I’m not expecting Starmer to make rejoin official party policy because it’s just not politically possible right now. It simply won’t work. A party leader can’t just make everyone do what they want, that’s not even how leadership should work.

Or to put it another way, you can only play the hand you’re dealt.

This is on the money IMHO.

It doesn’t matter what Starmer may or may not want or believe right now, because there isn’t sufficient appetite within the great unwashed to accept rejoining. If Labour were to start down that road tomorrow the backlash would be huge. Those who “won” believe that they still haven’t got their prize – whatever that may be I don’t know, I don’t think they actually do either, deporting everyone with a tan perhaps – and believe that it’s all the fault of traitor remainiacs. It would be both political and societal suicide. For rejoin to be on the table there has to be a shift in attitudes nationally and

They are going to have left utter chaos in their disaster capitalist wake by the time they’re done. And now they now that they’re finished electorally it’ll be about doing as much damage as possible before they’re booted out

unfortunately I think this is the only way it’ll happen. Like, you know the adage about only being able to help an addict after they’ve hit rock bottom?

The brexiters are still in denial. Things are shit at the moment because pandemic / Ukraine war / leaver interference / government interference / aliens / literally anything other than brexit. Theresa May – lest we forget, the woman who single-handedly, autonomously and unilaterally triggered A50 – sabotaged it all by being a closet remainer. They’ve had a sniff of what (in their heads at least) might have been and if we take that away from them then there will be a fan / excrement interface. We’ll never hear the last of it.

This country will have to burn before we can start to rebuild it.

Starmer declares a new policy of rejoin asap with whatever concessions are needed.

You’re right, that is an extreme example.

Almost as extreme as ruling out SM/CU/Swiss style arrangement and saying he can make Brexit work.

A pragmatic solution would have been to not rejoin but also not rule out alignment in the name of making Brexit work. He didn’t choose the pragmatic way.

Does it hell. Sure, the terms of trade are known and fixed, but the political fallout? The instability? The possibilty of refusal? The terms imposed? It’d be an absolute bloodbath!

You’re sounding more hysterical about rejoining than I remember people being about leaving.

This country will have to burn before we can start to rebuild it.

I wonder if Cougar has hit the nail on the head here.

i was a lifelong labour voter until labour in Scotland got into bed with the tories

I believe a platform of rejoin, constitutional convention and no more deals with the tories would gain ;labour a lot of the scots seats

I hate to break it to you TJ, and I sincerely don’t mean this pejoratively, but no-one outside of Scotland gives a f*** about Scotland.

This is a huge part of the problem. You’ve had the thin end of the wedge for years. Westminster is concerned about the affluent parts of the country, so London, the Home Counties etc. Scotland, Wales, NI, and in fact the rest of England north of maybe Coventry might as well not exist as far as UK politics is concerned. The only time they give the remotest of thoughts to us is when it’s election time.

I don’t want Scotland to gain independence, purely for selfish reasons – it’d leave the North of England even more ****ed than it already is – but I genuinely believe that it’d be the best thing for them.

It doesn’t matter what Starmer may or may not want or believe right now, because there isn’t sufficient appetite within the great unwashed to accept rejoining.

Large majority in favour.  almost 2:1 according to recent polls – which even show rejoin would attract some previously tory votes.

You’re sounding more hysterical about rejoining than I remember people being about leaving.

I would love to know where your confidence comes from but I can’t escape the feeling in comes from ignorance of the political reality. Sorry.

Large majority in favour. almost 2:1 according to recent polls

I said, “there isn’t sufficient appetite within the great unwashed to accept rejoining,” I didn’t say anything about majorities. Do you suppose 2:1 is sufficient? I have my doubts.

Large majority in favour. almost 2:1 according to recent polls – which even show rejoin would attract some previously tory votes.

Again, it’s just a poll around a very simple question, i would answer yes to this, as would most on here, but if you then factor in whatever realistic Pro’s and Con’s, then it may change dramatically.

We had our own terms before we left, a generation of being inside to tweak our membership benefits all gone at the stroke of a pen when we left, all i see is a very hard route to joining again, the French do not want the UK inside the EU, for their own benefit, same with a few others, i doubt the Italians, Spanish and a few others want the UK back, they’ve all moved up the pole due to us leaving and won’t be giving anything back, which would make rejoining a bit of a disaster part 2 in the making.

Large majority in favour. almost 2:1 according to recent polls

Once again, the numbers don’t matter, it’s the distribution of those numbers. You need deeper analysis than that.

