(AFP) – Britain’s government is set to announce legislation next month to move the country closer to the European Union, as the Iran war sours the UK’s so-called special relationship with the United States. President Donald Trump’s unpredictability and stream of insults towards America’s historic ally is adding impetus to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s bid to deepen ties with the 27-nation bloc, a decade after Britons narrowly voted to leave the EU.
“We have a government that is already eager to move closer towards the EU, and the events in Iran provide an opportunity to speed up that process,” Evie Aspinall, director of the British Foreign Policy Group think-tank, told AFP. Starmer’s administration is preparing an EU “reset” bill that will give ministers powers to align UK standards with EU single market rules as they evolve — something called “dynamic alignment.” King Charles III will announce the legislation on May 13 when he reads out Starmer’s legislative plans for the coming months, a government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Starmer has repeatedly called for a deeper economic and security relationship with Europe since his Labour party won the 2024 general election, ousting the Conservatives, who had implemented the 2016 Brexit referendum. He has upped those calls in recent days, telling Dutch leader Rob Jetten on Tuesday that “he believed the partnership between the UK and the bloc needed to be fit for the challenges we were facing today.” The EU is Britain’s biggest trading partner, while the International Monetary Fund warned this week that the UK will be the advanced economy hardest hit by the Iran conflict. “Certainly Iran has made it (the reset) more prescient,” said the UK official. “We need to build economic resilience across the continent,” they added.
Starmer refused to involve Britain in the US and Israel’s initial strikes on February 28, angering Trump, although he has since allowed American forces to use UK bases for a “limited defensive purpose.” Under pressure at home for his disastrous decision to appoint former Jeffrey Epstein associate Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington, Starmer has received plaudits for standing up to Trump in the face of repeated taunts from the US president. Days ago, Trump threatened in a phone interview with Sky News to scrap a US-UK trade deal that limited the impact on Britain of his tariffs blitz.
“There’s no doubt that there is now momentum in the UK-EU relationship partly as a result of Trump’s unreliable behaviour,” David Henig, an expert on UK’s post-Brexit trade policy, told AFP. “Independent UK trade policy looks much harder, the prospects of working with the EU much brighter.”
Starmer’s administration hopes to table the EU legislation in the next few months, meaning it could come around the time of the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum, held in June 2016. MPs will get to approve whether to provide the government with a mechanism to adopt EU rules — sometimes without a full parliamentary vote — in areas where it has already signed deals with the bloc. They include a trade agreement designed to ease red tape on food and plant exports and plans for an electricity deal that would integrate the UK into the EU’s internal electricity market. Britain and the EU are also aiming to finalise negotiations on a youth mobility scheme in time for a joint summit in Brussels expected in late June or early July.
Starmer has ruled out rejoining the single market or returning to free movement. The Liberal Democrats, Britain’s traditional third party, want him to cross one of his other red lines by negotiating a customs union with the EU. “We need to be doubling down on relations with reliable partners who share our interests and values,” the Liberal Democrats foreign affairs spokesman Calum Miller told AFP.
But Brexit remains a toxic issue and the hard-right Reform UK party, leading opinion polls and headed by Eurosceptic firebrand Nigel Farage, have branded the legislation “a betrayal” of the referendum’s narrow result. Surveys regularly now show, however, that most Britons regret the vote to leave the EU, something Starmer hopes to capitalise on. Rising cost-of-living pressures on family households, which UK finance minister Rachel Reeves has blamed on Trump for starting the war “without a clear exit plan,” could also influence minds. “When the relationship with the United States is fracturing, it means there’s reduced opposition to a closer relationship with the EU among the public,” said Aspinall.
– Peter Hutchison
© 2024 AFP
