As prime minister, Keir Starmer should order a full public inquiry ... into Brexit

Even Nigel Farage agrees that Brexit has been a disaster. A judge-led inquiry could get to the bottom of how that happened, writes Tom Peck

Electoral politics is making it impossible for most politicians to tell the truth about the EU referendum (PA)

Britain’s future is outside the EU. Not in the single market, not in the customs union, not with a return to freedom of movement,” wrote Keir Starmer earlier this week, in the pages of the Daily Express.

He’s only been an MP since 2015. One has to suspect that if you could have told him then that within eight years these were the words he’d be coming out with, he’d have run a mile. Back then, nobody of note had dared come out with anything this radically right wing. These words would have landed Starmer well to the right of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Nigel Farage, Arron Banks, indeed absolutely anyone.

Back then, Farage and co changed their mind every few weeks. Sometimes they were tempted by the “Norway model”, which they didn’t appear to understand meant remaining in the EU’s single market and thus accepting freedom of movement from other single market member countries. Or there was the possibility of joining the European Free Trade Association. Daniel Hannan and various others were well up for that, even though it meant remaining in the EU’s customs union, and therefore accepting almost all EU product regulations, making it essentially impossible to have an independent trade policy.