This, plus there are other issues that affect voting behaviours. There are some true blue voters that’ll never vote labour, and yet are remainers. Hell, even some MP’s would still in private at least if posed that question of stay out or rejoin say rejoin.

It’s not a referendum any longer, it’s about making sure we don’t get another 5 years of tory government. And while i sympathise and agree that we lack truthfulness in politics and that if Starmer is planning a bait and switch or whatever then he’s no better than the other lot…… right now they’re the rules and losing clean is disastrous. As hurtful as it is to say, win by whatever means necessary is the game right now.

I tend to agree. We simply cannot afford more Tory rule – in the most literal sense, in many cases – so I would tend to agree that theres not much I would rule out to achieve that.

Voting Labour is an easy enough compromise for me – even though I would rather vote Green, we live in a Lab/Con swing constituency.

Interestingly, almost TJ’s entire argument seems to have been based on… a lie? Happy if someone can actually find it, but I’ve tried quite hard and I can find no record of Starmer ever saying there is no economic case for rejoining. He’s a lawyer, and careful with his words. He always says ‘no case’, which I understand to mean that when you take everything into account, the sums don’t add up. In the original R4 interview that kicked all this off he said “Do I think, just to take your question head on, that going back into years of wrangling, years of uncertainty, is going to help our economy? No, I don’t.”. Unlike the ERG, I think he is likely to have done some actual thinking to arrive at this conclusion.

Another part of the argument that seems to have only a tenuous relationship with the truth is the repeated claim that Starmer is “pretending he can reverse the ill effects of brexit while ruling out all the steps need to reverse the ill effects”. As far as I can tell, he has only said that trading arrangements could be improved, or made better, not reversed. And he hasn’t ruled out all the steps, he has ruled out rejoining the SM and CU – the reason for which he stated as above.

It would really help if you could stick to things that Starmer has actually said, instead on making stuff up so you can work yourself into a bit more of a lather. Obviously I will retract this and apologise if you can provide the references.

Does it hell. Sure, the terms of trade are known and fixed, but the political fallout? The instability? The possibilty of refusal? The terms imposed? It’d be an absolute bloodbath!

Better or worse than what we’re going through at the moment and for the next few decades?

Better or worse than what we’re going through at the moment and for the next few decades?

Worse. We’d have to spend all our capital and time working on the new terms and conditions and meeting them, JUST after we’ve created a whole new set of terms and conditions anyway.

You can’t just wind the clock back and pretend it never happened. Rejoin won’t put us back to where we were, we would have left then rejoined. You can’t undemolish a house and get your money back, you have to build a new one.

The damage we’ve done over the last few years is we’ve made the country one that isnt worth negotiating with because we can’t be trusted not to piss on anything that other parties have spent time, effort and money on.

The US is in the same position – its is internationally weakened by Trump’s arbitrary tearing up  intentional deals an agreements – even out of power theres enough political  fuckupery going on in the country – enough electoral support of trumpisjm even iif its one the wane – that any deal the country tries to negotiate comes with the spectre of only being one election cycle away from being trashed again.

In the UK we’ve been a victim of tory party infighting spilling out into international relations – the tory party as we have it needs to be gone – as in long gone – consistently irrelevant – obviously abandoned by the electorate before we could seriously consider rejoining the EU.

What we’d have to do to get there is operate alongside the EU – acting in good faith, being dependable – being a half descent neighbour. You know hold a referendum where the facts are available to all and yield a result that show overwhelming support.

Making Brexit ‘work’ would be the best step towards rejoining, eventually. But it can only be better than doing everything possible to prevent it from working which is where we are now

I can’t see the direct quote.  I could have sworn I did

No political case and no economic advantage as above seems to be it.    Apologies that my wording was not 100% correct and nice use of pedantry and weasel words.  Starmer himself would be proud :-)  Both are still untrue of course IMO

My basic point still stands.  Starmer has ruled out the steps needed to reverse the damage or to significantly improve trade

Errmm – its really not me that is working myself up into a frothing mess on this.  I am actually amused by the logical contortions you guys have to try to shore up your position and am certainly I am not ill tempered.  Again apologies if it comes over as that

I am however disgusted by starmers embrace of brexit, on him letting the tories off the hook and his refusal to even follow let alone attempt to lead public opinion

I really fail to see the point of a labour party that is now a party of centre right policies and that supports brexit.

You can’t just wind the clock back and pretend it never happened. Rejoin won’t put us back to where we were, we would have left then rejoined. You can’t undemolish a house and get your money back, you have to build a new one.

