In an exclusive interview with The i Paper, the Labour peer launched a frustrated, impassioned and sometimes angry broadside at what he said were his Labour successor’s failure to so far show concrete results from his overtures to Europe.
He also suggested Starmer risked squandering the goodwill for a new government. “There is a period during which expectations for a new government with a different orientation will try to assert reality,” he said.
Now sitting in the House of Lords as Baron Kinnock, the grandee is credited with making his party electable again after Labour suffered three heavy defeats to Margaret Thatcher between 1979 and 1987 – despite overseeing the last of these himself, and narrowly losing out a second time to John Major in 1992.
“I can’t see evidence of achievement,” he said. “There is real determination to achieve and operate a reset among several government ministers, including at this very senior level. But getting tangible proof of occurrence has proved, thus far, to be beyond my persuasive abilities.”
“It would help if the signals sent out from Number 10 and the Treasury were published rather than conveyed by semaphore.”
The sense that the reset is already floundering is also reflected in Brussels, where EU officials are puzzled by what they see as Starmer’s reluctance to leverage his massive parliamentary majority to push ahead with concrete rebuilding measures, even though the full reset negotiations are not set to start until the Spring.
Starmer’s Brexit reset so far
Prime Minister Keir Starmer shakes hands with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, in October last year(Benjamin Cremel, Pool Photo via AP)Keir Starmer has made resetting relations with the EU after Brexit a cornerstone of his government. He travelled to Brussels in October last year to meet European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
“There will be issues which are difficult to resolve and on areas on which we will stand firm,” he said after the meeting, “but we will find constructive ways to work together.”
Starmer and von der Leyen agreed to hold regular EU-UK leader summits, with the first set to take place in the Spring
The Prime Minister has ruled out any return to the EU’s single market, its customs union or freedom of movement arrangements. He has also ruled out a youth mobility programme – which would allow those under-30 to travel to the UK for a set period, despite indications from the EU that this would be a key demand of their.
Observers suggested the EU making suggestions is a sign it is trying to cajole the UK into treating the reset with more urgency.
Kinnock added that while he had “endless respect” for Starmer, and “rejoiced” at Labour’s landslide election victory last July, progress on the reset, if it was happening, was painfully slow.
“I have absolutely no doubt at all about the recognition of common sense, of the need for mutual advantage to be explored and then exploited, and the desire to be engaged economically and politically with the rest of Europe.
““Either they are the most disciplined politicians in history who won’t disclose success until they’ve got a real, really big achievement to celebrate, or they haven’t yet felt able to register elements of progress. The fact that I know that they are beavering away and still unable to announce real developments is frustrating to the point that it drives you nuts,” he said. “In some ways, I’m glad I haven’t got any hair!”
He is now the Honorary President of the Labour Movement for Europe (LME), a group within Labour that boasts more MPs than there are Conservative MPs.
Despite accepting that the UK is not likely to rejoin the EU Kinnock also claimed that the public was in favour of closer ties to the EU.
Treasury an ‘anti-growth department’
Kinnock also criticised Rachel Reeves and the Treasury’s handling of the economy so far, with growth data gloomy and public services facing further sweeping cuts.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been criticised for increasing Employers’ National Insurance contributions (Nics) which it is argued will slow growth either through businesses passing the rise on to customers, meaning higher prices, or employing fewer people.
Reeves argues the measure was necessary to plug a claimed £22bn black hole in the nation’s finances left by the last government. But with high borrowing figures also challenging her slim £9.9bn fiscal headroom there are fears she may to go further than anticipated in spending cuts.
The government has earmarked economic growth as a major priority and Reeves will set out some of her plans in a speech next week, but so far the economy has been flatlining in the months since the Budget.
“I understand that the government is daunted,” Kinnock said. “I support and respect them, and they’d be stupid to make just audacious cavalry charges, so I don’t blame them for being cautious.
“But what they’ve got to do, however, is to get the Treasury to understand that it’s a Department of State, not an independent republic.
“That it’s there to serve progressive purposes of a progressive government, and not to act as if conserving money is its sole focus. Right now, it’s an anti-growth department, and the Labour government has got to overcome that.”
Kinnock, who was MP for the Welsh constituencies of Bedwellty and Islwyn for 25 years until 1995, said the government should recognise what he claimed is the shift against Brexit.
He reeled off a long list of areas where he believes the UK can set up a new relationship: youth mobility, phytosanitary inspections (agricultural imports and exports), acceptance of common qualifications, aligning regulatory regimes across all business areas.
“I just wish that they had teams in the relevant ministries now finalising the detail in company with their counterparts in the European Commission to implement agreements by mid-to-late this year. That could be done. And it wouldn’t frighten anybody. It would be treated with relief.”
“In a very, very fragile world and a continent with a war raging in it, we need – and Europe needs – British participation at the deepest, strongest level,“ he said. “A new government has the means to advance both economic and political areas, and to do so with mutual advantage. Sensible observers would have hoped that they would have been progressed by now.”
An EU source said: “We are in the same space on security and defence. We want to ensure we have a credible deterrence in Europe, for Europeans. We need to stick together, because Russia will be an enemy potentially for decades.”
He added negotiators impose “inflexibility and paralysis” when they box themselves in with red lines.
Kinnock added that many government figures were still scarred by the 2016 referendum.
His own experience of the referendum was that the Remain campaign was doomed. “Most of the time I knew we were going to lose. I could taste it,” he said. “That feeling increased with the utter bloody incompetence of the Remain campaign led by David Cameron.”
“But it’s bloody rubbish! For a couple of years afterward, everyone was coming to conclusions that led them in the wrong direction.”
The government has been approached for comment.
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