Denis MacShane / Jan 2026
Image: Shutterstock
It is no accident that the tenth anniversary of Brexit coincides with a near perfect economic and diplomatic storm for the Labour government.
The promises of increased growth and profitable trade with non-European economies have turned into chimeras. The vision of a US-UK English speaking geopolitics has vanished into the icefields of Greenland. Lifelong Brexit enthusiasts like Daniel Hannam and Andrew Neil are now tweeting that America is Britain’s enemy, using language that makes Jeremy Corbyn look moderate.
So what does Sir Keir Starmer do now? He should look again at Britain’s relationship with its closest economic partners, and Nato partners who are clear, unlike the White House, that Putin is a serious threat to a Europe that stands for international rule of law.
It is not a question about rejoining the EU nor about the gimmick idea of joining the EU Customs Union which is a slogan not a policy. A Custom Unions means there are no tariffs applied to goods flowing between economies in a Customs Union. But the EU already offers tariff free trade to the UK.
Turkey is in a Customs Union with the EU but no Turkish firm or citizen can operate or set up in the EU without negotiating visa rights or finding an EU partner to represent its interests.
Instead Britain should look at one of its most solid friends on the continent with a democratic culture as old as Britain’s. Switzerland voted to reject membership of the European Union when the EU Treaty was launched three decades ago.
In response the Swiss opened unending negotiations with the EU to protect the right of open trade across the border between Switzerland and its four EU neighbours and to allow its citizens to maximise business opportunities by working in the broader European economy.
Voltaire said that if you saw a Swiss banker jump out of the window he should be followed as there would always be money at the end of the leap. Britain’s self-imposed rupture in trade with our near neighbours forming the world’s biggest market economy bloc in the name of Brexit purity is costing up to 8 per cent of GDP growth which is ruining all the Government’s hopes for growth led economics.
Starmer can reverse that by taking advantage of the current global political turbulence and announcing a commitment to engage in talks with Europe seeking a full Swiss style agreement. This is not a reversal of Brexit as it does not involve elections to the European Parliament, voting in EU Council decisions, though a stepped up more political UK office in Brussels would be welcome.
We have seen the so-called Boris wave of up a million migrants from Asia and Africa entering Britain to do the work that European Union citizens did prior to Boris Johnson’s damaging hard ultra hard Brexit.
Europe has got a lot richer since Brexit and its citizens are no longer seeking to come to a poorer UK suffused with Boriswave migrants doing low pay, long hours work.
The Swiss insist migrant workers from the EU must have a contract, must learn a Swiss language, have ID cards, and obtain a residence permit based on income and an employment contract.
In return Swiss citizens can live, retire or work in the EU as Brits could up to the damaging withdrawal deal signed by Johnson. Britain can apply the same rules so that freedom of movement is firmly controlled.
The details can be argued over but the world impact of Starmer re-connecting Britain with a Europe where Poland and Spain are growing at 3 per cent lasy year poised to overtake the Brexit weakened British economy and where Trump is rupturing the ties that bind Europe and America would be huge.
Labour, Lib-Dem, Green, Scottish and Welsh voters would all have a reason to vote for a return to Europe as Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch scratch each other over the bleached bone of the failed Brexit experiment.