So much this.

The other thing to remember is that Brexit is not the cause of all our ills – brexit was largely a reaction the the feeling that everything was totally fubared already. Brexit obviously hasn’t fixed all those things, it’s made them all worse, but any rejoin effort would completely divert attention from fixing those root causes. As Starmer said “But I do also fundamentally believe that if we don’t address the other underlying issues that have bedevilled growth in this country … then we will not actually be able to fix the problems that we’ve got.”

Asked if being part of the single market would boost economic growth, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘No, at this stage, I don’t think it would. And there’s no case for going back to the EU or going back into the single market.’

Exactly. “No case”

And he hasn’t ruled out all the steps, he has ruled out rejoining the SM and CU – the reason for which he stated as above.

He also ruled out FOM which rules out a Swiss style deal.

Once you’ve ruled out SM/CU/Swiss deal what is left?

Please don’t say ‘regulatory alignment’. It’s a meaningless phrase without the specifics of what is going to be included and how it is going to be policed.

Each piece of regulatory alignment is going to have to be negotiated and agreed by all the EU countries. Each and every piece. It’s going to be far more difficult and take far longer to arrange than membership of the CU.

It’s one step above the ‘technological solution’ proposed by the Tories for the NI border.

final word till somone comes up with a different point :-)

here is another newspaper quoting folk who agree that Starmer is talking bunkum – just to show a different side that the Grauniads unwavering support for everything starmer says and that my viewpoint is not absurd

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/keir-starmer-doesnt-want-rejoin-single-market-twitter-eu_uk_638dc9bfe4b0ca11e41439f9

I really fail to see the point of a labour party that is now a party of centre right policies and that supports brexit.

You’ve said in the last couple of pages that you can’t support the Tories, Labour or the SNP. Aren’t you kinda running out of options?

Yup

A plague on all thier houses.  Ive even fallen out with the greens.

Ill read manifestos and opinion polls.  It doesn’t really matter for westminster elections in my constituency.  Tories have no chance.  If the defacto referndum is going to happen then it will be a pro independence party

You never know – we might even have a choice of a pro independence socialist party if they can stop being spliters!

here is another newspaper quoting folk who agree that Starmer is talking bunkum

I don’t seriously disagree with any of them. We would obviously be better off in the CU and SM. But what none of them are addressing is the cost of getting from where we are today to that state where we are back in and benefiting from it. Your magic wand won’t do it.

Ive even fallen out with the greens.

Looks like you’ve only one option left….

Have you ever seen a picture of them together?

Makes you think.

Anothe Brexit buggered my business story. Thing is I looked at the pic and thought <seen that on Ali for a couple of dollars>

Brexit is bad but should not be blamed for things that are down to unfair competition from sweat shops in China:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/23/brexit-has-lost-us-25-of-sales-british-bike-storage-firm-buckles-under-red-tape

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Bicycle-Support-Bike-Wall-Mount-Hook_1600519349066.html?spm=a2700.galleryofferlist.normal_offer.d_title.14565ee4OafC4w

Edit to add: the Ali boom has only just started in France and I reckon his falling sales are typical of businesses that had low-tech high margin products that are now appearing on Ali in French.

“No case” for rejoining doesn’t mean it’s not in the country’s ultimate best interests. It means that there is no way to do that right now.

A bit like knowing someone’s guilty but also knowing that you can’t get enough admissible evidence to have a chance of a successful prosecution.

Please don’t say ‘regulatory alignment’. It’s a meaningless phrase without the specifics of what is going to be included and how it is going to be policed.

Not really. Most people know what it means in practice. It has been discussed at length these last 6 years or so. The point is that gentle softening of Brexit will help to build good faith, will ease trade a bit, and lay the groundwork for stronger cooperation in the future.

I don’t have specifics of course, I’m not a trade analyst. I talking about what I think Starmer is up to. I think that’s more plausible than suddenly becoming a Brexiteer. You don’t go from being a remainer to actually embracing this Brexit mess, that doesn’t happen. If you were pro EU membership then, you can only be more pro now.

Anothe Brexit buggered my business story. Thing is I looked at the pic and thought <seen that on Ali for a couple of dollars>

Brexit is bad but should not be blamed for things that are down to unfair competition from sweat shops in China:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/23/brexit-has-lost-us-25-of-sales-british-bike-storage-firm-buckles-under-red-tape

I don’t think thats fair. We’ve lost way more in revenue due to Brexit than the Cycloc guy (Actually around 15% but our 15% is still a bigger number than Cycloc’s 25%) and its not because some one makes something similar on Aliexpress.

unfortunately I think this is the only way it’ll happen. Like, you know the adage about only being able to help an addict after they’ve hit rock bottom?

