In a major change of tack, Starmer will use a speech to denounce the “mess” created by the British prime minister’s 2020 Brexit deal and the breakdown of trust with the EU caused by the row over trade arrangements for Northern Ireland. The Labor leader has so far avoided talking about Brexit, fearing it would alienate Leave voters, but has been encouraged by emerging evidence of the blow Brexit has dealt to the economy. He will claim that Labor can “make Brexit work”, arguing that Johnson’s Brexit deal had contributed to a sense of a country that was “stuck”, with wages and growth stagnant and public services in tatters. “They have created a huge ‘fatberg’ of bureaucracy,” he will say in a speech, comparing Brexit to the “wet mop island” found in the River Thames. “It’s preventing the flow of British business – we’re going to break that barrier.” Brexit had become something of a taboo subject for the Labor leadership: a third of Labor supporters voted Leave in 2016 and Starmer was associated with the ill-fated campaign to overturn that result. But new data has begun to separate the economic impact of Brexit from the Covid pandemic, showing a dismal UK trade and investment performance compared to other G7 countries. An Ipsos UK study found last week that the proportion of Britons who believe Brexit has made their daily lives worse has risen from 30 per cent in June 2021 to 45 per cent. only 17 percent said their lives had improved.

Starmer will insist that a Labor government would not seek to rejoin the EU single market or customs union or restore freedom of movement — let alone seek to overturn the 2016 vote to leave. “Nothing about reviewing these rows will help boost growth or reduce food prices or help British business thrive in today’s world – it would just be a recipe for more division,” he will say. Labor will seek a vet deal with the EU to reduce burdensome agri-food controls, mutual recognition of product standards and a mobility deal to facilitate short business trips and help artists tour Europe. Starmer would use the agri-food deal to remove most controls on trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and negotiate a trusted trader scheme to end a row with Brussels over the rules, contained in part of Brexit agreement called the Northern Ireland Protocol. The Labor leader said business leaders wanted to preserve the protocol, which leaves Northern Ireland in the single market for goods. “The solutions are there, the desire is there – what’s missing is the trust,” he will say. The foreign ministers of Germany and Ireland wrote an opinion piece in The Observer on Sunday accusing Johnson of not engaging with Brussels on the protocol in “good faith”. They wrote that there was no “legal or political justification” for his decision to introduce legislation to tear up parts of the deal. Starmer will say Labor will negotiate mutual recognition of qualifications and keep Britain in EU science programmes, including the €95bn Horizon programme, which British researchers value. Data sufficiency rules will be aligned, but Starmer would follow Johnson in pursuing a different course on City regulation, he will say in a speech at the Center for European Reform. The plan would also include more cooperation with the EU on justice and police matters, including a new “security pact”. Johnson is likely to portray Starmer’s speech as evidence that Labor wants to block Brexit, a policy embraced by many working-class voters in the former “red wall” of northern England. Some senior Labor figures, including London mayor Sadiq Khan, want Starmer to go further and commit to rejoining the EU single market, but this has been blocked by party strategists. Even the Lib Dems, who favor a return to the single market, have set no timetable for the move, unwilling to bring the British public back to a debate whose scars remain unhealed. Video: Is the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill a breach of international law?