It’s time for Keir Starmer to talk about Brexit

Keir Starmer is on a roll. He has the highest ratings for any Leader of the Opposition since Tony Blair. He is the first opposition leader in 13 years to be the preferred candidate for prime minister. And for the first time since the week Boris Johnson became PM, an opinion poll has placed Labour level with the Conservatives. Just five months ago Johnson’s party enjoyed a lead of 24 points.

Starmer has repeatedly exposed the PM’s incompetence, dishonesty and caprice. At PMQs on Wednesday he again demolished Johnson with characteristic precision, and an increasingly personal robustness.

And yet there is one issue on which, so far, Starmer has barely uttered a word. This issue could cost more jobs than coronavirus. It threatens the fabric of our economy, prosperity and international relations for decades to come. It could permanently break the contract between the government and voters. Most worryingly, it is hitting in less than four months.

It’s time for Keir Starmer to talk about Brexit.

We know why he hasn’t discussed it so far. Labour lost the 2019 election in large part because of the unpopularity of Jeremy Corbyn, but also because of the insoluble dilemma facing it on Brexit. In essence, it had to preserve an electoral coalition of metropolitan Remainers and Red Wall Leavers. Its chosen way out, a second referendum, stemmed some of the flow, but failed to resolve the dilemma. The Red Wall seats in the north east, midlands and parts of Wales duly fell.

Starmer inherited, then, a party toxified by its Brexit policy, and one for which he himself was held responsible. His own Remain sympathies were not a secret, and figures on the left and from the Red Wall could identify them only too well. He can be forgiven for wanting to keep that unhappy memory far in the past.

And yet, it is done. Brexit has happened. We cannot now remain even if we wanted to, and not even the Liberal Democrats are currently proposing we rejoin. The membership argument, for better or emphatically for worse, has been resolved. And that means Starmer has nothing to lose in confronting a new proposition: on what terms the UK leaves the transition.

Johnson is increasingly and openly touting the idea of leaving without a trade deal. If that catastrophe does unfold, it will be because Johnson has calculated he can get away with it. He will do that by blaming the EU, but in all circumstances he will also attempt to inculpate Remainers and the Labour Party. Indeed, if he is going down he will do everything to bring Starmer down with him. It is vital that Starmer can demonstrate he made the right call and was on the right side of the argument.

The stakes get even higher when we consider who stands to lose the most from a no-deal scenario or bare-bones agreement. More Leave voters are exposed to Brexit than Remain voters, and the Red Wall seats will bear the brunt. In England’s manufacturing heartlands, jobs, supply chains and entire industries could disappear. Any party which seems to have just waved that destruction through can expect to be punished for it.

There is no advantage, anywhere, to remaining silent. If we leave with a disastrous no deal, Starmer can say that he warned about it and sought to avoid it. If we leave with a deal, he can say that he argued for that and it was the right thing to do. Nobody will say that he should have backed remaining outright, because that proposition disappeared after the 2019 election.

The Labour leader does not have to advocate staying in the single market or customs union. It is effectively too late to recommend either, and the government will in any case ignore him. All he has to do is advocate the closest arrangement within the currently deliverable parameters. In practical terms, that means arguing for a deal on fishing and accepting the level playing field. As and when Brexit significantly harms our economy and costs jobs, he will have the political space to advocate the closer relations embodied in a so-called soft Brexit, and include it in a future Labour manifesto.

Starmer was perhaps politically wise to avoid this battle so far, but he cannot avoid it forever. The Red Wall voters endorsed Brexit but never approved no deal. Quite the opposite: that deal was supposed to be “oven-ready” and, after the agonies of Covid-19 and nine months of a status quo transition, few will be braced for the shock awaiting them.

And yet this issue goes deeper. At its heart, it is not a question of politics but of principle. Labour’s founding mission is to defend workers, not abandon them to their fate. Now is Starmer’s moment to show voters that he knows what’s coming and cares. Any capitalisation by the Tories that he is a “closet Remainer” will be more than outweighed by his subsequent vindication, and sometimes in politics doing the right thing is more important than securing a week’s approval ratings.

Starmer has amply proven himself in his new role and demonstrated he is fit for power. But this could prove his biggest test, because in the end it is existential. Really it comes down to this: if Labour is not against a Tory Brexit which destroys our economy, what is Labour for?