405. Starmer's EU Deal: A New Era

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1:25Welcome to the Restless Policy's live. Here we are with me, Anastakambal and Mirori Stewart. And talking about the, well, both Kierstarm and Ursula Von Der Leyen use the old H -word historic, they said. The first post Brexit UK European Union summit, a lot to digest. Some bits of it, actually more, more covered by the agreement than I was expecting. Some of it in less detail. And I think genuinely, actually, the Nick Thomas Simmons, the minister who's been in charge of negotiations and Michael Ellem, a civil servant who used to be a colleague of mine when he was Gordon Brown spokesman back in the day, I think have done a pretty good job.

2:13The trouble of course with anything to do with Europe is we are immediately plunged into these parallel universes. You've got the universe of the Starmer government and the European Union are trying to find practical, pragmatic, technocratic solutions to an event and a deal that took 4 % out of the economy. And you've got Farage, Badenock, most of the right -wing media basically saying, regardless of what was said, that this is a terrible betrayal of Brexit. I see that Boris Johnson has crawled out from under a stone today to give us his opinions. I think he could crawl back. But anyway, what did you take?

2:52Let me give a try to give my sense of what was in the deal, just for people who have not been following the ins and outs. So, the main thing to understand is that the Brexit vote happened in 2016. There were all these negotiations which didn't work out with Theresa May in 2019. Boris Johnson came in and finally in December 2020, this thing called a trade and cooperation agreement was signed with the European Union. And the headline was, zero tariffs, zero quotas. So that means that goods can go, you can sell a Cambrian cook -o -clock into the European Union and you don't have to pay tariff on it when it goes in.

3:33And there's no quotas, no limit on the number of cook -o -cloks you can sell. But because Britain had left the, who wanted to sign trade deals with other countries, you had to fill in paperwork, paperwork, particularly on rules of origin, proving that that cook -o -clock was made in Cumbria, not made in China and just coming through Cumbria, other ways to be a way of getting around the EU barriers. And in these whole negotiations, one of the things that was a real sticking point was fighter sanitary standards, which is to say, anything to do with live animals, plants and other stuff, moving back and forth across the border had to have a lot of paperwork, a lot of vets inspecting it.

4:17And so the big first breakthrough with this deal is you can now push that stuff across the border. And of course, in exchange, Britain has to agree that it's going to remain in lockstep with the European Union standards on these things. So the European Union can be confident that they're not putting in food that doesn't meet European Union standards. And the European court of justice will rule if there's some dispute about whether we're putting a little dash of chlorine on our chicken. And then the only other things that going on on the is talking about carbon tax, so making sure that we unify ourselves with a European Union carbon tax, which also means that we are not going to face potentially hundreds of millions of pounds charges around divergence.

5:02There's been some conversation around freedom of movement for young people, youth mobility scheme. Not free movement, they're emphasizing youth mobility. And they call it youth mobility. Keir Starmer kept saying youth experience. People in South America school visit. And then the big losers in all of this are the fishermen, not the people exporting fish, the people exporting fish, Scottish salmon association, quite happy because this deal makes it easier to sell seafood into the European Union. But the fishermen who'd hoped that they would be able to catch more fish off UK waters and exclude European Union boats from fishing in European waters were disappointed in 2016, disappointed in 2019, disappointed in 2020.

5:57And I really disappointed now because basically till 2038, the European Union basically continues to have almost the same access British waters that existed before Brexit. If I got it? Yeah, I think there's a few other bits and bonds you can go through. But just first of all, the fishing, because this goes to the heart of the politics. I was in Scotland over the weekend and because Fiona and I wanted to swim in Olderswater, we stopped near Puli Bridge, scene of one of your own. Very good. Communication is triums where you ended up at the wrong end of the bridge. That's right. We don't need to tell that story.

