Tuesday, 29 November 2022

Starmer & Freedom of Movement

Starmer has said that he will not support the return of Freedom of Movement.


A very canny pronouncement, if I'm not mistaken. My reasoning:

  1. To win the next election, and win as big as Blair's first term, he needs both constituencies - a healthy proportion of reasonable Brexiteers as well as the Remainers.
  2. To achieve this he needs to forestall any possible attack from the Conservatives and so is setting out his stall early in the eventuality of an early GE.
  3. Unilateral FoM without a quid pro quo from the EU for British citizens is an open goal that the Tories would exploit and bilateral FoM won't happen unless we're in the Single Market.
  4. Remainers will, in the main, not die on the hill of FoM. I certainly wouldn't.
  5. He will focus instead on immigration for available jobs, not people simply turning up for jobs that may or may not appear. The latter is primarily what annoys Brexiteers and any reasonable Remainer wouldn't balk at that. FoM with attendant benefits in the instance of not getting a job in the UK would not be good.
  6. Starmer might possibly be in a secret pact with the LIbDems, such that any votes lost from Remainers who are prepared to die on the hill of FoM won't be completely lost in the case of a coalition, should it be needed.
  7. Pragmatic gravity will inevitably lead to the UK rejoining the EU at some time in the future, and that will entail FoM as a necessity anyway. Starmer knows this.

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