British and EU politicians and officials would regularly get back in the room together on a scale not seen since Brexit negotiations, under plans by Sir Keir Starmer’s government to reset relations.
Nick Thomas-Symonds, Starmer’s EU ministerial envoy, said Britain wanted “structured dialogue to happen as soon as possible” to build closer ties on a wide range of issues including security, trade and migration.
Thomas-Symonds confirmed that Britain was also seeking an UK-EU leaders’ summit to help seal the new partnership, saying both sides would be “laying some groundwork for this in the autumn”.
In his first interview as EU relations minister, he said talks with Brussels would include efforts to dismantle Brexit trade barriers. “What business wants is fewer barriers to trade,” he told the Financial Times.
Starmer this week hosted a European Political Community meeting of 44 European leaders — representing both EU and non-EU nations — at which the new prime minister vowed to move on from the trauma of Brexit.
Since the UK’s departure from the bloc took effect in January 2020 official contacts between London and Brussels have withered — aside from official-level meetings to discuss aspects of the UK-EU trade deal. Thomas-Symonds said it was in Europe’s interests for a regular dialogue to begin again.
“It’s about creating a formal structure which is politician to politician and official to official,” he said. “Whatever form it takes, it’s going to have a regularity of meetings.”
A first UK-EU summit since Brexit is also being lined up to baptise the new partnership, with officials looking at early 2025 as the most likely date, to allow time for a new European Commission to bed in.
Charles Michel, president of the European Council, which represents EU leaders, said on Thursday it would be “good if in the months to come there would be a bilateral summit”. Thomas-Symonds said his comments were “evidence that the suggestions we’re making are well received.”
Thomas-Symonds said the Labour government had set out in its manifesto some of its objectives for the new relationship, including seeking a new security pact covering defence, migration and energy.
Labour also had specific manifesto proposals to remove Brexit trade barriers, covering areas such as agricultural trade, professional qualifications and visas for touring artists.
Most of them are relatively modest and constrained by the “red lines” that Starmer has laid down, insisting he will not take Britain back into the EU, the single market, customs union or restore free movement.
The EU has repeatedly rejected any attempt by Britain to “cherry pick” parts of the single market, but Thomas-Symonds wants to explore options for lessening trade burdens by building trust.
The EU Relations minister said he had been “pleased with the constructive response” to Britain’s overtures and suggested he would look to go beyond Labour’s manifesto if it was in the national interest.
“We do have that framework, but I do believe we can be ambitious about this reset,” he said, while insisting the red lines — identical to the ones adopted by Boris Johnson in his “hard Brexit” deal — would remain in place.
Thomas-Symonds wants to reassure the EU that the new government has no interest in creating the kind of “Singapore on Thames” vision of a low regulation post-Brexit economic model favoured by some on the Tory right.
“We aren’t a government that’s interested in a race to the bottom, whether it’s on environmental standards, workers rights or consumer protection,” he said. “We do aspire to have high standards and it’s pretty clear you want to reduce barriers to trade.”
Thomas-Symonds, a former barrister, has been entrusted by Starmer as his link person in Brussels. The EU Relations minister sits in the Cabinet Office, next door to Number 10.
Details of how exactly “structured dialogue” would take place and detailed talks on trade liberalisation will come into focus in the autumn, but for now the priority has been to rebuild relations with the EU.
“You can see Britain reconnected on the world stage — you can see the positive and welcoming response that has received,” he said.
“The first thing we wanted to do in opening a new chapter was to set a constructive new mood and partnership,” he said, arguing that the EPC meeting capped two weeks of diplomacy since Labour’s election win.
Thomas-Symonds, a postwar historian, said Starmer had reassured EU leaders by vowing “we will never withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights”, removing the threat made by his Conservative predecessor Rishi Sunak.
The original 1949 Treaty of London that paved the way for the convention was displayed at Blenheim during this week’s meeting to underline the point. Sir Winston Churchill, who was born at the palace, was an architect of the human rights framework.
While Sunak called the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg a “foreign court”, Thomas-Symonds wants to reclaim Britain’s role in setting it up: “We are back on the world stage, promoting values that are ours.”
But for all the warm words, Thomas-Symonds says Labour has no intention of taking Britain back into the EU: “I don’t think it’s in the national interest to go back to the debates of the past and the uncertainty that would have.”
Nor will talks with the EU be easy. For example the EU would like a youth mobility deal with Britain and improved terms for access to its universities, neither of which are palatable to a government committed to ending free movement and with a higher education funding crisis.
But Thomas-Symonds says the diplomacy of the past two weeks had been promising. “We are certainly encouraged,” he said. “It’s about setting a mood, an atmosphere. I don’t think we should be underplaying that.”
Additional reporting by Andy Bounds in Brussels and Peter Foster in London
Read the full article here
