The Great Labour Brexit Tiptoe

One of the more amusing aspects of Labour’s leadership manoeuvring is watching politicians suddenly rediscover the political sensitivity of Brexit the moment Reform appears over the horizon.

Andy Burnham previously said quite openly that he hoped Britain would rejoin the EU in his lifetime. Entirely respectable position. Perfectly arguable. Yet now, as a possible by-election and leadership contest loom, the volume appears to have been turned down to the level of a nervous man trying not to wake the dog.

Streeting has a related but different problem. He is more openly comfortable with the idea that Britain’s future lies back closer to Europe, possibly much closer. That may be economically sensible, but as a national leader facing Reform it is a gift-wrapped attack line. They would brand him the “rejoin by stealth” candidate before he had finished choosing the wallpaper in Number 10.

And therein lies the problem Labour still has with Brexit.

Most of the leadership contenders probably know, privately, that Brexit has economically underperformed the promises made for it. The difficulty is that openly saying so outside metropolitan Labour circles still carries political risk because Brexit stopped being merely an economic argument years ago. For many voters it became cultural identity, tribal loyalty and emotional inheritance.

So Labour ends up performing this curious dance: quietly edging toward closer EU alignment, carefully avoiding the word “rejoin”, while simultaneously pretending the subject itself has not become the largest unspoken issue in British politics.

The irony is that Starmer’s position is probably the most honest politically. Closer alignment where useful, no rejoin push unless there is a clear democratic majority for it. In other words: recognising reality without trying to restart the Brexit civil war every Thursday afternoon.

Meanwhile some of the challengers appear to be discovering that principles sound rather different once Reform UK starts measuring the curtains in your target constituency.