6:31Anyway, so coming back today by car means that I've done nothing but listen to different news stations covering this. And virtually every single interview was about until the deal was done when it sort of brought on a bit. It was basically about fishing and about the theme of betrayal more generally. And the reason for that, and this is what just gets my goat about the way that our media political ecosystem works. It's almost a decade now since we've left. So it says the referendum rather. And it was late going back in time. Nogel Farage, before seeing a word, says, if I'm your prime minister, I'll be reversing every last dot com of this.

7:14Can we be a knock? At least sort of waiting to hear what was might be in it before coming out to say she's gaps gobsmacked at this terrible betrayal. And even you, Rory, even you there, you said, you said big losers. Okay. One of the interviews, one of the interviews I heard. So Farage comes on and says this spells the end of the UK fishing industry. At which point, I think it was LBC news, interviewed a very calm, measured guy called Mike Cohen from UK fisheries who yes, wasn't very happy about some of the arrangements. I'll tell you what he wasn't particularly happy about him in it, but actually said in answer to the question, what is Nigel Farage right?

7:54This is the end of the UK fishing industry. And he said, no, he's not because actually this just extends the deal that we've got now. Okay. It doesn't make any worse. It leaves the sense is quite. Yeah, yeah. Additouage, one thing which I didn't hear until actually read the agreement was the fact that the government is putting in, I can't remember the sum, but it's some it's a sort of three figure millions, a 200, 300, whatever it was million, into coastal towns to help sort of, you know, develop. I think in the way they put it was to give fishing communities the opportunity to exploit this new this new arrangement.

8:30But the other thing I think it's worth just point to you. Sorry, it's like the existing arrangements as he pedantically they haven't really changed the arrangement about how much they can. Well, no, no, exploit the fund, exploit the fund that they're giving within the context of this arrangement. But just one thing and the guy Mike Cohen, he was very at pains to point out was the interview was saying, you know, hold on a minute, okay, you're not 100 percent happy, but the government has to look at the bigger picture and food and farm exports are much, much bigger. Now, I just don't want to look at it.

9:03So the fishing industry in total, in total, and I'm not minimizing fishing, it's a really tough industry in my view. But it's worth about a billion, okay. The whole thing, food and farm exports, which are covered by this bigger deal that you've talked about, yeah, worth exports to the European Union alone worth 10 times more than that. So the government does have to, and that's clearly where the deal has been done, you know, instead, and Keir's time have tried basically to say that the reason why 12 years is better than one is, because it gives people stability and so forth. So I think fishing is significant, but I'm not convinced that it's the, as it were, the most important deal.

9:44Farage makes it that or tries to make it that, because he thinks that's the best way to sort of wave the patriotic flag. The biggest betrayal of fishermen came with Brexit itself, and that's why John's and Farage and their expectations. Yeah, they believed that somehow they would be able to get control of the UK waters, which they said, instead of which they've lost 30 % of their trade since Brexit. The big picture I was looking at is this question, as we get closer to the European Union, closer to a sort of customs union arrangement, people will begin to point out that this constrains the kind of trade deals we can do with other countries.

10:22So one example might be, if we sign up to not chlorinating our chicken, we can't really sign that a deal with a country that's trying to sell us chlorinated chicken because we're now governed by European Union food standards. But I was looking at the figures comparing this great much -telted India deal with the EU deal, and here are some figures for you. So our exports to the EU are about 42 % of our goods experts, India 2%. Services about 125 billion to the EU to India 5. Tariffs with the EU zero, well, cars about 60 % whiskey about 150%. Savings from rejoining the European customs union, in addition to what we've got now, would be about 7 billion pounds a year.

11:14The trade deal with India is about 0 .7 billion, in other words, one tenth of that. And we've lost about 27 billion pounds of trade with Europe. And of course, the background of this also is that there's been a very big shift in views on Brexit. Only 30 % of people in the latest U .Gubb poll now think that it was the right thing to do to vote to leave the European Union. That was so crazy about the debate. So, you know, and as you know, my big complaint about the broadcast is always the way they take their agenda from the from the media and from a very small number of very right -wing politicians, like Farage and now Badnock, who's sort of trying to fight him on the same ground.

