With surveys showing that most British people now regret Brexit, the country’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, might have hoped for an easy ride over his cautious push to mend ties with the European Union.
But well before the red carpet is rolled out for a meeting with the bloc’s leaders on Monday, political opponents had squashed that idea.
In fact, they are calling it the “surrender summit.” Andrew Griffith, who represents the opposition Conservative Party on trade and business, uses the phrase in Parliament and on social media, and it has also appeared in headlines in The Mail on Sunday and The Daily Mail. Elsewhere, The Sun, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Group, is running a campaign called Don’t Betray Brexit.
Nine years after 52 percent of Britons voted to leave the European Union, the rupture still casts a long shadow. President Trump’s shaky commitment to European security might seem like a powerful incentive for greater cooperation with the bloc, along with the chance to reduce some of the costly trade barriers erected by Brexit. But for a vocal minority of voters and lawmakers, the idea of rapprochement is anathema.
Britain’s freewheeling tabloid news media, much of which cheered on the campaign to quit the European Union during a 2016 referendum, is in full cry. The Daily Express told readers this month that Britain “could be required to deploy troops on E.U. missions,” citing a “leaked memo” seen by The Telegraph. In fact the draft memo reported by The Telegraph said that Britain would “consider” sending servicemen and women on civilian and military operations “upon the invitation of the E.U.” — there was no requirement.
By calling into existence a semi-mythical threat, the article was a return to the kinds published regularly by some newspapers before Brexit. In 2011, The Express falsely claimed in a front-page story that the European Union wanted to merge Britain with France. Months before the referendum, The Sun ran a front page that read, “Queen Backs Brexit,” earning a complaint from Buckingham Palace and criticism from Britain’s independent press watchdog, which ruled it was “significantly misleading.”
Mr. Starmer campaigned against Brexit in 2016. But he won the last general election with a promise not to cross “red lines” by joining the European Union’s giant single economic zone or its customs union.
Jill Rutter, a senior research fellow at U.K. in a Changing Europe, a research organization in London, said that the government was “slightly behind public opinion” over a rapprochement with the European Union, particularly given that Mr. Trump’s unpopularity in Britain could open political space for closer ties with Brussels.
Mr. Starmer’s meek messaging, she argued, partly reflected a broader inability to communicate objectives. “This government is rubbish at making the positive case for what they’re doing on most things, because they’re so cautious,” added Ms. Rutter, who is a British former senior civil servant.
Mr. Starmer’s defenders say he faces a largely hostile media landscape in Britain, where many tabloids have long attacked the European Union. They offer readers a jingoistic tale of British exceptionalism, often using words — “surrender,” “betrayal” and “freedom” — that deliberately channel nostalgia for Britain’s victory in World War II, when, at one point, the country stood alone against continental fascism.
Even today, “the number of press outlets saying, ‘Actually, this is time for a sensible reset,’ is outweighed by the number of people who are prepared to write big headlines saying ‘Betrayal of Brexit,” Ms. Rutter said. Officials in Downing Street “are hyper aware that any concessions will be deeply weaponized by the opponents,” she added.
Mr. Starmer’s caution is also a consequence of the country’s long, queasy hangover from the divisive debate over Brexit, which plunged the country into political paralysis and led to four prime ministers in six years.
Most Britons now think that leaving the European Union was a mistake. Just 30 percent say that it was right to vote to leave the bloc, compared with 55 percent who say it was wrong, a YouGov survey in January showed.
Even the most fierce critic of the European Union, Nigel Farage, the leader of the anti-immigration Reform U.K. party, acknowledges that Brexit has not gone well — though with characteristic self-confidence, he argues that this is only because he was not in charge of carrying it out.
Ironically, given that in 2016 Prime Minister David Cameron held the referendum to try to neutralize the threat of Mr. Farage’s U.K. Independence Party, Brexit ultimately led to the fracturing of the political right. Ejected from power in 2024 after 14 years, the Conservatives are now engaged in an existential struggle with Mr. Farage’s new party, which made extensive gains in regional and mayoral elections this month.
Reform has surged in opinion polls, overtaking the Conservatives and, in recent surveys, Mr. Starmer’s governing Labour Party.
Battling Reform on her right flank, Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, has hardened her party’s stance on policies that Mr. Farage has championed: migration, net zero climate targets, identity issues — and Europe.
In Parliament last week, Mr. Griffith asked the government to reassure “the millions of people who voted to leave the E.U.” that “the surrender summit will not betray their wishes.” He has also accused Mr. Starmer of seeking to “rejoin the E.U. by the back door.”
This line of attack complicates life for a prime minister who is also contending with the return of Mr. Farage. Reform is winning over voters in former industrial heartlands that traditionally voted for Labour, but which switched to the Conservatives in 2019 when Boris Johnson promised to “get Brexit done.”
And so Mr. Starmer is treading carefully, moderating his language, limiting ambitions for closer ties with the European Union and insisting that Britain does not have to choose between alliances with Europe and the United States. It is a defensive stance that may be familiar to many British people when it comes to Brexit, a bitter political argument that divided families and cost friendships.
“It’s a very British thing this, isn’t it?” said Anand Menon, a professor of European politics at King’s College London. “We think Brexit was a mistake, but we are resigned to the fact that this is something that we are going to have to live with, so we shrug our shoulders and say, ‘God, that’s a shame.’”
Stephen Castle is a London correspondent of The Times, writing widely about Britain, its politics and the country’s relationship with Europe.
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