Revealed: Starmer’s secret EU agenda he’s keeping quiet to avoid upsetting Red Wall voters

Forget election campaign questions about Labour’s ‘secret’ tax rises – the party wants to keep quietest about the extent to which it will forge closer relationships with the European Union, says Andrew Grice

Keir Starmer has already ruled out rejoining the EU – but in office he would ‘lead from the front in transforming the post-Brexit relationship’ (PA)

While 2019 was undoubtedly the Brexit election, 2024 is doomed to be the non-Brexit one.

The Conservatives will make a few ritual claims about exploiting Brexit freedoms. But they won’t want to remind the 60 per cent of voters who now regret it and would rejoin the EU that they are the architects of the UK’s act of economic self-harm. Predictions of a 15 per cent decline in trade and four per cent hit to GDP are on track.

Labour has radical plans to overhaul the EU relationship, but doesn’t want to talk about them for fear of alienating Leave voters, notably in the red wall. (The Liberal Democrats, burned by being the anti-Brexit party in 2019, now merely talk vaguely about rejoining the single market one day).