11:54To my mind, if you were genuinely reflecting public opinion, that sense of where the debate has shifted would be much, much more a bigger part of the narrative. But it's not. To be fair, I thought of the press conference. It was really interesting.

12:12I care start with you had Ursula von der Leyen and Tony O 'Coster, the two European Union leaders and and Kierstammer. And they had sort of, you know, a few UK journalists and then a few non -UK European. And it was again back to this parallel universe. So Chris Mason was the first question, you know, Fisherman betrayal. To be fair to Robert Pestin, our rest is money colleague. I to Kierstammer is the not a danger you're getting the worst of all worlds. You're upsetting people who are still committed to Brexit by making clear that you're unpicking parts of it, but you're not going anywhere near to filling the gap with the damage, the economic damage that Brexit has done.

13:01And I just feel the one bit I think is missing from the from the labor government politics on this is actually the constant calling out of the people who did the damage. Now little for us shouldn't be allowed to go into a studio without being really pinned on his role the promises he made. And it's so easy now for him to say, oh, if I'd been in charge it would be in a very different sort of Brexit. They all say that because the truth is they didn't have a clue what Brexit was going to be. So I actually, as you know, Fiona was in the car and one of the things you have to understand about Fiona is that when I'm trying to listen to something like a press conference on the radio really carefully because I'm going to talk to Rory Stewart about it a couple of hours time, this constant commentary.

13:46She was coming out, absolutely from the perspective of this doesn't go nearly far enough. Well, let me join. And there's a lot of that. There's a lot of that. Well, I agree with Fiona on this and I take it further because I think the fault is partly with Britain, but it's also with the European Union. And what I mean by this is that I think there was a real opportunity to take these concrete steps. And in the end, in the end, the big historical picture, these are kind of minor tinkering. Their improvements, no doubt, makes it better. But there's still minor tinkering within a complicated trade deal.

14:22And a sense, I talked to Alan Menon, our friend, who said that it's just a kind of reminder that Brexit's never done event. It's a process that's just going to go on every year for the rest of our lives as you keep kind of tinkering with these deals back and forth. So I would have thought the really big opportunity would have been to take a step back and say we're in a completely new world. We're in the world of Trump. Look what's happened to Kani. Look what's happening in Ukraine. Look what's happening with tariffs. Look what's happening with Russia. And we, you know, Starmer, Matt Krone, Mets and the European Union, we have a much, much bigger vision of where we're going.

15:00And we're going to set some concrete steps. And this is the first step in that narrative. And you would connect it to an economic story. You'd connect it to a defense story. You'd connect it. So a democracy story, etc. And that's what I think is really sad here. What we really want is some courage and people to say here are concrete steps, here are milestones. We're not going to be sort of fuzzy. But let's return to some of the really bold ideas. You know, how about the Balkans, countries and Balkans joining the single market? How about thinking about putting a UK, Canadian, Turkish forces forward in Estonia?

15:42We've got some British forces there, but why not big permanent plan for to defend the Baltic? Why don't we really come up with a really interesting idea around the legal migration? So get into that in the main part when we talk about Germany's policies. But I think there was an opportunity here if Europe had been imaginative to actually solve the issue of the small boats across the Channel as part of this deal. Well, I think on that, I'll tell you what I was expecting. When this was this sort of build up to this because you really have the three areas. You have the sort of the general strategic approach and the partnership.

16:16And there was a lot of talk of that. That is interesting. And the mood musical on that is good. And that's fine. Then you had the trade and cooperation and the changes, which once you've ruled out single market customs union, then you are inevitably, as you say, talking about fairly major tinkering, but ultimately, you're not changing the fundamental. And then the third area, which I wasn't expecting more was in relation to defense and security. And because what you've got now is clearly ongoing, the process by which Britain can be involved in this European union, this big fund, 150 billion euro fund that they've set up, they're clearly desperate for the UK to be involved to a greater extent in relation to Ukraine.

