Month by month, Labour is bringing us closer to Europe. This week, the UK announced it is rejoining the Erasmus+ youth exchange programme. This will open the door beyond the many young people who attend university – its remit includes FE students, apprentices, and youth and school groups. A whoop of excitement greeted the announcement, with opportunities for those involved in education, training, culture and sport, and a commitment to maximise take-up by disadvantaged young people. Widening experience, encouraging adventure: Erasmus+ may help cure Britain’s monolingual handicap and the catastrophic decline in language courses. Last year in the UK, less than 3% of A-levels were in languages.
This all eludes Europhobes such as Andrew Neil, who posted on X that “extra taxes now being inflicted on working people will be used to finance some ‘study’ in Barcelona for gap-year yahs from affluent families”.
Our expensive experiment with isolation from Europe is unwinding. Forget Labour’s embarrassingly futile slogan of “make Brexit work”, its insistence on “red lines” and fear of doing anything that might reignite Brexit passions. Now it is accelerating from tiptoe to trot towards Europe. Last month, Keir Starmer wrote: “We must confront the reality that the botched Brexit deal significantly hurt our economy.” Listen to other ministers’ language. Rachel Reeves: “The cuts to capital spending and Brexit have had a bigger impact on our economy than was even projected back then.” Wes Streeting said Labour should undo “the economic damage done by Brexit”, while David Lammy refused seven times in one interview to rule out reversing a Brexit that had “badly damaged our economy”. This is the new mood music, as Liberal Democrats and Greens eat Labour’s pro-European lunch, with twice as many Labour voters considering fleeing to them as to Reform UK.
The Europhobe response to rejoining Erasmus has been as demented as you would expect. The Mail went for the Turks again (Turkey is an associate member of the programme), with the headline “Thousands of Turkish students could come to UK” – a reprise of referendum-era scare stories about Turkey joining the EU.
The Tories and Reform hope Labour is falling into their trap on Europe, reawakening deep Brexit “betrayal” passions. But they sound out of step: the shadow foreign secretary, Priti Patel, says: “Labour continue to betray Brexit … dragging Britain back under the control of Brussels.” YouGov finds 65% support for rejoining Erasmus with only 12% opposed. Even back in 2020, as the Brexit axe fell, 61% wanted to stay in Erasmus.
The Tories and their media attack the £570m cost of Erasmus. But if they bandy around numbers they have to answer for the whole cost of Brexit. The National Bureau of Economic Research finds that the UK’s GDP is between 6% and 8% smaller than it could have been. The House of Commons library estimates that leaving the EU is costing the Treasury up to £90bn a year in lost tax revenue. Here’s how. Unless lorries are backed up outside Dover, the unseen blockages and deterrents to trade usually go unnoticed, yet an estimated 16,400 companies have abandoned EU trade.
Here’s an example of the obstacles, reported in Farmers Weekly. Four refrigerated lorries carrying £650,000 worth of Scottish lamb to Europe were stopped at Calais; the meat was rejected by French inspectors despite being stamped as fit for consumption by the UK’s Food Standards Agency. Worse still, the lorries were not allowed to return, either. “They hold all the power. We’re completely helpless,” said West Scottish Lamb. As the meat neared its viable time limit, they said that standoff was “crippling our business”, adding: “The UK government has effectively handed the French authorities the power to control our goods.” Yes, that’s what the disastrous Brexit deal did. They can reject our exports, now we have given up any say. It was sorted last week, at the last minute. Though not accepted into the EU, the meat was finally allowed to return to the UK, after what Farmers Weekly says was a three-week standoff.
I spoke to the National Sheep Association’s Phil Stocker, who said: “In the last six months there have been more problems. Our standards have become misaligned. They change some rules and we aren’t told.” This matters as more than a third of lamb is exported, and 95% of that goes to the EU. “We urgently need that trade agreement on food,” he adds. The government’s response is that it is negotiating an SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary) agreement that will boost trade and remove border checks. Stocker says he’s optimistic it may get done within 18 months, cutting red-tape costs. This example, he says, shows how Brexit makes costs rise and GDP contributions fall.
No doubt when that SPS deal is made, Brexiters will protest that we have become rule-takers, obeying Europe’s standards. But that’s what Brexit did, obliging exporters to conform while removing our seat at the table to decide on standards and rules. There will be more trouble ahead, warns Liz Webster of Save British Farming, for as long as the government tries to keep strategic ambiguity with the US. The UK has agreed to allow up to 13,000 tonnes of US beef per year (if it conforms to our standards, and is not hormone-fed), to the distress of beef farmers such as her. Donald Trump is pushing Britain for a full food trade deal, chlorine-washed chicken and all, yet that would kill off any deal with Europe. Given Trump’s erratic behaviour over existing deals, and ministers’ and senior MPs’ warning that all agreements with him are only “built on sand”, the time is rapidly approaching when Britain will have to choose. Forget the “bridge across the Atlantic” fantasies: on trade, on defence and in terms of our identity, we are Europeans.
