Sir Keir Starmer and the ghosts of Europe

For the best part of a decade, British politics was convulsed by madness. Prime minister after prime minister was consumed by the impossibility of taming the visceral political energies released by the 2016 “Brexit” referendum. Political language became possessed of a certain acridity and brutality. For a while, even the British constitution itself, proudly buttressed and sustained by its complex tissue of arcane conventions, seemed to groan under the political strain. Even a global pandemic, a war in Europe, and the death of a long-reigning monarch could distract only temporarily from the wound that the Brexit vote had opened in Britain’s civic fabric.

Small wonder, then, that Sir Keir Starmer came to power in 2024 desperate to put the so-called Brexit Wars behind him. Attitudes towards both the European Union and individual European partners would be stripped of their chest-thumping bravado and recast in a language of pragmatism and cooperation. But Britain, Starmer intoned, would not be “returning” to Europe.

Hence it is a matter of no small irony that Starmer’s (very probably) short reign has witnessed a realignment of the British party political system into something recognisably European.

Last Thursday’s local elections validated the new reality that Britain has evolved into a genuinely multi-party system, stretching from Reform on the far-right to the Greens on the far-left (if we ignore for the moment the added complexities posed by the nationalist parties of Wales and Scotland). To be sure, the energies pushing towards this realignment had long been coursing in the subterranean caverns of British politics, veiled for the moment by the Manichean polarities of the Brexit debate. But finally, it seems, they have definitively crashed through the surface.

A more emphatic “pro-European” position is easy pickings for any prospective new Labour leader – and a prefabricated rallying cry for the opposition on the anti-EU right.

Now that Starmer has been conclusively sapped of his authority (at the time of writing, more than 70 of his own MPs have called for his resignation, a situation from which there can be no coming back) the ghosts of Europe seem set to return to British political life in a much more direct way. For a leadership contest within the Labour Party is coming. And it is inevitable that all candidates will be forced to position themselves against Starmer’s hard stance on Britain’s relationship with the European Union – indeed, it may well become the defining policy issue of the leadership contest. Given that Labour has haemorrhaged support to the Greens and possesses a membership base positioned, on average, to the left of the parliamentary party, a more emphatic “pro-European” position is easy pickings for any prospective new leader – and, of course, a prefabricated rallying cry for the opposition on the anti-EU right.

This will matter beyond any leadership contest. For one, even an unsuccessful candidate who campaigns on a strongly pro-EU (or even “rejoin”) platform will nevertheless have succeeded in returning the question to the heart of British political debate. But in the medium term, too, the matter is of fundamental importance to the Labour Party.

As soon as Starmer is replaced, calls for fresh elections will follow from both the opposition parties and the media – though any new prime minister, inheriting their predecessor’s huge majority in the House of Commons, will do their best to avoid them. But whenever the next vote does arrive, the strong possibility exists that Britain will enter an era of coalition government. Opinion polls are volatile, of course, and this parliament may yet sit for another three years. But still, a more or less even split across five parties, coupled with the unpredictable voting patterns thrown up by the first-past-the-post voting system renders it exceedingly difficult to see how any party could muster a majority in its own right (a sidenote: expect voting reform to become an increasingly prominent theme – calls for a proportional system yet another step on post-Brexit Britain’s unlikely path towards a European political arrangement). Would a new Labour leader be willing to work with the markedly pro-EU Liberal Democrats, Greens, or Scottish Nationals? And at what cost? Before long, the question may become unavoidable.

But right now, the British Labour Party is so imprisoned in its own internal vortex of self-destruction that questions of cost have been pushed to an invisible, infinitely distant horizon. Starmer remains in office, but in an untenable position – his final atom of political agency may be humiliatingly deployed solely to set the terms and timetable of his own departure. But, whenever it comes, his parting will bring with it an acknowledgment that Britain’s “Europe question” has not, in fact, been answered – and may not be answered for some time yet.