17:01But again, I think the politics impinge on this and politics without rebuttal. So again, on another, I had a weekend basically going to different Scottish football matches and on the way to one of them. Again, Nigel Farage, I think he lives inside, he and ties live in the BBC headquarters. And he was on another interview where he was essentially saying, well, part of the great betrayal, the great sell -out, we're clearly going to be sending British soldiers to fight under a European flag. I mean, absolute fucking nonsense, right? But where you are absolutely right, he's allowed to say that and feel confident that that helps his political project, because he isn't being put back in his box in relation to just how ridiculous a thing that is to say.

17:49The fact is that European security has changed because of Ukraine is continuing to change because of Trump and the European governments, including the UK, have to adapt to that. And so I, where I'm completely with you, I overall thought they've done a pretty good job in this. I really do both sides. Yeah, yeah, pretty good job. But I was expecting more in relation to the defence. But I think this isn't, I mean, I think we can believe both things. I think we can think Nick Timothy Simmons did a really good job, but in the end, as you said at the beginning, this is the only thing I think Nick Timothy Simmons would be a love child involving Nick Timothy, the Tory MP and somebody called Simmons.

18:31I think you mean the Thomas Simmons. Nick Thomas, I'm so sorry. I'm so weird. Sorry. What was it? That was a bit weird. That was a kind of strange thing going on in my head there. As distracted by my children coming. Listen, I think the team did a really good technocratic job, as you said at the beginning. But there is still a big mystery why this new age of Trump hasn't yet got these European leaders stepping up and saying, okay, we are going to think about what the global trading system can be in an age of Trump. What is a rules based international order to use that kind of jargon? But more obvious things, you know, we just sent a few to Ed Mellemand.

19:10If we're going to be serious about climate policy, we've got to do it with a whole of Europe together. No point Britain doing on its own. The only home is to do it with Europe. If we're going to be serious about AI, no point Britain doing on its own, we've got to really think about it because the money's involved in these things. I mean, in climate, it's that we need to get 15 % of global emissions, not 2 % of global emissions if we're going to make it different. And in AI, it's because it's going to take hundreds of billions and immense investment to get this off the ground. And we've got a huge option to also just to finish a little bit of the puzzle.

19:46In getting the financial markets from Britain connected again with the European financial markets, because in order, my friend Enrico Letter, who I keep trying to sell to you the future of former Italian Prime Minister, I'm hoping one day we can infuse, has been going around saying that what we need if we're going to get defence going in Europe is the City of London, that they need to get financial passports in going again. They need to make easier relationships with Britain, if they're simply to get the funds together to get EU defence off the ground. Yeah, one of the things that was, seems to be an agreed role, which I think would be a particular interest to you, was the use of e -gates at more European airports.

20:26Did I, I told you, I told you, I can't remember if I told our listeners about what I did at Lisbon Airport last year. You did tell us, that was a very lucky lot to be with you, that sounded very embarrassing then. Just to remind us, he stood up after he had been queuing for an hour and started shouting at the entire crowd, how many of you voted for Brexit? And nobody, not one person admitted it, not one. No, so I think there's that, and then I think the other, I think the, the, some, if I got a message from somebody, the new European, if I was Matt Kelly, the owner of the European, he said, some of this feels small, but the vibe shift feels really big.

21:05And I think that's quite an interesting way to look at it, that this was, and that said to me that there was quite a lot of confidence in the way that Kyrs Thal was sort of projecting it. It's never, ever going to be enough for people like Fiona and me, who just think this has been the biggest, I call it national, national act of self -harm, N -A -S -H. And, and, but this, but I think if you're less than a year in to your fur, hopefully the first of a few terms in government, it's a pretty good first start. And then of course, you know, once, once you get used to the idea that this is not part of the calendar, there's an annual, US, an annual EU UK summit.

