Brexit hope absent as Labour overtures on musicians hit bum note

However, it is sadly not surprising.

The Financial Times reported this week that the European Union will not loosen Brexit curbs on UK touring musicians, citing “internal EU briefing documents that deal an early blow to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s hopes for a reset”.

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The article noted that the Labour Government has promised to seek a deal on touring artists as one of its main ambitions for improving relations with the EU, observing professional musicians are required because of Brexit to obtain cultural performance visas and transport permits for their equipment.

And the FT, flagging the internal briefing documents, reported that “Brussels has said that such a deal is impossible because it would require rewriting the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement”.

Surely this is the crux, not just in terms of Sir Keir’s ambitions on touring musicians but also in other areas where he wants to ease the Brexit burden, including making things less difficult in the EU for the UK professional services sector and reducing bureaucracy on food and drink exports.

Sir Keir, while he is obviously adopting a far less hostile stance towards the EU than recent Conservative prime ministers, does seem somewhat like Mr Johnson in wanting to have his cake and eat it.

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This cake-related figure of speech was, of course, seized upon rambunctiously by Mr Johnson when he did the UK’s Brexit deal with the EU.

Of course, Mr Johnson’s claim that the UK was having its cake and eating it with this agreement has inevitably turned out to be about as wide of the mark as you could get. If anyone has any doubts about this, they just need to look at the colossal damage being done to the UK economy.

One big problem for Sir Keir appears to be that he wants things from the EU but is not willing to offer anything significant in return.

And this really begs the question of why on earth this powerful trading bloc would be interested in re-entering complex negotiations with the UK on what for the EU would amount to piffling things.

The scale of the EU relative to the UK means that the things Sir Keir is seeking are far more important to his country than they are to the 27-country bloc, members of which continue to benefit from free movement of people and frictionless trade between themselves.

The Prime Minister ruled out rejoining the EU or the European single market ahead of the General Election.

This was in stark contrast to his stance back in late 2019, when he argued eloquently against Brexit.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has said that Labour will never take the UK back into the EU or single market.

Sir Keir has even ruled out rejoining the European customs union.

And he has so far, lamentably, shunned the idea of a youth mobility scheme with the EU, a programme that the bloc looks keen to pursue and which would be so good for the young people of the UK who have seen their opportunities reduced so dramatically by the country’s hard Brexit.

All of this makes it no surprise that Sir Keir and his Government appear to have hit a bum note with their overtures to the EU on touring musicians.

It seems likely that the Prime Minister can expect the same with much of the rest of his dispiritingly small ambitions to relieve some post-Brexit bureaucracy.

Of course, this has all been predictable enough for a long time.

That is not to say that Sir Keir is not entitled to have a go. However, to say that what he is pursuing is a long shot would not really capture just how unlikely he is to achieve his aims.

We should also bear in mind that achievement of his aims would not mitigate in any meaningful way the colossal damage that has been and will be done to the UK economy from the country’s hard Brexit and consequent ending of free movement between the UK and European Economic Area and loss of frictionless trade.

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It is most incongruous that we have a Labour Government that says economic growth is its number one priority but rules out something that would provide a huge boost – rejoining the single market.

What is more, the difficulties Labour was always going to have in achieving its aims in relation to what amounts to tinkering around the edges of the post-Brexit arrangements were absolutely plain throughout the election campaign. And long before that.

The UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE) think-tank was among those to give its view on what was likely to happen.

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Assessing the situation back in the autumn of last year, when Rishi Sunak was prime minister, UKICE director Anand Menon said: “While there is little appetite on the part of the current UK Government to build on the relationship negotiated by Boris Johnson, the difficulties experienced in negotiating UK participation in the EU’s Horizon research programme bear eloquent testimony to the problems inherent in doing so even should the political will be present.

"This would become all the clearer under a Labour government. It is far from obvious that the EU is interested in even the limited kinds of alterations to the status quo that Labour figures are mooting. Brexit fatigue and a number of other issues vying for political attention will conspire to limit the appetite for lengthy negotiations with London. Not to mention that the EU will hesitate to negotiate anything with a Labour government that might be repudiated soon afterwards by a Conservative successor.”

Of course, Sir Keir has options if he wants to increase greatly his chances of making meaningful progress in the UK’s relations with the EU.

Or at least he did have until he decided to rule out just about everything that might make a significant difference.