic with Brexit, in part due to the series of anti-immigration protests that have rocked towns across the UK following the Southport stabbing, which (as we all know) was not perpetrated by immigrants.
What are the implications for future EU-UK relations? The tensions of the past 10 days are a stark reminder, if any were needed, of just how politically volatile immigration is in British politics, no matter which party is in power.
In her first interview on the steps of her new ministry, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper highlighted her commitment to a new “border command centre” and then pledged to stick to Conservative policy on curbing net immigration.
Youth Mobility
Anyone wanting a youth mobility deal with the EU (and the travel industry is still lobbying hard for this) should bear in mind how wary some very senior Labour ministers remain on the issue.
Similarly, Rachel Reeves' warning of a £22 billion budget deficit in this year's budget provides an important backdrop for those lobbying for Britain to rejoin the EU's Erasmus student exchange programme, a move that EU diplomats often say demonstrates British goodwill.
Over the past seven years the UK has contributed €2 billion more to Erasmus than it has received (because more EU children have used the scheme than UK children), which is £200 million more than the total spending Labour plans to do this Parliament on extra primary school teachers and breakfast clubs.
All politics is local, but the EU needs to rethink the terms of UK participation in these programmes. When the Conservative government renegotiated the financial terms of rejoining the Horizon Science programme, the EU showed little appetite for it. Otherwise there is a good chance that reconciliation will not happen so quickly.
EU-UK reconciliation
Indeed, there are growing signs that expectations that Sir Keir Starmer will lead a fundamental and rapid restructuring of Britain’s relationship with Europe should be tempered by an acknowledgement of the structural, legal and political barriers that currently exist between the EU and the UK.
The diplomatic reset is likely to continue after the summer break, with Starmer due to meet European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen soon and Foreign Secretary David Lammy due to attend a meeting of EU foreign ministers in October.
The question is, what follows after these set pieces?
Officials on both sides say discussions on a new EU-UK security pact are currently focused on striking a balance between “fast and shallow” and “slow and deep,” with the trend moving toward the latter, but there is great uncertainty about what “deep” actually means.
In this article, Luigi Scazzieri of the Centre for European Reform beautifully analyses the options, concluding that “pursuing a progressive approach” would be the surest way to build trust and overcome long-standing differences.
For example, he points out that the Gibraltar issue has delayed the implementation of a deal the Conservatives signed to make it easier to move troops across the EU. Reaching agreement with Spain on Gibraltar's post-Brexit arrangements is Lammy's main goal this autumn, but it shows that EU negotiations will not take place in a vacuum.
So rather than seek a full-scale, legally binding agreement that could get bogged down over infighting issues like how British companies will access the EU's defence procurement system, Scazzieri says the two sides should stick to a looser joint declaration – that is, small steps.
Trade
On trade, the UK is reportedly due to start negotiating a veterinary agreement in early 2025, but Starmer's EU envoy Nick Thomas-Symonds has described the deal as “highly ambitious”, as usual offering few details.
Sam Rowe of political advisory group Flint Global has analysed these options in detail on his Substack post Most Favoured Nation, taking a cautious stance and predicting that the UK will opt for a less deep New Zealand-style agreement rather than a Swiss-style option that aims for full and complete cooperation.
But Rowe, along with several other analysts, argues that a change in the EU commission responsible for Brexit during von der Leyen's second term may encourage Brussels to adopt a slightly softer approach in negotiations with Britain.
It's possible. As I reported last week, the initial document handed over to Thomas Symonds during his visit to Brussels included a list of “urgent measures” that the UK must complete to demonstrate its “genuine commitment” to its existing treaty obligations.
This diplomatic warning was dismissed by some as the death throes of the “old way of thinking” in the European Commission (given that some EU member states, such as Germany, are pushing for reconciliation), but it is probably wise not to overstate it.
Future tasks
Brexit was always going to be a structural issue: the EU must maintain its 27-nation unity and, judging by past experience, negotiate in a way that ensures individual member states consistently sacrifice their individual interests to defend the collective position.
The extremely ambitious mandatory youth mobility scheme announced by the European Commission before the election (and summarily rejected by Labour) is one example. I am not sure that a change in who is leading the negotiations with the UK will fundamentally change this internal EU dynamic.
Rowe is clear on this point, arguing that with EU traders now facing UK border checks, the EU could be more flexible on veterinary agreements – but only in the context of the UK catering to “aggressive EU interests such as youth movement and fish”.
On youth mobility, Brussels would need to significantly scale back its ambitions there to reach a realistic EU-wide agreement, and on fish, a fight is already underway over UK protection of Dogger Bank, infuriating some EU fishing nations.
My concern is that these are all issues that will inevitably be traded off against one another, leading to protracted negotiations as we have seen so far, rather than a series of quick deals.
Optimists such as Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia Group argue that Starmer wants to rebuild relations by focusing on practicality, rather than being drawn back into old ideological battles.
“The Cabinet Office wants to shift the discussion from 'cherry-picking' the UK to 'picking the low-hanging fruit' – that is, less discussion of ground principles and more practical negotiations,” he said.
Perhaps so, but while I understand that the UK has a new government, a new committee, a new geopolitical situation and probably new people running the negotiations, the structural reality of the UK being a “third country” is not going to be erased by political paternalism.
Progress will be made, but I think it's easier said than done.
UK on the charts
You're seeing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. This may be because you're offline or have JavaScript disabled in your browser.
This week's chart (with help from my data journalist colleague Amy Bolet) points out something that should trouble both Labour and the Conservative parties when it comes to the political ideas they have allowed to grow around immigration.
Online references show how the slogan “Stop the boats”, used by successive Conservative governments and carried by the Prime Minister's podium on various occasions, has come to the fore in the public sphere during recent protests.
A cross-platform analysis by social media management platform Hoot2 found that posts containing the phrase “stop the boats” have become significantly more negative in recent weeks, averaging twice as many as neutral posts so far this year, but in early August there were nearly five times as many negative posts as neutral posts.
The fact that mobs storming mosques and trying to throw asylum seekers out of hotels can be heard chanting “stop the boats” should make all politicians think hard about how simplistic narratives about immigration have been imported into the mainstream.
The UK, like many post-industrialised developed countries, faces serious structural problems that have led to rising inequality and, under the last parliament, falling living standards. It is easy to understand why a collapsing economy and deteriorating public services would provoke public anger.
What is outrageous is that so-called mainstream politicians are pandering to the Farageite far-right narrative that immigrants and asylum seekers are the cause of these problems, when in fact they are not.
Immigrants are not a burden on the NHS but a net contributor to the health service, they do not have higher crime rates than locals and they do not suppress wages or employment opportunities for local people.
So far, Starmer has been brave and uncompromising in confronting the mob, refusing to tolerate any notion that their behaviour is in any way justified or understandable.
But the real courage, especially with a Reform UK election victory on the horizon, would be to publicly challenge these misconceptions about the impact of immigration on the British economy and society – something Labour and Conservative politicians have consistently failed to do in recent decades.
Today's State of Britain is edited by Harvey Nriapia. Premium subscribers can sign up here to receive the email direct to their inbox every Thursday afternoon, or subscribe to our premium newsletter here. Read previous newsletters here.
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