Emily Thornberry challenges Keir Starmer to cut post-Brexit border checks to help small businesses

The new chair of the powerful Commons foreign affairs committee, a surprise omission from the prime minister’s cabinet, said she had a list of improvements she was happy to give the government

Emily Thornberry has indicated that she intends to use her powerful new position in the Commons to push Keir Starmer to go further on undoing the harms of Brext.

The newly elected chair of the foreign affairs committee urged Keir Starmer to cut vast amounts of unnecessary checks at the border as part of his planned Brexit EU reset.

There was “no need” for small businesses to give up trading with the European Union because of the friction, she said.

Ms Thornberry, who was snubbed by Starmer for a ministerial position, also said a Labour government in “full cry” could develop a proper trading relationship with the European Union for the first time since the UK left.

With a new Labour government in No 10, she said: “The question is, what can we do with that power?”

Her comments came days after it emerged that the EU plans to offer the Labour leader a youth mobility scheme, as part of his move to improve relations with Europe.

But Sir Keir disappointed many of his own supporters when he rejected the idea of such an arrangement before the general election.

(UK Parliament/PA Wire)

Ms Thornberry, a surprise omission from Sir Keir’s new cabinet, told a fringe meeting at Labour conference that Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal contained “almighty great holes in it”.

Echoing Sir Keir, the former shadow foreign secretary, said the UK was not rejoining the EU, the single market or the customs union.

“But you know what the agreement that... Boris Johnson signed has almighty great holes in it and they need to be plugged. And we need to make sure that we get closer to our friends, and we have a proper trading relationship and cultural relationship with them, and a Labour government in full cry with full confidence can do that,” she said. “And we must make sure that we do.”

She added that she had a “list”, adding: “I’m happy to give it to the current government.”

She called for the government to look at “mutual recognition of safety standards and professional qualifications… we need to do a lot more work on digital services and we need to remove an awful lot of unnecessary checks at the borders. There is no need for us to have this friction. There is no need for small businesses to no longer be thinking that the game is worth a candle when it comes to exporting to the European Union. If we want growth, we have to make sure that we have a proper relationship with the European Union, and I’m confident that we will.”

She also hit out at the previous government’s Pacific trade deal.

She told the Labour Movement for Europe rally: “The Europeans are our friends and our allies and our neighbours and our relatives. They couldn’t be closer. They’re our biggest trading partner. It is all very well for the last government to be saying, ‘Oh, but it’s fine, we are going to go off, we are going to have a deal with CPTPP’ (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership). I am one of the few people in Britain could even say it, let alone understand what it was.

“What is the point in us having a fragile trade agreement across the other side of the world when we have spent our time dismantling a proper trade agreement that we have with our European friends and allies and neighbours?”