Keir Starmer’s EU speech will contradict what everyone knows about him

The Labour leader is planning to explain that he is not ‘backsliding on Brexit’, writes John Rentoul

Starmer will advocate in his speech for a policy that he thinks is contrary to the best interests of the nation (PA)

It is a paradox that Boris Untrustworthy Johnson is more believable on the subject of Europe than Keir Integrity Starmer. The Labour leader is going to make a speech ruling out the free movement of people between Britain and the EU if he becomes prime minister.

That is a sensible position to adopt. Once the Labour Party has decided that it respects the result of the referendum, it has to respect the consequences of the referendum. That means it cannot advocate the Norway option of staying out of the EU but rejoining its single market, because the single market requires free movement, and opposition to free movement was one of the main reasons people voted Leave.

But there is a problem. It may be the sensible thing to do. It may even be what a Labour government would do. But everyone knows that it is not what Starmer himself thinks is the best policy. He thinks that Britain would be better off in the EU single market. Indeed, he thinks we would be better off rejoining the EU itself. That is why he devoted his time as shadow Brexit secretary to trying to secure a second referendum, in which he would have voted Remain.

Starmer will thus advocate in his speech a policy that he thinks is contrary to the best interests of the nation – and everyone knows that this is what he thinks. All politics is organised hypocrisy, but this is a particularly transparent example, on such an important subject. It makes Starmer’s equivocations about the rail strikes seem small beer and sandwiches. On the strikes, we know that he is sympathetic to the rail workers’ cause, while he probably has his doubts about the wisdom of the unions’ tactics. On Europe, the difference between what he says and what everyone knows he believes is far greater.

This makes it a tough speech to write. In it, he has to explain why, as prime minister, he would act against the national interest. He might say that the Labour Party has to win elections to change things, and that it has to win some votes from people who either voted Leave or who think it is important to respect the referendum. But this is not the kind of speech that Starmer tends to give: in which he seeks to explain difficult choices to the wider electorate, or to persuade a reluctant party that it must prioritise the things that it wants to do.

He has no choice because the voters know what he thinks about the EU, and they know what his party thinks about the EU. Most Labour MPs know that they cannot talk about rejoining the EU yet, but they are frustrated because they want to talk about it at some point. Stella Creasy, the chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, wrote in The Observer on Sunday that the party had to end its “silence about what effect leaving the EU is having”.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment, sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here

Starmer is going to break that silence, but I doubt if it will end what Creasy calls “the myth that talking about Europe is code for re-running referendums”. Whatever Starmer says in his speech will be portrayed by the Conservatives as an attempt to overturn the referendum. His office has briefed journalists that the message of the speech will be: “No backsliding on Brexit.” But you would say that only because that is precisely what a lot of people think you are doing.

Everyone knows that “backsliding on Brexit” and “re-running referendums” is precisely what most of the Labour Party wants to do. Most Labour members are frustrated that opinion polls now suggest that there would be a majority for rejoining and want to know why they shouldn’t be arguing to rejoin eventually. They look enviously at the Liberal Democrats, who passed a resolution at their conference last year that aimed at “maximising public support for eventual UK membership of the EU”. The Lib Dems have been remarkably timid about this campaign, with the only detailed policy so far a “roadmap” to rejoining the single market, rather than the EU itself.

Many Labour MPs agree with that. Anna McMorrin, a shadow minister, said it out loud in comments that were leaked to the media last week. “I hope eventually we will get back into the single market and the customs union and who knows in the future,” she said. The challenge facing Starmer in making his speech is to explain why she was wrong when everyone knows that he agrees with her.