21:46Then, and I think the, the other thing I spoke to somebody in the Trump administration last week, who basically was saying the point you made earlier, they don't, they, they, they actually think it's in their interest as well for Britain to have a pretty good relationship with European Union. The midst of this guy was on the, on the civil service side, is it where, rather than the kind of, mega, mega politicians. So yeah, I, I think there's, there's, I think it was a pretty good first start, but the front pages of the right wing, the front page of the right wing ranks tomorrow are going to be, so many to be seen.

22:19I'm too quick. Just bring the comments and we've got a few more minutes to go. Reinonymous, that's a great name. Always agree with Campbell, but I do think for our sits in his head a bit too much. I did think that a little bit actually when you were, you were sort of giving the vision, when, when you, I was a bit worried about that. I think that's what Reinonymous was coming from. But when you, you were moving on to say that Farage was camping in the BBC studios, but I did worry a bit that he was camping in your head. No, I'm sorry. Can I, am I allowed to go on to that? My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my chair is gone to that.

22:47Yeah, I, I, I, I, because the reason is, I'll tell you why, it's not that he's sitting in my head, but I think one of the reasons he's got himself to the place where he now is, is because the media treating him like a commentator, not the politician, and the two main parties have not gone after him as though he were. They keep saying he's a serious threat, but they don't treat him like one. So it's not that Reinocerus, whatever your name was, Reinonymous, that he lives in my head, but I think he needs to live in the head of Labour and Tory strategist a bit more than he does, and they need to be more effective about dealing with him.

23:23Sorry. Thank you. Okay. Very good. Very good. One time pad, there's no collective strategic vision for us as Europeans, the EU needs to do a big piece on setting its aims and objectives. Maybe it's too difficult with divergent members' heads, but can I have a go at your friend, Matt Cron here, inspired by one time pad? Have you followed this absolute nonsense that he's doing about a European political community? So he's envisaged this sort of association of democracies, which doesn't include Russian Belarus, and he's completely failed to notice that he's actually already got one of those things sitting in Strasbourg called the Council of Europe within his own country.

23:58So instead of leaning into an entire institution that already exists, making something of it, let's say a big meeting every six months of the heads of the Council of Europe, he's trying to then in Toronto set up some whole new body, which has no secretariat, no agenda, no direction. No. No. Okay, go on then. I think the European political community, as I see it, was a, and you're right that Russia and Belarus are excluded, because I think I think it was motivated by two things. One is Ukraine, bring together, show the size of the European family that is on the Ukrainian side against Russia, and the other thing was Brexit.

24:38I think this is a way of involving the UK, and there was Kierstharmer and Tarana, but so was Erdogan. Exactly. Exactly the same as the Council of Europe. Yes, treat by country. And the Council of Europe is a secretariat. A specific, the second, I did have a chat with, because as you say, it was in Albania, and Adirama did a bloody good, Albania did a bloody good job of putting on them, it looked amazing. And I think that, yeah, I think they probably all agree that it could do more direction, but I don't see it as a complete mirror. And by the way, we have been saying, Roy, that new institutions are going to develop in this sort of new world.

25:17One thing we haven't mentioned, Nathan Townsend there has a question, where do you think youth mobility ends up? Again, that was something that I think was a little bit unclear. The Europeans wanted to talk about, you know, and Ursula von der Leyen was talking about when she started in London, it was all very romantic, Kier wanted to sort of emphasise putting a cap on it and duration and visas. So that's one where I think they're still working out. To me, that is a way of… What was… Why is Tamil worried about that one? It's a very… I still can't quite understand it seems the most… Maybe, in a way, what does it… European Union students come over for two years, Ursula von der Leyen has a lovely time studying, and she goes back again.