Starmer hints at thaw in EU relations

United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer has signaled a potentially significant change in government policy toward Europe, a decade on from the 2016 referendum that took the country out of the European Union, an event that has dominated British politics ever since.

In a BBC interview on Sunday, Starmer, whose leadership has recently come under pressure from people within the Labour Party he leads, stopped short of calling for a full-blown customs union with the EU, but said the UK should seek closer alignment with the European single market on an "issue-by-issue" basis when it is in the national interest.

Loud voices in Starmer's Cabinet, including Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Wes Streeting and Secretary of State for Justice David Lammy, had suggested a new customs deal would be to the country's advantage, but it seems Starmer is more interested in building upon the food and drink deal agreed with the 27-member bloc in May and expanding it into other areas of trade.

"I argued for a customs union for many years with the EU, but a lot of water has now gone under the bridge," he explained, citing as justification some of the alternative trade arrangements the UK has made since the 2016 referendum that saw voters choose to leave the bloc by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent – a process that became known as Brexit.

"I do understand why people are saying: 'Wouldn't it be better to go to the customs union?' I actually think that now we've done deals with the United States, which are in our national interest, now we've done deals with India, which are in our national interest, we are better looking to the single market, rather than the customs union, for our further alignment."

At the end of 2025, the UK rejoined the Erasmus educational exchange program, enabling British students to spend time studying in the EU and EU students to study in the UK. Another sign of growing proximity after a decade of increasing distance from Europe is the ongoing discussion over a youth mobility program, "which will be for young people to travel, to work, to enjoy themselves in different European countries, to have that experience".

In a newspaper interview last year, Streeting said a customs union would bring "enormous economic benefits", comments that were widely interpreted as a veiled challenge to Starmer's leadership of the Labour Party, which Starmer guided to victory at the general election in July 2024.

Addressing this issue, Starmer cautioned against infighting, highlighting how the opposition Conservative Party was now on its fifth different leader since the 2016 referendum, and how continued very public disputes, mainly Brexit-related, had contributed to its worst-ever showing at the 2024 election, losing support and political ground to the right-wing Reform UK, which was previously known as the Brexit Party.

"What I don't think will help us is if a Labour government turns back to the chaos of the last (Conservative) government," he said. "That would gift (Reform UK leader) Nigel Farage."

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