If you’re going to use that analogy then the UK is very far from rock bottom. We’re basically at the stage where the initial excitement has worn off and we’re chasing the initial high. When the problem develops further the next stage is to figure out how to manage it with harm reduction strategies and appropriate medical and other interventions and treatment. The UK’s immediate future is not that of a hopeless smack/crackhead who needs to go cold turkey, it’s a stable addict on methadone who holds down a job/family and has a long term ambition to one day kick the habit.

Worse. We’d have to spend all our capital and time working on the new terms and conditions and meeting them, JUST after we’ve created a whole new set of terms and conditions anyway.

You can’t just wind the clock back and pretend it never happened. Rejoin won’t put us back to where we were, we would have left then rejoined. You can’t undemolish a house and get your money back, you have to build a new one.

I think you’re being too optimistic of the ‘consequences’ of Brexit and the impact on ‘ordinary folk’, you aren’t seen nothing yet.

As any physician knows, the best time to treat a sick patient is when they are getting worse. If they get better, it must be the intervention you’ve just given. If they decline further, then it was too late to save them and nothing would have helped. Starmer is just playing the safe-to-get-elected game as the patient declines. Eventually the economics will be so obvious that intensive care will need to be called. Nurse SM/CU will arrive just in time for the election after next, and we will be Norway not Singapore-on-Sea. Sadly, like children, you have too let things fail to learn the lessons.

Johnson losing in Uxbridge would be magnificent. After hubris comes nemesis.

Not really. Most people know what it means in practice. It has been discussed at length these last 6 years or so.

Has it?

What was the conclusion? As far as I can tell, every piece of regulatory alignment is going to have to be negotiated with the EU. Both the details and how it’s going to be policed.

I find it strange that joining the SM or CU would result in a ‘bloodbath’ but negotiating the details of lots of little agreements is going to be a doddle.

Even the assumption that the EU is going to be interested in our ‘regulatory alignment’ is a bit of a leap.

I don’t seriously disagree with any of them.

Eh?  You have spent the last goodness knows how many pages arguing against the points made and saying Starmer has everything right when allthose quotes are agreeing that Starmers position is illogical and untrue.

As for popularity of rejoin in some form – Starmer is fighting against public opinion

there isn’t sufficient appetite within the great unwashed to accept rejoining. If Labour were to start down that road tomorrow the backlash would be huge.

What’s the evidence for this please?

Bear in mind that a large and growing majority of the public think Brexit was a mistake. And that’s despite the two major parties still insisting it was a great idea.

The point is that gentle softening of Brexit will help to build good faith, will ease trade a bit, and lay the groundwork for stronger cooperation in the future.

so why is Starmer refusing to do that?  Out of the CU and SM is hard brexit and cannot be softened

Fiddlesticks – sucked back In :-)

What’s the evidence for this please?

Bear in mind that a large and growing majority of the public think Brexit was a mistake. And that’s despite the two major parties still insisting it was a great idea.

Don’t quote me on this but I suspect the electoral maths hinges on the remain/leave split by age group being combined with the % of various age groups that actually gets off their arse to vote.

If you’re going to use that analogy then the UK is very far from rock bottom.

Entirely my point. Which is why we’re not rejoining any time soon. People won’t see a reason to do so.

The UK’s immediate future is not that of a hopeless smack/crackhead who needs to go cold turkey, it’s a stable addict on methadone who holds down a job/family and has a long term ambition to one day kick the habit.

In that scenario, tomorrow never comes. Comfort breeds complacency. Where’s the incentive for that lofty goal?

What’s the evidence for this please?

Bear in mind that a large and growing majority of the public think Brexit was a mistake.

No evidence. Plenty of anecdotes.

It’s just like, my opinion man.

You have spent the last goodness knows how many pages arguing against the points made and saying Starmer has everything right when allthose quotes are agreeing that Starmers position is illogical and untrue.

Ok, sorry, I do disagree with Caroline Lucas, who, like you, is making up stuff for political purposes. Starmer has never claimed that we can be better off than we were as members under Brexit, just that we can be better off than we are today. The rest are just stating that we would be better off in the SM and CU, which as I have stated many times, is self evidently true. But none of them are offering practical routes to get back in, and neither are you.