Tim Ross is POLITICO’s chief political correspondent for Europe. His most recent book, “Landslide: The Inside Story of the 2024 Election,” was published in November.
LONDON — It’s not the economy, stupid.
Brexiteers are crowing that U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to hit the EU with tariffs while (probably) leaving Britain out of his trade war proves that quitting the bloc was worth it.
But Brexit was never about economics.
During the 2016 referendum campaign, George Osborne’s Treasury ran a so-called Project Fear strategy of trying to scare voters into backing Remain, with dire warnings that families would be £4,300 a year worse off after Brexit. Voters chose to leave the EU anyway.
A few months later, Osborne reflected that the referendum showed Brits had put economic concerns second and prioritized political change instead.
Voters had wanted to restore Britain’s “sovereignty” and to “take back control,” as the Leave campaign slogan put it, especially over immigration and the courts, regardless of the risk of economic damage.
So while Trump’s hint he will give Britain a pass on punitive tariffs would amount to an economic win from Brexit, that misses a vital point about the politics.
Mr Brexit
Trump is a product of the same impulses that drove the U.K. to leave the EU: nationalism, protectionism and hostility to immigration. During his 2016 campaign for the White House, he described himself as “Mr Brexit”. The parallels are real, and still relevant.
In winning the 2024 election, Starmer successfully appealed to what his team called “hero voters”. These are people who are patriotic, likely to have voted Leave, have backed the Tories in the past, and don’t feel the current economic system is working well for them.
In 2019, many of them voted for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, swinging a ribbon of seats in the so-called “red wall” across northern England from Labour to the Tories. Starmer won these voters back for Labour.
In part he did so by pledging not to undo the Brexit they had voted for. Starmer’s Labour has ruled out rejoining the EU’s single market or customs union for the lifetime of this parliament.
Yet while the Brexit vote itself was a cry for political change, it was also rooted in the painful economic realities of life for millions of voters who felt disadvantaged by immigration and disenfranchised by the elites of business and politics. And that’s where Starmer faces a sticky dilemma.
Growth — and making sure people feel better off under Labour — is his most urgent domestic task in government. A healthier trade partnership with the EU is likely to help that, and he’s said he wants to negotiate new terms with Brussels. But that carries the risk of betraying the spirit of Brexit, and his opponents on the right are already leveling that charge.
So Starmer is stuck: He must walk the line between keeping faith with those voters behind the 2016 referendum result and delivering the economic gains of a better EU partnership. It’s a tightrope that looks increasingly like a cheese wire threatening to slice his prime ministerial career in half.
And Nigel Farage, the godfather of Brexit, is waiting eagerly to take over.
A poll from YouGov on Tuesday put Farage’s Reform UK ahead of Labour, in first place nationally for the first time. Polling this far out from the next election is easy to write off as meaningless. But while today’s numbers can’t predict what will happen in 2029, it would be a mistake to dismiss the risks for Labour.
Farage looms large
With Trump rewriting the rules of the world economy, a vote for his friend Farage might be perfectly logical. Starmer says he also wants a trade deal with the U.S. but no party leader can claim to be closer to Trump or more committed to Brexit than Farage.
Ahead of last year’s election, Labour deliberately chose not to fight Farage. But Starmer’s most senior allies do now see the danger. They know their task is not just to deliver economic growth that resonates in the lives of swing voters, but also to make sure Labour gets the credit.
They reckon they’re likely to be fighting the populist right in some form at the next election, whether that’s primarily Kemi Badenoch’s Tories, or Farage’s Reform, or some merged version of the two. The key to countering that threat, Starmer’s team believes, is what they call “delivery.”
The lesson Starmer needs to remember, as he contemplates his EU reset over the next few months, is a political one, however much he wants improved trade terms to boost growth: If you look like you’re betraying the voters who put you in power, like their counterparts in America, they might punish you by backing a hard-right populist next time.
And if Trump or his buddy Elon Musk have a choice over whether to endorse the Labour leader or a true believer like Farage, in this age when national boundaries no longer constrain election campaigns, there’s only likely to be one winner.
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