Will someone please tell Rishi Sunak that simply having a plan is not enough? Baldrick had a plan. In fact he had several cunning plans, none of which stopped him and his boss, Blackadder, getting into terrible messes.
The Conservatives have begun this election telling us they have a very clear plan. Part of it must have been to turn Sunak into a dripping wet, bedraggled Baldrick at his Downing Street lectern. Another part of it is to just ignore Brexit.
Opinion polls now show consistently that a majority of people believe it was a mistake to leave the EU. Economists produce reports bemoaning its hit to the economy. In January, Cambridge Econometrics calculated that, in 2023 alone, it cost everyone in the UK almost £2,000, adding that if we fail to address these problems, by 2035 it will have knocked more than £300bn off our economy.
Any administration set on rebuilding the UK would surely want to grab a slice of that. And yet, despite making the economy the key focus of his election platform, Sir Keir Starmer is avoiding mentioning the B word, too. He is sticking to his own plan, which is to allow the despair and frustration which the electorate feels about the last 14 years to deliver a victory to the Labour Party.
Understandably, he would like that victory to be as decisive as possible, with a sizeable majority that would ensure he could get things done. That means alienating as few voters as possible.
It is a fair bet that those who have always inclined towards Remain will not vote Tory, but he wants to be seen as acceptable to the rest as well. A recent poll shows that 31% of the public still believe that Brexit was the right decision.
A degree of caution is natural for a lawyer and desirable in a former director of public prosecutions. Nevertheless, as this short election campaign runs on, there is surely scope for Labour to be a little more imaginative in addressing the Brexit issue. While it is not at the top of concerns for most people – the cost of living, NHS, immigration and housing are the major preoccupations – Brexit has negatively affected all of those. Improving our relationship with the EU would have a beneficial effect.
Starmer is very clear that he is not ready to talk about rejoining the Single Market, let alone the EU, for fear of frightening the more committed (some might say pig-headed) Brexit supporters into voting Conservative. If some were to take their prejudices one step further, and vote for Reform, it would actually benefit Labour, but that is not a risk he is prepared to take.
Talk of reducing food prices would certainly go down well with voters, who are struggling with supermarket bills and face yet more price rises when stricter border controls are implemented. By any account – apart from the government’s – Britain’s manufacturing exports have been significantly held back by the restrictions now imposed on trade with the vast EU market. What sensible administration would not aim to minimise those obstacles?
Freedom of movement, the non-negotiable partner of single-market membership, is now acceptable to a majority in the UK, and the proportion will continue to grow as the younger generation comes on to the electoral roll. But as recently as November YouGov found that 20% of people remained totally opposed to the concept. Even they would be unlikely to be upset, however, by schemes to enable youngsters to live and work for, say, three years across the EU, with reciprocal rights here for EU citizens.
Skilled European workers are deserting the UK’s health and social care sectors where they are desperately needed. Starmer could find a route to bring them back. That might help him to negotiate a more pan-European approach to curbing illegal migration, which would allow him to fend off Tory criticism that he offers no alternative to their crackpot Rwanda scheme.
In short, he could produce a plan for relations with the EU that would hugely benefit Britain, could be implemented relatively quickly, given that the EU would also gain from it, and would cheer up the nation whatever the weather.
