LONDON — For years, Labour didn’t want to talk about Brexit. It’s changed its mind.
As the 10th anniversary looms of Britain’s vote to the leave the European Union, senior ministers in the ruling center-left Labour Party are going studs up — daring to pin the U.K.’s sluggish economic performance on its departure from the trading bloc.
“There is no doubting that the impact of Brexit is severe and long-lasting,” Chancellor Rachel Reeves said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.
“I’m glad that Brexit is a problem whose name we now dare speak,” Health Secretary Wes Streeting, another staunch ally of Keir Starmer, told a well-heeled literary festival audience in the leafy county of Berkshire on Monday.
Senior government officials insist the reason for this week’s interventions is simple — rolling the pitch for bad news in Reeves’ Nov. 26 budget.
Britain’s productivity over the last 15 years is expected to be downgraded in a review by the Office for Budget Responsibility watchdog. Officials expect it to say explicitly that Brexit had a larger impact than first thought — leaving Reeves with no choice but to talk about the issue.
Others in Starmer’s government, though, also spy a link to the prime minister’s wider strategy to challenge Reform UK leader Nigel Farage in a more muscular way.
Labour ministers are seeking to paint Tory leaders and Farage — one of Brexit’s biggest champions — as politicians who took Britain out of the EU without answers, contrasted with the (still-limited) deal that Labour secured with Brussels in May.
But these strategies, and particularly the way they are voiced, create a tension within government.
Some aides and MPs fear they will be perceived to blame Brexit voters, reopening the bitter politics that followed the 2016 vote and driving them further toward Farage.
This risk rises, argued one Labour official, when the government line strays beyond a narrow one of attacking the implementation or Farage and into the consequences of Brexit itself. The official added: “You can’t just go around blaming Brexit, because it’s saying voters are wrong.”
Laying the ground
Reeves’ intervention this week did not come out of the blue.
Nick Thomas-Symonds, Starmer’s minister negotiating post-Brexit trading rules with the EU, pointedly turned up at the Spectator — a magazine once edited by Boris Johnson — in August to make his pitch for a new relationship.
Armed with statistics about the Brexit hit to exports, he said: “Behind every number and statistic is a British business, a British entrepreneur, a British start-up paying the price.”
Starmer (who campaigned for a second referendum in 2019) is said to have liked what he heard. In his party conference speech in September the PM went a step further, attacking politicians “who lied to this country, unleashed chaos, and walked away after Brexit,” while also hitting out at those responsible for the “Brexit lies on the side of that bus.”
The shift in No. 10 over recent months has been informed by focus groups and polls that show many Britons think Brexit was implemented badly, said one minister. “I think it’s very risky,” the minister added. “But it’s a gamble they’ve decided to take because they can see which way the wind is blowing.”
It has also been encouraged by some campaign groups and think tanks. The Labour-friendly Good Growth Foundation shared a report with the government in May saying 75 percent of Labour-to-Reform switchers (out of a sample of 222) would support co-operation with the EU on trade and the economy.
One Labour MP added: “It’s totally the right strategy. Just look at the maths. It’s, like, 70-30 for people saying Brexit was a bad idea. It’s just where people are.” (A July poll by More in Common found 29 percent would vote to leave and 52 percent to remain if the 2016 referendum was today. The rest would not vote or did not know.)
Supporters of Starmer’s strategy believe the May deal — which will ease some trade barriers and sand off the hardest edges of Boris Johnson’s Brexit — allows the government to sound more positive. The government is “in a really confident position on this” and “actively negotiating” solutions, a second minister argued.
Labour officials also believe they can hammer Farage as a man without the answers to complex problems such as returning migrants to Europe. One argued the Reform leader promised to leave the EU for stronger borders and a better NHS, but did not “do the work” to show how it would happen.
Labour aides also note that Farage did not mention Brexit directly in his recent conference speech — instead focusing on issues such as net zero, government waste and immigration. (Challenged on this criticism, a Reform spokesperson texted a statement with the party’s nickname for Reeves: “Labour can try any excuse they like, but they can’t escape the reality that Rachel from accounts has the U.K. economy flatlining.”)
Pitch to the left
One group that will lap up any anti-Brexit noise is Starmer’s own party.
The first minister quoted above said the pivot had gone down well with their local Labour members, many of whom have long viewed Brexit as a mistake.
“There’s been a feeling in the party and in government that we have been alienating our own members a bit by trying to appeal to Reform voters,” the minister said. “It’s not gone unnoticed by our faithful — it’s been seen as something finally for them.”
Some in Labour also believe that talking about the harms of Brexit could slow a drift of left-wing voters towards the Green Party and Liberal Democrats. The minister added: “If you are looking at younger voters, the polls are saying we’re losing them in their droves to more progressive parties.”
But worried Labour strategists want to keep the messaging tight and nuanced, not drift back into a pro-EU comfort zone.
This means keeping the focus on jobs, the cost of living and borders — bread-and-butter issues touched by Brexit. “Nobody is suggesting we relitigate 2016,” said the second minister quoted above.
This is especially true now that Labour has implemented policies that could not have been done inside the EU, such as economic deals with the U.S. and India — and even the controversial 20 percent Value Added Tax on private school fees.
A second Labour MP said: “We’re not going to rejoin, but we can at least say that it went badly and has harmed the economy.”
A third Labour MP added: “I think now it’s happened, we can discuss if it was done well. It’s certainly felt like an elephant in the room while there was a general consensus that our economy was amorphously fucked. There is always a danger — but this pretence it was without impact was treating the public like fools.”
Nuance can become lost in a world of partisan social media, though.
One person who speaks regularly to No. 10 said: “I was surprised that they took that on as a new narrative … it is a risky strategy. You’ve got to be careful about how you frame that — to blame what people voted for, not them.”
Farage could also try to turn Labour’s strategy on its head. Luke Tryl, Executive Director of the More in Common think tank, said Brexit voters in focus groups often believe it has gone badly — but tend to blame politicians “rather than saying it could never have worked.”
This exposes a flaw in Labour’s policy of attacking Farage, Tryl argued: “It leaves Farage able to say ‘if I am in charge, I will do a proper Brexit and get the benefits.’”
Our friends in Europe
Labour’s stance may, at least, go down well in Brussels.
Many in the EU (naturally) also think Brexit has gone badly, and showing a willingness to open up about problems might help Thomas-Symonds — who is in the process of negotiating a deal to smooth the trade of food, animals and plant products across the channel by aligning with EU rules, the boldest step back into Brussels’ orbit yet.
Anand Menon, director of the UK in a Changing Europe think tank, said: “[U.K. ministers] are ramping up the rhetoric, saying we’ve got this, we need to implement it fast … There’s a lot of deadlines coming up, and they want movement, and they want to show a sense of enthusiasm.”
But Menon was skeptical about whether it will make any difference. He added: “For all this newfound enthusiasm, actually, the EU aren’t going to let them get much closer.
“So it’s probably a doomed strategy anyway.”
Bethany Dawson and Jon Stone contributed reporting.
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